I am continually challenging myself to think beyond the current trends of thoughts circulating and being directed to me. In the world we live in, in the country i live in i constantly hear from people and i too continually utter words like " change is hard, it cannot be done, too few of us truly care". At times i need to take a step back at my own arrogance, "too few of us care" how i included myself in the "too few of us really care" category warrants deeper introspective thinking that for now i will cascade to the side. I recently watched a video on SKOLL and found myself being challenged by the repetition of words like "disruptive thinking", "non-linear change", "frugal engineering", "learning", "creating", "participating", "designing" and my favourite : we cannot fix 'the problem' because one is well resourced, resources don't make change (case in point many 'developing countries' and the pour of aid", we begin to fix through UNDERSTANDING.
A very good friend of mine and i were talking about encountering expats, friends of ours who are recent graduates from noted universities like, Harvard, Columbia, SOAS, LSE, USC etc who engage in community centred projects, programs and other development stints. They often begin by going to live in a country located in the global south, working in a remote village or slum with an over-glorified ego and sense of self worth under the impression that because they've experienced bathing with a bucket of cold water or walked long distances with the only shade being their ray-ban sunglasses, signifcant difference is being made. Their goal often is to end up at the UN or World Bank. They are experiencing the development life. This happens regardless of whatever race/ethinic background they may be. It is the mind set, it is the indoctrination, the lens on to which they have come to see the world and how to help or dare i say it, CHANGE, the world. Little UNDERSTANDING is acquired, just programming skill sets, M&E lingo and local catch phrases and stories to take back home and share.
Then we think about those of us who originate from a country in the global south and how we operate within our localized settings when we return, how we come to view our own people, our own ideas about change in relation to lack of resources, lack of order, and spastic lens on which our localised fellow country folks see, absorb and interact with the world. Their remains tension, a disconnect. We are all wearing very different brands and more importantly lenses.
We cannot change, fix, alter, produce if we cannot at the very least exchange lens or merge lenses once in awhile.
I am interested in the story of progress, in its strength and in its ugliness. I am interested in HOW we bridge UNDERSTANDING for collective CHANGE, a CHANGE that is mad mad mad disruptive because i STILL BELIEVE that power utlimately lies in the PEOPLE. It lies in the PEOPLE and will only come from THE PEOPLE.
So perhaps fitting into the status quo of what 'progress' as been predetermined to look like, how we measure progress and/or change is the very foundation we must begin to disrupt, to dear i say it, think AUDACIOUSLY, BODLY...how do we at an individual micro-form begin to redefine what GROWTH is and how we as localised communitties would like to GROW?
This is the world we live in, some of what we have now good or bad we had no choice in, however what we are going to leave behind and create in our life time we DO.
Tell me about your disruptive ideas, lets dream a little this week.
fambul dem, this is how we do....
