Medical care, clean water and gender equality are the issues focused on by participants in this year's Public Benefit International Challenge for Youth (PBICY) in Beijing on Saturday. A total of 12 teams have made it to the final round. They tried to outshine each other onstage with their proposals on Saturday in a final attempt to convince the judges they deserved to take home the grand prize.
2020 Public Benefit International Challenge for Youth in Beijing, August 15, 2020. /PBIC
A team called Green Leaves Volunteers won the gold award.
"According to my experiences and my team leader's experience, we found that female unemployment is a very big problem in Kenya," said Li Yuling, a member of Green Leaves Volunteers.
"Our project will provide three types of vocational courses, including traditional courses like cooking and sewing, computer skills and special course which will send girls to local training centers," added Hu Jiaxin, another member of the team.
Hu and Li are both 16-year-old students from south China's Guangdong Province. They worked on their project for 10 hours a week during the summer holidays before coming to the Chinese capital for the the contest.
Their team leader, Wang Yining, couldn't make it. But the two ladies' performance was good enough to impress the judges.
2020 Public Benefit International Challenge for Youth in Beijing, August 15, 2020. /PBIC
PBICY was launched in 2017 by the China-Africa Business Council and the China Social Assistance Foundation to promote exchanges between young people in China and Africa.
This year, the theme of the competition was "zero hunger, good health, quality education and gender equality." The contest has attracted hundreds of students over the past four years.
A lot of the student's proposals are practical too. The contest's co-founder Huang Zhongyang said many of the students' ideas could really be implemented in Africa because of their real-world application. "For example, last year we had a program called The Digital Library. They have already set up some digital libraries for African students," Huang said.
Thw 2020 Public Benefit International Challenge for Youth in Beijing, August 15, 2020. /PBIC
PBICY is also supported by the United Nations. Its work ties into the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development while giving its young participants an opportunity to grow.
"I think the contest is a very significant one. The world that we want is a world of global solidarity, where global problems are solved through collective actions," said Dr Babatunde Ahonsi, the UN resident coordinator in China.
The participants are very confident about the implementation of their projects, adding that they're happy to be able to play a role in promoting China-Africa exchanges.