Shaping A Just Future Forum

As The Bankole Thompson Center’s signature event of the year, Rising Voices: Shaping A Just Future Forum, is a declaration that leadership does not wait for permission nor can justice be postponed. It is a declaration that young people are not the leaders of tomorrow. In fact, they are the leaders that the world has been waiting for right now. 

The Forum provides an opportunity for leaders including captains of industry to interact face-to-face with young people who are enrolled at The Bankole Thompson Center to engage and discuss issues of inequality, justice and leadership and how today’s youth can be shaped by courage to make impact in their own communities and schools. 

The Forum which will be held each year in October is designed to inculcate in young people the fact that they are thinkers, builders, and truth-tellers who are accountable to a generation that is watching, a community that is waiting and a future that will ask what did they do when they had the chance to make a difference. 

The Forum underscores the immortal statement that President John F. Kennedy made during his inaugural address on January 20, 1961: 

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man. Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us hear the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.

The Forum is a reminder that progress has always required disruption of silence and indifference and that disruption without purpose is simply noise. That what young people aspiring to be the leaders of their communities need is disciplined, courageous and ethical leadership. And that means leadership that listens, learns and lift others as it rises. 

The Forum will showcase leaders who are making impact and creating legacies that are built not on recognition but on lasting generational impact, not the kind measured by titles, but by lives changed and not the kind that fades, but the kind that transforms communities for years to come.