Former President Barack Obama wants to help usher in the next generation of young leaders, he said Sunday at a conference in Japan.
According to the Washington Examiner and the Guardian, Obama discussed the Obama Foundation's efforts to make a "platform for young, up-and-coming leaders" to connect with each other online.
"If I could do that effectively, then – you know – I would create a hundred or a thousand or a million young Barack Obamas or Michelle Obamas – or the next group of people who could take that baton in that relay race that is human progress," Obama said, the Examiner reported.
He also spoke about young people's ability to spark change, citing the March for Our Lives rallies in the wake of last month's deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida.
This was all because of the courage and effort of a handful of 15- and 16-year-olds who took the responsibility that so often adults had failed to take in trying to find a solution to this problem, and I think that's a testimony to what happens when young people are given opportunities," he said, according to the Guardian. "And I think all institutions have to think about how do we tap into that creativity and that energy and that drive because it's there. It's just so often we say: 'Wait your turn.'"
He added: "A lot of our problems are caused by old men. No offense, men who are old."
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