Courtesy greetings

Distinguished Guests,

Participants to the Essay writing competition,

Thinkers in The Gambia

my Ladies and Gentlemen – Assalamalejkum, good morning to you all!

The World has a lot of difficulties. Every part of it has its own. Every social area has its own. Every family, and everyone in the family has his/her own difficulties. For the past few months now, the World has been facing its most challenging times. And I am not just speaking about the virus, but its socio-economical consequences as well. We are in trouble, hence the question:

How can we manage to be well physically and mentally these days? Mankind`s history is about surviving. So, how can we survive?

The truth is, and I`m happy to reveal the secret that YOU, all of you who participated in this competition, YOU HAVE THE KEY to survival.

One of the most critical points of survival is knowledge. Because the more you know, the more chance you have to survive. And this is why education is so important. Albert Einstein once said, ”educaton is not the ‘learning of facts’ but ‘training the mind to think’.

When you are a child, you learn to speak, walk, dance, sing and respect your elders. You learn how to behave in a family. When you go to school you learn how to write, read, how to behave in a bigger group of people, communicate in a proper way, respect not only the elderly, but each other.

As you are getting older, you learn, how to use these skills to grow. You learn about yourself, your acts, your own feelings, and these experiences merge into your knowledge.

I regret to have to tell you the bitter fact that, the average person stops learning as soon as he/she finishes school. These people do not learn about themselves, and they do not learn to merge their knowledge deeper into themselves, thus they cannot grow.

If you want to grow, you have to be and remain curious and ambitious. You have to find the strength in yourself. You have to learn to ask questions about what you do not know. You have to learn how not to be ashamed of making mistakes. If you learn from them, mistakes have the power to turn you into something better than you were before.

I know, it is a lot of pressure, specially on the young ones, to learn about new topics, or to stay in school. But when you find fun in school, when you find joy in learning, in thinking, you become a winner. You can be anything you want to be because you are able to LEARN to be.

You can be unstoppable with your knowledge. You can save lives, or you can be a successful businessman/woman, you can help others to be their better-selves by teaching them, you can – you can be president and lead this country!

OR should nothing work out you can still be an ambassador J

You have a lot of resources at hand to be anything you want to be. Technology is ever evolving. You can see it in your everyday lives, it grows. Either you use it or not, it still grows. Like the internet. The internet itself is young, just like you are, and developing very fast.

You are growing up with the idea, that you are able to turn on a computer or a smartphone, and you have access to endless amont of information. Unfortunately, you could be mislead, IF you did not learn to differenciate between right and wrong information or if you haven’t learned the ability to think things through. This is why the internet can be dangerous, but wonderfully genious at the same time.

Once you have gathered enough experience, you can start to separate the information you need to find the connections. And connections are of most importance because they make you think.

As I was telling you before: you have the key in your possession, Everyone in this essay competition has the key to survive. Because you can use your knowledge to think. That is how you survive in this competitive world. You learn and think and then you learn more and you think again – and on and on.

I imagine, in this competition forming your thoughts was the main challenge. You got your topic on the spot, and you thought about what to write. First, you had an insight, then you formed an opinion and finally you started to write into the future. With your `pen & paper` you thought and then you wrote a future.

Welcome to the club of future-thinkers of The Gambia!

”Impossible is nothing” – world boxing champion, Muhammad Ali said, and even one of the biggest sportbrands (Adidas) used this quote to inspire others – ‘Impossible’ is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in a world they’ ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it.

Impossible is not a fact, it’s an opinion!

Impossible is not a declaration, it’s a dare!

Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.

I feel privileged to be here today to see YOU, because you will be the future of this country. You actually ARE the future. Because you have the key to form and shape the future of this country. God gave you this key, and you nurish and further develop it, so do not be shy to use it! But be a lifelong student, be a lifelong thinker!

The more you learn, the more you earn and the more self-confident you will become. Your country badly needs self-confident THINKERS among its citizens! And Thinkers have a huge responsibility – actually two: 1) to guide others and 2) to never stop thinking!

And that is exactly I find the only way for you all to remain…

”to The Gambia ever true”

Thank you for your thinking about all these J