Move between worlds: A brighter future unfolds at the intersections
An open letter by Dr Charles CHEN Yidan, Founder of the Yidan Prize, on International Day of Education
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We’ve never lived more interconnected lives — or felt more divided. Separated by belief, culture, and access, we turn inward to master our own fields in the hope of cutting a predictable path forward. Reality, though, is filled with surprises, and we can’t clear roadblocks by simply mastering our own fields.
Education clears the way, but not alone. To forge paths forward, we need to combine strengths, and bridge differences. Vibrant ecosystems thrive through connection. Forests flourish as roots intertwine; rivers sustain life as they link mountains to seas. So too do we break through our own limits by the flow of ideas. When perspectives meet, new possibilities take root.
Turning borders into pathways
Mamadou Amadou Ly, Executive Director of Associates in Research and Education for Development (ARED), works where the worlds of home and playground, school and system lack a common language to connect them.
In countries like Senegal, rich with local and regional languages, many children arrive at school to be taught in an official language they don’t know. In response, Mamadou has led the ARED team to develop bilingual approaches that transform learning outcomes. With ARED’s programs, children learn first in a familiar Senegalese language, before being introduced to French.
This turns linguistic borders into pathways, opening doors to foundational literacy and numeracy for children and youth across West and Central Africa. His approach proves that when education meets cultural and social context, it restores dignity, strengthens identity, and gives every learner a fair chance to cross into new futures.
Professor Uri Wilensky moves between a different set of worlds: the world of computational models and the world of complex challenges like climate change, pandemics, and economic instability.
A leading voice in agent-based modeling and creator of the free open-source platform NetLogo, he has equipped learners — from school students to researchers — with tools and skills to explore how individual behaviours ripple into large-scale, non-linear patterns. In doing so, he invites them to step out of textbook thinking into solving real-world problems.
Uri’s work embeds computational exploration into curricula so that learners can test ideas and simulate possibilities. A student might model how a virus spreads through a city, or how individual choices shape a shared ecosystem, like a simple traffic jam. In the process, they cross between mathematics, computer science, natural science, and social science. His vision is not of computers as a separate world, but as a shared language that helps everyone engage thoughtfully with the complexity of their society.
Humility to learn, courage to let go, curiosity to connect
Dr Rukmini Banerji, Professor Usha Goswami and Angeline Murimirwa’s stories showed us what it means to transcend boundaries — moving between classrooms and communities, between research and reality, between individual and impact. Real progress happens when we carry ideas across borders: when policy makers listen to teachers, when teachers become researchers, when learners become co-designers of the systems that shape them.
On this International Day of Education, UNESCO urges us to empower young minds. Young people are not simply successors of a changing world — they are creators, thinkers, and partners in the solutions we urgently need. Empowering young minds means ensuring equitable access to new tools that expand our limits beyond imagination. It means reshaping education systems to unlock human potential. And it means moving beyond preparing learners for the world — to partnering with them as they shape it.