School competition YES! – For the first time, students from all Federal states participate
Kiel/Hamburg, 16 February 2022: YES! is the biggest school competition in Germany in the field of “business and society”. Schools from the entire Federal Republic compete with school teams from the UK, the USA and Hong Kong for the best solution for relevant current economic problems. Economists from 27 renowned research institutions act as mentors during the upcoming YES! year. The new head of the YES! is digital change expert Professor Marianne Saam of the ZBW.
The national school competition YES! – Young Economic Summit, organised by the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics and Joachim Herz Foundation, enters its eighth round. In 2022, YES! is all about climate targets, CoVID-19, gender gap, unemployment, new work, smart cities, educational inequality, migration and digitisation. All topics can be looked up at: www.young-economic-summit.org
The motto is “Finding solutions together with researchers” and the task for students from years 10-12 is to develop their own ideas for regional and global challenges in business, society, politics and the environment in collaboration with scientists from eminent reseach institutes.
In 2022, all 16 Federal States have at least one school participating in the competition, which is a first. International knowledge exchange has also been enhanced with this competition, with 9 school teams hailing from Hong Kong, the UK and the USA. The participation of the schools from the UK and USA is funded by the YES! BRIDGE award granted by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. They will also be mentored by researchers from Germany. In all, YES! 2022 starts with 72 schools and 740 students.
The international finals of the YES! – Young Economic Summit will take place from 19–21 September 2022, prospectively at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg.
The YES! team has prepared more than 50 topics for selection in 2022 and also welcomed five new scientific institutes on board. Thus 27 research institutes and 80 scientists from Germany and Switzerland act as mentors for the school teams.
The Technical University of Munich, the Technical University of Lübeck, Leipzig University, Rostock University and KOF Swiss Economic Institute have newly joined the Partner network of the YES! which has thus grown to 27 institutes.
From 2022, the YES! – Young Economic Summit will be headed at the ZBW by Professor Marianne Saam, head of programme division “Economic Research Interface” and professor of Digital Economics at Hamburg University.
Professor Marianne Saam says about YES!: “Young people get to know scholarly thinking as something that immediately addresses real problems. They evaluate each other’s solutions and thus create visibility for ideas that their generation regards as important and convincing. This is what makes YES! unique in the field of economic education.”
About YES!
“YES! – Young Economic Summit” is one of the largest school competitions around economic and societal challenges for the young generation. Students work out solutions to global economic, ecological and societal problems on their own and present these in English at a school conference, the “YES! – Young Economic Summit”. Through debate with leading personalities and other students they improve their view of global interrelations and develop their own innovative solutions. The best solutions are chosen by democratic vote. The chosen solutions receive awards and are handed over publicly to suitable bodies for implementation and tracking. All participating schools receive continuous support for research, presentation and media communication on their way to the YES!. The YES! thus adopts the recommendations of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany which demand that students be enabled to use media critically. The “YES! – Young Economic Summit” is under the patronage of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection. It is a joint project of the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics and the Joachim Herz Foundation. In 2020, the YES! received the “Raising the Profile of Education and Science Diplomacy” award of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. In 2021, the prototype YES! MINT started, which involves grades 5-9 at the interface between MINT and business.
About the Joachim Herz Foundation
The Joachim Herz Foundation is mainly operative in the fields of natural sciences, business and personal development. In these fields it also funds small, innovative projects of third parties. Since 2017, the foundation has also been funding research projects in the fields of medicine, law and engineering. The Joachim Herz Foundation was established in 2008.
