“We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.” The wisdom of Franklin D. Roosevelt resonates even more today, in a world where preparing the next generation is the only guarantee of progress.

It’s the art of recognizing that real progress begins in the classroom, where the future is quietly, patiently built, one lesson at a time.

To prepare students for a future defined by constant change, education systems must focus on nurturing adaptability, critical thinking, and digital fluency, believes Dr Sonia Ben Jaafar, CEO of the Abdulla Al Ghurair Foundation. For her, these aren’t just soft skills. They’re survival skills in an economy shaped by automation, AI, and global interconnectivity.

Equally important is forging stronger partnerships between academia and industry. “When educators and employers collaborate, curricula stay relevant, students gain practical insights, and graduates are better equipped to contribute meaningfully from day one,” says Ben Jaafar.

She shares a moment that stays with her. “I’ll never forget what Fatima, a young woman from one of our programs, said, ‘Before this, I wasn’t sure what I had to offer. Now, I not only have skills—I have a sense of purpose.’”

That’s the focus: unlocking potential, instilling confidence, and preparing youth to participate in the workforce and shape it.

PREPARING FOR TOMORROW

At this year’s AGF Summit, global education leaders, policymakers, and industry experts explored how artificial intelligence, technology, and strategic philanthropy can shape the future of learning.

What emerged were two sobering truths: the pace of change is outstripping the pace of reform, and too many young people are graduating into uncertainty.

“In some MENA countries, youth unemployment is still over 25%, the highest regional rate in the world,” says Ben Jaafar. “This isn’t about a skills gap. It’s about a vision forward gap.”

The summit served as a space for bold, candid conversations, about what the future of education could become, and the real, often difficult, barriers that must be addressed to get there.

The UAE’s leadership has been instrumental in this shift, highlights Ben Jaafar, setting the tone for reimagining education as a system that must be agile, tech-enabled, and relentlessly learner-focused for the future of work and development. 

“That leadership from His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan creates room for foundations like ours to take risks, pilot innovations, and collaborate at scale,” she says.

THE AI VALUE 

AI holds incredible promise in education, but only if built with intention. 

At AGF, one of the flagship initiatives, Massar Al Ghurair, is already using AI to help learners navigate personalized pathways based on real-time work opportunities. The goal is to equip young people with tools that make their futures feel not just achievable, but hopeful.

As one young woman in the program shared, “I always thought I had one shot to get it right. Now I know I can keep learning, shifting, evolving.”

That shift in mindset is everything. But with that promise comes responsibility. 

She continues, “We’re deeply aware of the risks—bias, exclusion, the misuse of personal data. That’s why we’re prioritizing equity from the ground up: ensuring access to AI-powered learning tools across socioeconomic lines, and advocating for responsible AI that’s transparent, ethically governed, and human-centered.”

AI, she emphasizes, should be a scaffold for human potential, not a replacement for it.

Being based in the UAE offers a distinct advantage. As the first country in the world to establish a dedicated Ministry of Artificial Intelligence, the UAE has set a global precedent for how governments can lead with vision and accountability. That leadership has created an environment where innovation is grounded in purpose, where ethical, inclusive, and human-centered AI isn’t the exception, but the baseline.

“We’re not just adopting technology. We’re shaping it around the values we believe education should stand for: dignity, access, and agency,” Ben Jaafar says. “Because in the end, it’s not the algorithm that changes lives. It’s what people are empowered to do with it.”

THE DIGITAL DIVIDE 

The digital divide is not just about access to broadband or devices, although those remain essential. It is about something deeper: access to dignity, opportunity, and a sense of possibility. For education to truly serve as an equalizer, it must reach students where they are, not where systems assume they should be.

Since its inception, AGF’s online learning and university support programs have reached more than 55,739 beneficiaries across the region. Many come from communities where access to formal higher education has been restricted by geography, economic hardship, or systemic challenges. The use of hybrid models has played a central role in this progress.

“Our partnerships, galvanized through the University Consortium for Quality Online Learning (UCQOL), are a key part of this work,” says Ben Jaafar. “Uniting regional universities to co-create high-quality, flexible, and accessible digital education rooted in local context and supported by government leadership.”

For many, the impact is deeply personal. One student from a rural area in the north said that before the possibility of remote learning, the university felt like “something other people did. People who could travel far from home and didn’t have family duties.”

With access to digital courses, she enrolled and became the first in her family to pursue a degree. Her father, she told AGF, “stopped calling it a dream and started calling it her path.”

“That kind of shift, quiet, personal, generational, is where transformation actually begins,” says Ben Jaafar.

Technology alone cannot close the gap. However, when paired with purpose, community, and local relevance, it can open doors that were never meant to be closed in the first place.

DEFINING SUCCESS 

Philanthropy has evolved, from quiet, behind-the-scenes giving to a more deliberate, strategic force for long-term change, particularly in education.

At AGF, the focus is on using data to inform programs and strengthen the connection between learners, educators, and the job market. Funding is only one part of the approach. At the core is a commitment to accountability and thoughtful innovation.

For Ben Jaafar, success lies in building resilient programs and systems that empower communities well into the future, going beyond short-term fixes to create lasting opportunity and dignity for young people. She believes, “This isn’t about temporary interventions. It’s about deliberately partnering to transform lives and shape futures with intention, compassion, and lasting vision.”

That long view is grounded in measurable impact.

Success, she says, isn’t just about graduating but is about what comes after. When a learner completes their education, transitions into a job, starts a business, or shapes a dignified future that generates income and supports their community. 

But the impact isn’t just about individuals. It’s about systems. 

She says, “We’ve seen it through our work with institutions and partners. I can think of one university leader in particular and his team of faculty who, after collaborating with us, lowered access barriers for their programs.”

The result: more than 2,000 young students who would have otherwise been excluded or found it nearly impossible to continue their studies, have now been served.

“What’s more powerful,” she highlights, “is that these educators are now vocal advocates across their entire campus and have become a model for other institutions in the region.”

Their transformation was driven not just by strategy but by the voices of young people who had previously been sidelined. “That’s how change scales,” she says. 

When learners are equipped to shape their futures, and institutions become stronger, more inclusive, and more accountable, that’s when the work truly makes a difference. The goal, she says, is to be welcomed in and thanked when they leave. Because by then, communities are self-reliant and sustainable in their own growth.

Every learner reached, every institution transformed. That’s the standard, not the exception. “It’s not enough for one student to thrive, or one university to shift,” she says. “Our responsibility is to ensure that many do, and to keep doing the work until that’s no longer the anomaly, but the norm.”