Why is education and awareness raising so important?

Well, first and foremost, consider the issue of family planning: there is no doubt developing countries need to lower their birth rates dramatically to reduce the social, environmental and economic burden of providing education, healthcare, food, water and jobs amongst other things, to so many people. For sure, some of the poor in those countries understand this and want to have less children but cannot, for reasons including sexual pressure from males, lack of access to (or awareness of) contraceptives and reproductive health knowledge. 

But, for many they are not aware of the impacts their children will have: the impacts on the child, on the parents, on the wider family, on the country, or on the environment. They have not done the calculations: if they have they probably still believe that having more children helps provide for the family in the medium-term, and for their parents in the long-term. Overlooked is the real short-term needs as well as a sophisticated understanding of longer-term impacts from splitting land up between children for example. Of course it is on the larger-scale where most of the problems lie, and this falls to the government to deal with (i.e. in providing social services, employment, food etc).

Thus it is hugely important for governments to take the lead, for their own self-interest, in in-expensive education and awareness campaigns for their citizens to better understand the impacts their children might have. Without creating this desire, through role-models, peer pressure, media, peer-to-peer education and so forth (varied and thought-out campaigns utilising all available channels), the poor may never even want to limit their family size.

Once such a desire is created, then specific education on family planning and contraception can be provided along with increased access to a variety of contraceptions and other longer-term social activities to address larger issues such as coerced sex, female empowerment, poverty etc.

As previously proposed, many of us 'rich' are unable to take responsibility for our own lives. We need the government to build barriers in the road to stop us crossing the road when it is unsafe, we need companies to reduce their promotion of bad foods, as we cannot stop ourselves eating too much of them, we need regulations to restrict smoking, because we smoke too much. This is not new, but it is depressing. However, we are educated, and we know what choices we are making and the sacrifices we are making.

The poor though, are not as well educated, so do they have an excuse for making such bad choices, which an interesting article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review proposes they regularly do, with significant negative impacts. As the author notes:

The consequences of bad choices are bad for everyone, but even worse for the poor, who lack the resources—financial, psychological, social, and political—to compensate for their errors.

A recent field study in Sri Lanka reveals that more than 10 percent of poor male respondents regularly spend their entire incomes on alcohol.

More generally, poor people “could easily save more without getting less nutrition by spending less on alcohol, tobacco, and food items such as sugar, spice, and tea,” Banerjee and Duflo conclude. For example, the typical poor household in Udaipur could spend up to 30 percent more on food if it did not spend money on alcohol, tobacco, and festivals.

Evidently education is not the answer to this conundrum, since the rich have education too -or, a fairer comparison might be that the poor in the rich countries have good education (comparatively) but still make the same mistakes. Or is the answer that our education, one that is influenced by school, peers, families, media and more, all geared towards taking away our sense of personal responsibility, or focusing too much on short-term, or personal, gain? If it is, then this could be changed. Whereas, if this is more genetic and evolutionary, then it might be harder to change. Food for thought...

Business approaches and Traditional approaches needed, to reduce poverty

Yes, i totally agree with Paul Polak, Jacqueline Novogratz, CK Prahalad, Stuart Hart, Nancy Barry and the others who think a new, business, approach is needed to help combat poverty. It is, for sure. It helps create new products that the poor need and can afford, and can access. It helps create jobs. It empowers the poor and unleashes them do work hard to reduce their own poverty. It can be sustainable. It can be scalable. There are many many books and reports written about this approach, how it is changing the world, how it is changing the business world and how it is making aid and traditional appraoches to poverty reduction/eradication a waste of effort, time and money.

However, as much as I agree with them, I have to say that there are a number of things that determine poverty, and the business approach will nto solve all of them. It will not help put children in school, not will it get rid of corruption, or write laws that protect citizens, or protect citizens by enforcing those laws (though business could play creative roles in all of these, in some way).

Aid is still needed -more aid and better applied. Governance is a key issue, and one, unfortunately, where so little progress is being made. Ultimately irregardless of how one tries to reduce poverty, be it through aid, loans, business etc... a country needs a good government that sets the right framework for a country (i.e. laws that are implemented), does what is best for its citizens and so forth.

With issues like poverty and Climate Change, where incredibly fast progress needs to be made on a massive scale, there is a need to engage governments and improve the aid agenda (where actually some progress has been made, despite constant environmental degradation, increasingly unfair trade, increasing population growth, wars, greater incidence of diseases amongst others) AND for business to utilise business approaches to poverty reduction. Let's pay more attention to the business approach, but not forget the need for aid and 'traditional approaches to poverty reduction'.

Blanket statements criticising 'traditional approaches' as useless, are not useful. Instead one needs to see how they have helped and learn lessons to improve traditional approaches, and use their lessons in business approaches. Ultimately business will find it very hard (though possible) to thrive when there is no effective government creating an effective marketplace.

