A mother and daughter travelled the world to film stories of ordinary people making a difference. This is their story –
http://openingoureyes.net/our-subjects/
Thanks to Katherine at Bowl of Miso – http://bowlofmiso.com/2012/02/18/opening-our-eyes/ – for pointing me in the direction of this very interesting video.
A revolution is an idea which has found its bayonets. Napoleon Bonaparte
Are mobile phones the ‘bayonets’ of the next revolution?
Are there ways to use social media that we haven’t yet even begun to imagine?
Have a look for yourself and see what you think.
The classic model of the diffusion of social change is one where the change comes from outside. Experts try to persuade people to adopt new ways and often look for charismatic locals to lead the change.
A newer model, Positive Deviance, tries to approach the idea of change from a different angle.
In the struggle to achieve participation and not simply persuasion, it has been found that local wisdom will usually be better than outside expertise. This model also proposes that if people can be brought along as participants, even the most intractable problems can be solved.
In 1990, Jerry and Monique Sternin arrived in Hanoi to open a branch of the U.S. NGO, Save the Children. At that time two-thirds of Vietnamese children under five were suffering from malnutrition. The Sternins hoped to find ways to help with this as supplemental feeding had already failed.
They initially travelled to the Quong Xuong District. There they weighed 2,000 children under the age of three and discovered that 64% of them were malnourished. The Sternins weren’t the first people to discover this but they were the first to ask a very important question.
Were any of the well-nourished children they had encountered from very poor families?
The answer was ‘yes.’ Some of the children were well nourished even though their families were just as poor as those of the malnourished children. These families were exhibiting positive deviant behaviour.
So the Sternins studied them. What were they doing that was so different?
It turned out that the mothers in these families were all doing a number of things –
Now they knew the key to the nourishment of the local children but how would they convince the villagers? They struggled to come up with ideas until a village elder reminded them of a local saying – “A thousand hearings isn’t worth one seeing, and a thousand seeing isn’t worth one doing.”
The Sternins designed a pilot project where local mothers agreed to work for two weeks with the ‘positive deviant’ mothers, harvesting the shrimps and greens, encouraging the children to eat, feeding them more often and washing their hands.
They were at all times encouraged to ‘do.’ They weighed their children every day and plotted the data on their own charts. Within two weeks they could see the changes in their children for themselves.
This pilot project continued for two years after which malnutrition had decreased by 85% where the Positive Deviance approach was implemented. Over the next several years this approach was used all over Vietnam and helped more than 2.2 million people improve their nutritional status.
The interview below is with Monique Sternin and demonstrates not only the success of this project but also beautifully shows how much the way we interact with others – all others – impacts on the outcome.
There is no tool for development more effective than the education of girls.
Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General
I can’t say it better than that – or this –
http://itonlytakesagirl.blogspot.com/
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
Photograph – [WOMAN SITTING IN STORE] – James Jowers (American b. 1938) Date: 1969
Accession Number: 2007:0275:0043
George Eastman House Collection
There is a college in India that has few parallels in the world of education.
In this college you can train to be an engineer, a doctor, a nurse, a computer engineer, a solar expert, an architect – amongst other things.
Many colleges provide such training, but few have as an entry requirement that you must have little or no formal education. Even fewer colleges will insist that they will not confer the students with qualifications – no matter how proficient they become.
The Barefoot College believes that successful rural development is not only based in the villages but also managed and owned by those it serves. All Barefoot initiatives – social, political or economic, are planned and implemented by a network of rural men and women who are known as ‘Barefoot Professionals’.
Rural men and women irrespective of age, who are barely literate or not at all, and have no hope of getting even the lowest government job, are being trained to work as day and night school teachers, doctors, midwives, dentists, health workers, balsevikas, solar engineers, solar cooker engineers, water drillers, hand pump mechanics, architects, artisans, designers, masons, communicators, water testers, phone operators, blacksmiths, carpenters, computer instructors, accountants and kabaad-se-jugaad professionals.
With little guidance, encouragement and space to grow and exhibit their talent and abilities, people who have been considered ‘very ordinary’ and written off by society, are doing extraordinary things that defy description. (1)
One such graduate of the Barefoot College, is 19 year old, semi-literate Santosh Devi, India’s first Dalit (Untouchable) solar engineer. As she was growing up, Santosh had to avoid the upper caste people in her village or – failing that – cover her face in their presence. (2)
But everything changed when she trained as a solar engineer at the Barefoot College.
