EMPOWERING YOUNG PEOPLE TO CREATE A BETTER WORLD August 2016
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Thriving Fuelled by explosions in population growth, urbanisation and technological advancement, our world today is defined by accelerating volatility, complexity and hyper-connectivity; forces which make our tangle of personal, social, economic and environmental problems everyone’s problems and increasingly difficult to address. Traditional approaches to addressing our challenges (centralised decision-making and rigid hierarchies in which a few command the many) are becoming increasingly ineffective. For us to thrive together in the modern world, we can’t afford to follow the rules without question, or do what we have always done, or be blindly compliant. We need to become self-empowered to lead our own lives and to live for the common good.1 And with businesses around the world expanding models of mass participation, decentralisation and do-it-yourself, a person who is self-empowered is in great demand. And people want to be empowered.2
Becoming Being empowered to live for the common good (what Ashoka calls being a changemaker) involves taking responsibility, taking the lead, and collaborating with others to make life better for yourself and your family, friends and community - and humanity and the planet. It is about the way you live your life, your attitudes, your actions and the decisions you make from moment to moment. Changemaking is a way of being. It involves being empathic and thoughtful, being curious and creative, being resilient and effective. And it requires a rich understanding of the world. Becoming an empathic changemaker, then, is a process of becoming equipped with (and inclined to use) a sophisticated worldview and a complex array of changemaking skills.3
Experience Within the limits imposed by our genes, the extent to which we become empowered is determined by the experiences we have throughout childhood and adolescence - the environments we spend time in, the people we spend time with, the things we sense, feel, think and do. But nurturing changemaking skills is rarely the focus of our attention when we are working with young people or otherwise influencing their experience, despite being fundamental to employment, personal wellbeing, economic and social development, to environmental stewardship, and to our collective quality of life.
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The terms being self-empowered, being empowered and being a changemaker are used interchangeably in this document to mean being equipped and inclined (from within - as opposed to being allowed or being given permission by others) to live for the common good (which includes serving one’s own interests but not at the expense of others). Closely-related ideas include agency, autonomy, self-determination, self-efficacy and self-authorship. 2 Researched over 40 years, The World Values Survey charts significant global increases in the demand for selfexpression and self-empowerment. 3 The word skills is used here as an umbrella term for things that are otherwise called capabilities, competencies, capacities, characteristics, attributes, dispositions, strengths, and qualities; things which are expressed through a person’s actions and behaviours and capable of being practiced and developed.
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Commercial and cultural influences often pull in opposite directions. Despite good intentions, parenting is typically ill-informed and improvised. For most people, the experience of school reflects narrow conceptions of human potential, reveals highly individualistic and economic ambitions and reinforces compliance with the status quo. Ultimately, experiences provided outside of school that are truly empowering are usually isolated and sporadic and enjoyed by only a small minority of young people.
Learning ecosystems For the new world to become a better world, we believe we need to give every young person experiences that are: explicitly intended to empower them as empathic changemakers woven together inside and outside of school systematically scaffolded throughout childhood and adolescence We envisage new learning ecosystems in which whole communities work together to provide experiences that keep every young person on a journey to becoming a changemaker. These ecosystems will leverage existing resources but won’t be constrained by traditional school models. Disruptive innovations will be needed. New infrastructure, processes, information flows, rules, and resources will be needed. And so too will new mindsets and behaviours throughout.i
funders
technologists
young people
researchers
parents media influencers health workers culture-makers social workers
teacher unions
every young person on a journey to becoming a changemaker
teachers
employers
university admissions
out-of-school educators assessors & evaluators teacher trainers education leaders
curricula- & policy-makers
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Critical changes 1
Young people
will aspire to become empathic changemakers and demand empowering learning experiences - and they will be trusted decision-makers throughout the ecosystem.
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Parents
will prioritise and choose empowering learning experiences when making decisions about their children’s education, and will actively engage in changemaking journeys.
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Teachers & out-of-school educators
will be trained, supported and empowered to put the empowerment of young people at the heart of their work, to uphold and advance their own professional standards, and to be leaders of system change.
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Education Leaders
will be trained, supported and empowered to be leaders of systemic change and to empower teachers and other educators to empower young people as empathic changemakers.
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Universities
will prioritise changemaking experience in their admissions practices, making this understood by schools, students and parents. They will also provide empowering learning journeys to their students.
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Employers
will select, evaluate and organise staff based on their changemaking experience, and make this understood by schools, students and parents - and will reflect empathic changemaking throughout their customer and supplier experience.