Making a difference to education

Always a hot topic and ultimately the bedrock of creating a sustainable society, for without quality and accessible education there can be no government officials, judges, teachers, doctors, engineers, journalists etc and it will be harder to reduce corruption and inequality or increase participation.

It is common to focus on helping those who really need it, and making a massive difference to those who are disadvantaged and lack the opportunities that others have. This is not a bad thing, especially if the school or students have (or will have) a relationship to the company, i.e. by being in the company's 'local community'. Scholarships can be great especially if they are motivating others as well as those who get the scholarship, and if they are really helping the needy.

But, for these initiatives, a holistic perspective must be taken. The most needy might not apply for the scholarship or be able to take advantage if they have to care for their family or must work to earn income for their family (so does one provide a scholarship to the student and also cover the opportunity cost of that student not generating income?). A school might look great, but what is the quality of the teaching? In many poor areas, even with trained teachers and good facilities, is there ongoing support for the teachers and are the children actually healthy enough to attend school and concentrate?

A school is not just teachers and students, it is also head-teachers, local education officials, parents and even sisters/brothers. All of these (and more) are stakeholders in the school to varying extents and through participation ideas and efforts from all can be generated and then implemented. But participation does not come naturally and must be facilitated to ensure those who do not want to participate, who are afraid to participate, who are unable to participate -do participate.

Support also must take a long-term and wider perspective in order to understand any side-effects from the program. An extreme case could be that the government has money for the school, but because of a corporation's contribution, that money ends up in someone's pockets, but to all affective purposes, what the money was earmarked for was achieved and thus the books can easily be amended! And what about the other schools, or the other students, that do not get the support of the company -how do they feel? How can the support in one location rub-off onto others? Anything is possible as long as such an approach is taken.

This kind of effort is not easy, and this is why companies rarely do this themselves and instead partner with another organisation, but a company needs to understand the issues to thus select a suitable partner and help that partner (whose capacity may well be weak, if they operate in an area that needs help). Reducing poverty is not easy and as with the case in China, the poor are often stuck in a rut. A certain proportion can get out of poverty relatively easily, but for the rest, it takes a long time and a lot of effort.

Educating for the future

Today, a child of 5, entering our education system will be working until 2070, at least; but we cannot predict the future in 5 years, let alone 65, so how do we know how we should be educating our children? Ken Robinson believes we need to focus on nurturing creativity in our children, instead of educating them out of creativity, as we are doing at the moment. We've decided what the World of Work needs at the moment, and this is what we are preparing our children for -but the World of Work maybe be incredibly different in the future.

If there is on1 think I am sure about, it is we need more creativity to solve the mess we have put this planet, and this society, in. There are many problems that need to be solved -and that can be solved, but only through creativity.

We should focus on developing our children, and helping them be the best they can be -without defining what the 'best' is (i.e. academically intelligent). Apparently Picasso said every child is born in artist, but only a few are allowed to keep the skill into adulthood. Why should sport, art, music, theatre and other non-academic subjects take up so little of our childhood (especially at school), and even at High School, University and beyond, our we still undertaking enough of these activities to develop ourselves -or are we too focused on developing the tiny per cent of our brain that deals with marketing, finance etc?

In fact, we need to not just nurture creativity in our children, we need to nurture it in everyone, and in the World of work, this means nurturing it in our employees. When I heard google allow all employees 10-20% of their time to do whatever they want to to, whilst at work, i became inspired (i hope this is still true, at google!). Of course nurturing creativity in employees will help them be better at their jobs, but it will also, more importantly, help them be better for the whole of society. This is something responsible leaders need to think about.

The role of arts in education for Sustainable Development

It is now best practice for workshops and lessons to be interactive and learner-centred; indeed occasionally role-plays and the like are utilized to increase the ‘learning by doing’ element of such a workshop.

The next step is to go beyond ‘learning by doing’ and ‘learning by expressing’ but to recognize the power for the arts (music, art, theatre etc) to connect to people emotionally and sensually; to not just support co0ncepts of discovery, creativity and innovation, but to inspire. The arts can transcend gaps (in student abilities, in time, in cultures) that other forms of communication cannot and can play a key role in not just improving the educational experience, but in relating education to sustainable development.

Through arts individuals can feel a part of something bigger, can connect to other people and to society and can better value intangible elements in life. They can of course also develop key skills required for a sustainable society such as creativity and communication; but more importantly they can be inspired, inspire others and envision a sustainable World.

Once such a world is envisioned, the arts can be used to inspire action, as communication tools and as enablers. They can be used not just to help people think but to help people feel and to influence how they behave. There is a whole new world out there and the arts need to play a greater role in that World, starting with education.