Mind the gap: School competition YES! adds a digital sixth region and brings on board schools from the USA and UK

Press release News

YES! – Young Economic Summit builds bridges for science diplomacy – German research partners now cooperate with schools from the USA and UK

Kiel/Hamburg, 17 November 2021: YES! is the largest school competition for business and society in Germany. Schools from all over Germany compete for the best problem-solving idea. The next year will see two changes: (1) There will be a purely digital sixth region beside the five established ones. (2) Schools from the UK and the USA participate with YES! BRIDGE.

The national school competition „YES! – Young Economic Summit“organised by the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics and the Joachim Herz Foundation goes into a new round. In 2022, YES! will be all about climate targets, COVID-19, gender gap, unemployment, new work, smart cities, educational inequality, migration and digitisation. All topics can be found here: www.young-economic-summit.org/mitmachen/

“Finding solutions – together with researchers” is the motto for students in the school years 10+ to develop their own ideas for regional and global challenges in business, society, politics and the environment, in cooperation with researchers from renowned research institutions.

The YES! team offer a choice of 50 topics in 2022 and have acquired five new research institutes as scientific supporters. School teams in 2022 will have 30 institutes with more than 80 researchers at their side as mentors with whom they will discuss their solution ideas.

The new members in 2022 are the Technical University of Munich, Technical University of Lübeck, Leipzig University, University of Rostock and KOF Swiss Economic Institute. The network of scientific partners now numbers more than 30 institutes.

The YES! 2022 and its partners have big plans, because in addition to the five German regions there will be an Area Six which is fully digital. International schools from the USA and the UK will also participate, with support from the Ministry of Research and Education (BMBF) which funds the YES! BRIDGE programme.

The international schools will work on global themes jointly with German research institutes and thus increase science communication between German research institutes and schools from the USA and UK.

Teachers and students who are interested can register now until 12 December 2021 for the upcoming YES! 2022.

About the 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 Energy. 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. Also 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.