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Media & culture-makers
will celebrate empathic changemakers, changemaking and the people who empower young people as changemakers.
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Curricula & policies
will create time and space for changemaking experiences, and reward the provision of journeys and cultures that are effective in helping young people become changemakers.
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Student assessments
will motivate and help young people become empathic changemakers and will be empowering in themselves.
10 Impact evaluations
will judge the quality, impact and success of schools, educators and programmes in terms of their effectiveness in helping young people becoming empathic changemakers - and they will advance good practice and be empowering in themselves.
11 Research
will be applied widely and effectively to fuel innovation and mainstream good practice - and it will have front-line teachers and educators in lead roles.
12 Technologies
will be used extensively to maximise access to and the effectiveness of self-empowering learning experiences.
13 Money
will be used to encourage and sustain the equitable and effective provision of self-empowering learning experiences to all young people. 3
Emergent ecosystems In contrast with traditional education systems, the kind of learning ecosystems we need to build are emergent ecosystems, which will be characterised as follows:ii
Purposeful - A shared focus on a single purpose is essential for everyone in the ecosystem. Collective future-thinking is an essential component of any sustainable and evolving community of practice. iii
Collaborative - People doing things together towards a shared goal will build social capital by creating evolving webs of strong, interdependent relationships.
Dynamic - The more often individual agents interact, the faster the whole system will likely adapt. A highly dynamic flow of ideas, information and dialogue will create patterns that are more sophisticated than anything possible by an individual alone.iv
Adaptive – The ecosystem will change continuously to serve its purpose and respond to its environment ever more effectively, becoming smarter, better and stronger over time.v
Innovative – In an emergent ecosystem, knowledge is not just about sharing lessons learned from individual successes or failures, but about developing, testing and refining a constantly evolving set of hypotheses about what works in dynamic environments. Systems that can accommodate many hypotheses and deliberately test them can adapt at orders of magnitude faster than systems lacking this ability. Entrepreneurship, experimentation, failing, learning and adapting are all essential to a continuously improving, self-healing ecosystem.
Self-aware - Agents in an emergent ecosystem are aware of the system and their role in the system, they reflect, and they act continuously to improve the system.vi
Diverse - The participation of agents from across the ecosystem is critical. So too will be the accommodation of diverse methods and models. And the use of diverse approaches to getting things done together (limited hierarchical approaches for some activities that require strategy, expertise, and the enforcement of rules; but also solidarity approaches including belonging, equity, and shared value; and individualistic approaches such as self-interest, competition, and enterprisevii).
Democratic - Decision-making will be highly inclusive and distributed throughout the ecosystem. Hierarchies will be kept to a minimum. “The rhythm of social selforganisation can sustain only in societies where the power of differential tends to zero.”viii
Open - There will be multiple entry points to the ecosystem, with easy access to information, ideas and dialogues - allowing the system to evolve to meet the changing needs of the people it serves.
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Our approach Ashoka’s mission is to catalyse the growth of these learning ecosystems to the point at which 16% of children and adolescents are enjoying experiences that are explicitly intended to empower them as empathic changemakers.4 Our approach to doing so follows the logic we applied in creating the field of social entrepreneurship and is grounded in collective impact theory and emergent ecosystems theory: 1. Establish project teams
Map the current system of actors who most influence the experience of young people.
Select the innovators, experts and influencers – the Change Leaders - who are already putting the empowerment of young people at the heart of their work, who are committed to collaboration, and who have the leadership capacity to create widespread change.
Unite these Change Leaders explicitly towards a shared vision & mission; enable them to find their common purpose while respecting and exploring their different models and approaches.
Organise teams that work together synergistically - day to day - on collaborative projects with shared impact objectives, resources, connections, systems, and processes.
2. Build learning communities
Share findings, research, evidence, knowledge and opportunities for adapting, growing and continuously improving the ecosystem.
Learn to accelerate, amplify and multiply growth & impact by developing skills in changing mindsets & behaviours, systems thinking, network theory, storytelling, etc.
Model the changes and ecosystems we want to see.
Inspire others to contribute & join the ‘tribe’; build collaborative project teams & learning communities; and create awareness & demand for innovations, good practice & change.
3. Grow learning ecosystems
Open up new entry points, invite widespread engagement, diversify and mainstream participation.
Cultivate the conditions in which new project teams and learning communities can emerge, multiply, flourish and evolve.
Connect and build corridors between learning communities - by fostering trust and by sharing & distributing resources, strategies, plans & leadership throughout teams & communities.
Empower others to establish project teams, build learning communities, grow learning ecosystems - and to transmit the approach.
