June 6, 2021 – Last week, the Whitaker Peace & Development Initiative’s (WPDI) CEO and Founder, Forest Whitaker, participated in the 2021 Les Napoleons Summit to deliver a keynote address and exchange with young humanitarian activists working in vulnerable urban areas of France. Held in Marseille, France, the summit’s theme of “Emancipation” focused on some of the world’s most daunting social struggles and explored avenues of action to bring about transformative change.
In his remarks at the summit, Forest stressed how the COVID-19 pandemic made large segments of people – many for the first time – aware of rampant inequalities that exist around the world. “Our time in isolation forced us to reckon with a clear awareness of all the people who aren’t free today. Billions realized that they were trapped in a system that doesn’t work and saw that they needed to emancipate themselves from economic constraints,” he said, adding that, for young people especially, “As traumatic as the past year has been for many throughout the world, youths are probably the group that suffers the most from the social injustices that were created and heightened by the pandemic. They didn’t just lose freedom – they lost opportunity.”
He told attendees how, for him, the summit’s topic of emancipation was personal. “The desire to find emancipation isn’t foreign to me – in fact, it’s the story of my own family. For my grandfather, racism was a fact of life. As he saw the world, emancipation from fear wasn’t an option. My parents disagreed and looked to the future, changed their perspective of the world, and searched for possibilities.” Forest’s remarks also spoke to how, in his opinion, “the planet has already started its emancipation … Now, we’re entering a new phase, like the one my parents saw for our family – we must be propelled to make the change we want to see.”
In looking ahead, Forest also touched upon the importance of empowering youths as a crucially important way to address the most pressing challenges humanity faces. Drawing on WPDI’s work – which has directly impacted more than 1.3 million people around the world since its founding in 2012 – he told the audience how “Through my work with WPDI, I’ve learned that empowering youths is a key investment for addressing the roots of many of our world’s problems. Youths are our propellers of change, and rightfully so: the world belongs to them twice, both today, and tomorrow.”
After his remarks, Forest also met with a group of youths working to improve the prospects of their peers from vulnerable urban areas of France, notably through NGOs sponsored by our partner, BNP Paribas. Together, they further exchanged about the summit’s themes, emancipation and the struggle against inequality, as well as their important work in their respective communities. Etienne, an English teacher in a secondary school located in a low-income area of Marseille, mentioned how he, as a teacher, “believes that youths are the future of our societies … I’m inspired to hear that we can harness concrete solutions to our challenges.” Another, Gladys, spoke about her dreams for starting her own NGO, telling us that “I want to help improve what I see in my community … This is my dream, and I’ll make it possible.” Sharing with them his experiences with the young people WPDI supports in Africa and the Americas, Forest Whitaker concluded this rich discussion on his admiration for the power that youths hold to transform their world in a spirit of solidarity and generosity that the world of adults should heed to for the future to be a better place.