Author: teamunity
Empowering the Next Generation: Green Education is Key
‘If you want 10 years of prosperity, grow trees. If you want 100 years of prosperity, grow people.’ This ancient Chinese proverb remains relevant to humankind’s future, even as we struggle against an existential environmental threat. The challenge underscores the prism that the journey toward sustainability requires more than technological advancements and financial investments; it demands an informed and engaged populace.
The youth are at the forefront of this crucial task, their enthusiasm and inherent curiosity about the world making them pivotal contributors to building a sustainable future. However, a glaring deficit in environmental literacy poses a significant challenge requiring a collective and strategic response.
As governments and the private sector make substantial financial investments into transition toward a net-zero emissions future, it is imperative to recognize that their success relies on a robust human capital foundation. Merely channeling billions into technological advancements and infrastructural changes is insufficient if there is a lack of corresponding investment in nurturing the minds and capabilities of the next generation.
The call to nurture human capital is not merely a plea but a pragmatic recognition of the return on investment (RoI) that sustainable education yields. When educational strategies align with economic sustainability, the result is a pipeline of skilled individuals ready to contribute toward implementing sustainable solutions. This alignment is essential for the success of climate initiatives and for the long-term benefit of society.
Education is an investment in the world’s future leaders. By instilling environmental literacy in the younger generation, we shape the minds that will lead nations, raise families, and drive communities. The RoI in their education ensures a generation committed to upholding and advancing the sustainable agenda.
In educating the youth about environmental issues, we are sowing the seeds for a future where climate change mitigation is not just a policy but a way of life. The knowledge and awareness imparted today will empower these young minds to become advocates and contributors in the fight against climate change.
As COP28 drew to a close late last year, the global community recognized that the success of environmental initiatives rests on technological advancements and the shoulders of environmentally literate and empowered youth. Investments in education today will yield dividends for generations to come. The alignment between educational strategies and economic sustainability is not just a strategy; it is an ethical imperative that ensures a harmonious and sustainable future for our planet.
‘By pooling resources and expertise, organizations can create comprehensive and inclusive educational materials that can be freely accessed by educators worldwide. This shared knowledge can empower educators and students, fostering a global community committed to environmental stewardship’
The urgency of the environmental crisis calls for a paradigm shift in how we approach education. Environmental literacy should not be an optional addendum to the curriculum but as a core component of every educational institution’s mission. Integrating sustainability principles across disciplines ensures that every student has the knowledge and skills to navigate a world battling environmental challenges.
Furthermore, addressing the current barriers and challenges to environmental literacy is crucial for its widespread adoption. One significant barrier is the resistance to change in educational systems that often sideline holistic and experiential learning about environmental issues. To address this, educational institutions should embrace innovative pedagogical approaches that encourage critical thinking, problem-solving, and real-world application of knowledge.
Another challenge is the unequal access to quality education. In many parts of the world, especially marginalized communities, students lack access to resources and educational opportunities. Bridging this gap requires collaborative efforts between governments, non-profits, and private organizations to ensure that environmental education is accessible to all, regardless of socio-economic status or geographical location.
The digital divide poses challenges to the widespread integration of technology. Moreover, a lack of education or digital literacy can prevent individuals from effectively using it. Technology and internet access costs can be prohibitively high for individuals in lower-income brackets. In some areas, mainly rural or remote regions, the necessary infrastructure for high-speed internet and other communication technologies is lacking, hindering technology integration.
Organizations can collaboratively develop and share open-access educational resources focused on environmental literacy. By pooling resources and expertise, organizations can create comprehensive and inclusive educational materials that can be freely accessed by educators worldwide. This shared knowledge can empower educators and students, fostering a global community committed to environmental stewardship.
Additionally, organizations can offer mentorship programs, internships, and educational outreach initiatives to support schools and communities in building their environmental literacy programs. By connecting with local schools and educational institutions, organizations can provide real-world insights, share best practices, and inspire the next generation of environmental leaders.
In return, organizations can offer to collaborate on research projects, share data, and provide funding for educational initiatives. By offering financial support, expertise, and resources, organizations can contribute to developing a robust and sustainable educational infrastructure focused on environmental issues.