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Diffusion of Innovations Theory shows that at around 16% uptake of a new idea, a system begins to tip irreversibly towards mass adoption.
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People and place Growing learning ecosystems in this way will require careful consideration of geography and scale. An effective ecosystem will serve every child and adolescent in it and must function at the size of a community. The development of national ecosystems will, therefore, most likely proceed as community ecosystems spawn other community ecosystems - which fuse into city-wide ecosystems - that, in turn, migrate to other communities and cities.
The success of this approach will be determined, then, by our ability to build teams at community, city and national levels - teams of Change Leaders who must be:
Aligned - being fully committed to, and active in working towards a shared purpose.
Ethical - showing empathy and ethical fibre throughout their life and being deeply and personally attached to their mission.
Transformational - working beyond organisational or marginal improvements.
Action-oriented - having a track record of leading effective, positive change.
Innovative - demonstrating a deep commitment to innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity.
Influential - exerting substantial influence on their organisation, network and wider system.
Articulate - being active and effective in articulating their vision, spreading their message, creating followers and platforms, and advocating their work.
Collaborative - being proactively inclusive and open to working with anyone in the network, without a reliance on hierarchy.
Empowering - trusting and empowering others as an explicit approach to positive change.
Network-minded - being committed to building emergent ecosystems through an ongoing process of learning, sharing and continuous improvement in teams and networks.
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Your contribution We have developed the approach set out in this document in consultation with some of the world’s most visionary educators and social innovators. It is grounded in substantial experience and expertise but should, nevertheless, be read as a work in progress that we will continue to refine and evolve as we learn. Please do share your knowledge, ideas and questions. In everything we do, we aim to be open and inclusive to anyone who can make a positive contribution. Thank you.
Ross Hall Ashoka Global Leadership Team rhall@ashoka.org
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References i
“Paradigms are the sources of systems. From them come goals, information flows, feedbacks, stocks, flows. The ancient Egyptians built pyramids because they believed in an afterlife. We build skyscrapers because we believe that space in downtown cities is enormously valuable… People who manage to intervene in systems at the level of paradigm hit a leverage point that totally transforms systems.” Donella H. Meadows, Whole Earth Winter 1997 ii
See, for example, Holland, J. (1995). Hidden order: How adaptation builds complexity. New York: Perseus Books ; Holland, J. (1998). Emergence: From chaos to order. Reading, MA: AddisonWesley ; Social Impact Navigator - https://www.phineo.org/themen/social-impact-navigator iii
“In self-organising systems at all levels of complexity, there is a wholeness that depends on a characteristic organising field of that system.” Biologist Rupert Sheldrake in conversation with C.O.Scharmer, www.dialogueonleadership.org And also: “When a cell’s morphic field deteriorates, its awareness of the larger whole deteriorates. A cell that loses its social identity reverts to blind undifferentiated cell division, which can ultimately threaten the life of the larger organism. It is what we know as cancer.“ Senge, P., Scharmer ,C.O., Jaworski, J., and Flowers, B.S., Presence, 2008 iv
“Emergence is a process by which, through many interactions, individual agents create patterns that are more sophisticated than what could have been created by an individual entity alone.” Darling, Marilyn; Guber, Heidi; Smith, Jillaine; and Stiles, James (2016) "Emergent Learning: A Framework for Whole-System Strategy, Learning, and Adaptation,"The Foundation Review: Vol. 8: Iss. 1, Article 8. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.9707/1944-5660.1284 Available at: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/tfr/vol8/iss1/8 v
“Emergent complexity without adaptation is like the intricate crystals formed by a snowflake: it’s a beautiful pattern, but it has no function. (Emergent behaviour shows) the distinctive quality of growing smarter over time, and of responding to the specific and changing needs of the environment. In that sense (emergent systems) rarely settle in on a single, frozen shape; they form patterns in time as well as space.” Johnson, S., Emergence, 2001 vi
“A network mindset is a stance toward leadership that prioritises openness, transparency, making connections and sharing control… Working with a network mindset means operating with an awareness of the webs of relationships you are embedded in… cultivating these relationships... finding where the conversations are happening and taking part in them... acting transparently by sharing what you’re doing and learning along the way.” http://www.monitorinstitute.com/downloads/what-we-think/catalyzingnetworks/Catalyzing_Networks_for_Social_Change.pdf vii
See : https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/matthew-taylorblog/2016/05/humility-of-the-intellect-ambition-of-the-will viii
See : http://www.zulenet.com/vladimirdimitrov/pages/complexity-andecology.html#References
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