5 challenges facing the world, and potential solutions.

Fight "alternative facts", taboos and inequalities with tech. Those were our challenges to 26 young entrepreneurs from our 13 markets. Let's see what they're coming up with.

In December 2016, the 26 delegates of the Telenor Youth Forum gathered in Oslo to address 5 pressing challenges facing the world today.

But what are the challenges, and what could be their possible solutions?

Challenge 1: Climate Change is Real

According to many commentators, we're in a 'post-truth' world. So much so, in fact, that people and politicians are denying the advice scientists and experts and suggesting that Climate Change is a myth. It's not. It's a pressing challenge to the world as we know it, and demands immediate attention.

Proposed solution: GreenCred is an interactive application powered by a database that helps consumers identify – with their mobile phones – low-carbon products and companies when shopping (in-person or online). It rewards them with back payments, discounts and/or vouchers when they purchase GreenCred-verified products or services from these eco-friendly companies.

Challenge 2: The Mental Health Taboo

Despite broad gains in the acceptance and understanding of mental health and related illnesses, a taboo remains. The crippling experiences of suffering from depression, anxiety and their unwelcome siblings are enough to define and even ruin a life.

Proposed solution: Many mental health problems develop during youth, so the focus in this solution is to educate kids early on to be unafraid of reaching out when they're feeling alone or sad or bullied. The idea is to get children to deal with this tough topic by gamifying situations that would lead to feelings of depression or isolation, such as bullying, and have them connect to teachers and professionals while doing so.

Challenge 3: All men are created equal. But not women.

Equality remains an aim, not a reality. From earning power to opportunities, the world's women are too often treated as second class citizens. Progress has of course been made but it's delicate.

Proposed solution: Focusing on domestic violence, the Gender Rights internet Platform, or GRiP, connects abuse victims to the help that they need through an interactive internet-based education-and-recovery process that is safe and secure. It provides them with resources to understand their legal rights, develops a personalized action plan and follows up on progress.

Challenge 4: Education for Young Refugees


The issue of displaced peoples extended beyond a critical point in 2016 and became a fully-fledged humanitarian crisis. In this displacement, children too often lose the opportunity to learn. Lack of education limits both their and their country's futures.

Proposed solution: Feelings of cultural and socioeconomic isolation can be widespread among the youth of immigrant and refugee communities. This solution proposes building a system that combats this by creating personalized operating systems powered by Artificial Intelligence to help youth build language skills, navigate their new hometowns, and feel socially and culturally more integrated and accepted.

Challenge 5: Unemployment and Social Instability

Lack of jobs is inherently linked to social instability, and this generation is arguably facing into one of the most unstable world job markets since the Great Depression. With so-called 'blue collar' jobs already feeling the effects of technological advances, 'white collar' jobs are surely next.

Proposed solution: SkillSet aims to empower unemployed people by providing a personalized list of professional development and training opportunities near them. It would create this list for them based on their own strengths and areas of improvement, which the fully interactive application would "learn" through an ongoing social, collaborative and gamified process.

Follow the teams on their year-long journey via the #TYF Instagram or Facebook accounts