The College began their solar engineering course in 2005 and since then they have trained more than 300 Barefoot engineers. These engineers – mostly women – have brought power to more than 13,000 homes across India.
A further 6,000 households, in more than 120 villages in 24 countries from Afghanistan to Uganda, have been powered on the same model. The course in solar engineering is made available primarily to women, over 35, who live in remote non-electrified area, anywhere in the world. The only proviso is that they are backed by their villages. Women from Tanzania, Uganda, Gambia, Malawi, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Bhutan completed their six-month residential training at Tilonia between 2008 and 2009, and have since set up solar power in their villages.
At the Barefoot College, the women learn through listening and memorising, using colour-coded charts that help them to remember the permutation and combination of the wires without needing to read or write.
Since becoming a solar engineer, Santosh Devi’s life has changed out of all recognition. Now everybody wants her services – regardless of caste. As she describes it,
“From looking down on the ground when higher caste people passed to looking them in the eye, I never imagined this would have been possible.” (4)
This is an interesting talk by one of the founders of the Barefoot College –
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(1) http://www.barefootcollege.org/
(2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/jun/24/india-barefoot-college-solar-power-training
(3) ibid
(4) ibid
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Sacrifice is defined as:
An act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy: e.g. ‘we must all be prepared to make sacrifices.’ (1)
Sacrifice is an old fashioned idea. We associate it with punitive self-deprivation. It is a concept associated with misery and joylessness. However, the truth is that sacrifice is a natural phenomenon. We can’t really have anything unless we are willing to sacrifice something else.
If you plant a seed in the ground, a tree will become manifest from that seed. The seed sacrifices itself to the tree that will come from it. The seed is outwardly lost, destroyed; but the same seed which is sacrificed will be absorbed and embodied in the tree, its blossoms, fruit and branches. (2)
There can be no change without sacrifice, therefore, sacrifice is an agent of change.
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Photograph – Sunflower – U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier: 412-DA-2097. Photographer: Reaves, Bill, 1934-
Persistent URL: arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ExternalIdSearch?id=544590
(1) Online Oxford Dictionary
(2) ‘Abdu’l-Bahá – Promulgation of Universal Peace p. 470
British education expert, Ken Robinson describes creativity as,
The process of having original ideas that have value.
We have come to confuse creativity with artiness and as a result we have come to believe that only some people are creative.
It is widely agreed that divergent thinking – i.e. the type of thinking that results in the generation of multiple answers to any problem – is creative thinking and then…
In a longitudinal study of 1,500 people, 98% of one group performed at genius level in divergent thinking.
Who were this marvellous and exciting group?
Children under 8 years of age.
Not special children under eight, or artistic children under eight but ordinary children under eight.
The other 2% were probably pretty good but not quite genius level.
Sadly, this same study also showed that this capacity for creativity declined steadily as these children – retested every five years – got older.
So, that means that 98% of us start off as creative geniuses.
We sorely need creative geniuses to help us solve all the problems we face.
So, OK then, how can we get back in touch with our own ‘genius’ so that we can not only better realise our personal potential but also apply our creativity to the needs of humanity?
And how can we stop today’s under eights – and the under eights of the future – from losing their natural born creative genius?
The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. – Linus Pauling
Keep the postcards coming…
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Photograph – Christmas party at works, 18/12/1937 / by Sam Hood. Taken at Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia), Ashfield, N.S.W. Find more detailed information about this photograph: acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/item/itemDetailPaged.aspx?itemID=21102
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If you educate a man you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman you educate a family (nation). (Dr. Kwegyir Aggrey)
Of the many millions of children who don’t go to school – the majority are girls. This has serious repercussions for everyone of us – not just little girls.
Not only are girls who go to school less likely to die in childbirth when they grow up, they have fewer – and healthier – babies. Their sons – as well as their daughters – are more likely to be educated and less likely to contract diseases such as HIV/AIDS.
Outside of the home, these girls can find work more easily when they grow up, which not only contributes to the well-being of their family but also helps develop their economies.
So, if you want to live in a safer, healthier world with access to the potential of 100% of the population – educate the girls (as well as the boys).
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*Photograph – Unicef Photography – Somalia, 2007: Children attend a UNICEF-assisted school in Mogadishu. http://www.unicef.org/photography/photo_2008.php#UNI46407
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creatingreciprocity 