Addressing the funding challenges in the climate emergency requires a holistic approach that includes investing in environmental literacy. The global community must recognize that the success of climate initiatives depends on technological advancements and cultivating an environmentally literate and empowered youth.
Organizations can play a crucial role in building a sustainable future by breaking down barriers, collaborating on educational resources, and offering support to schools and communities. Environmental literacy is not just an academic goal but an ethical imperative shaping the leaders and citizens who will drive positive change for our planet.
The road ahead is challenging, but it is also filled with opportunities. By investing in environmental literacy, we invest in a sustainable but also equitable, resilient, and prosperous future. At COP28, it was collectively affirmed that the most critical investment we can make for our planet’s future is in our people—their education, empowerment, and ability to lead the way in creating a sustainable world for future generations. The task is to keep the good work going and gather adequate momentum.
Malakeh El Haj is the Vice President for Knowledge & Innovation at the Abdulla Al Ghurair Foundation.
The post Empowering the Next Generation: Green Education is Key appeared first on Alliance magazine.
Book Review: The Bill Gates Problem
For many working with philanthropy, there is always a twinge of discomfort.
Philanthropy itself arises out of an unequal system where a few individuals are able to accrue far more wealth than they actually need, and then, at the behest of their own whims and fancy, they decide who should get some of their ill-gotten spoils and how should they get it. It requires a bit of double-think in your work: you close your eyes to the origins of the funding and even the decision-making models and try to accept that the outcomes are more important than the means.
But even with the awareness of the compromises I accept in my work, reading Tim Schwab’s forensic expose, ‘The Bill Gates Problem, Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire’ made for some very uncomfortable (and gripping) reading.
Schwab reveals the tentacles of Gates’ influence across public health, journalism, vaccinations, the pharmaceutical industry, agriculture and even women’s lives in global majority countries. All of these have one primary thing in common toward recreating these sectors in the same way he put his stamp on Microsoft: an ideological adherence to trickle-down economics, controlling markets in a monopolistic fashion and avoiding scrutiny.
For those that think, well, as long as they pay taxes, then that’s fair, this book will force you to think again. Schwab also reveals how Gates, and indeed other billionaire philanthropists, aren’t just avoiding tax, they’re actually being subsidised by the state for their philanthropy through tax breaks and complex organisational accounting practiced by the likes of the multi-national companies that they once presided over. They have effectively privatised public goods and shaped charity to fit with their own world view.
And that world view is one that is rooted in neo-colonialism. In several chapters, Schwab finds evidence that shows this bias towards western-led solutions, one that sees people of colour in need of ‘saving’, never able to solve their own problems. ‘We’ll see a foundation with a retrograde colonial gaze that leans hard on high-paid technocrats in Geneva and Washington DC, to solve the problems of poor people living in Kampala and Utter Pradesh.’ The foundation’s business model that prioritises funding – even for so-called African-led initiatives – to those who are US based only further serves to reinforce this view, or the billions going to McKinsey or other corporate consultancies.
‘Particularly worrying was the rapture that many in the media and government are prepared to pay at the throne of Gates, and how the Foundation has managed to ensure that all institutions are beholden to them as a result of their financial largesse’
In Chapter 13, Schwab provides the example of Gates’ ambition to introduce GMOs to Africa, and to industrialize farming using western-led technology. ‘The premise of the Gates Foundation’s work is that African nations don’t have the expertise or capacity or tools to manage their own food systems – that they need professionals and expert from the Global North to help them.’
And, argues Schwab, that effort has largely failed to deliver the promised new Green Revolution (known as AGRA), a view supported by a Scientific American article in 2022. ‘Since the onset of AGRA’s program in 2006, the number of undernourished people across these 13 countries [where AGRA works] has increased by 30 per cent,’ says a letter from African organisations asking Bill Gates to effectively stop helping.
Indeed, in my own work on the food system, some years ago, with Fairtrade producers in India, it was widely proven that farmers who prioritised organic, local seeds through mixed farming methods, alongside fair access to markets, were far more resilient and productive than those who had been offered GMO technology.
The ‘white gaze’, the author finds, is everywhere, presenting some compelling examples like the derogatory view expressed by Melinda Gates in 2022, of African or Indian women holding babies on their hips: ‘when you go in places in India, you know, you often see a mom with a baby strapped on her back, and maybe she’s cooking over a boiling pot of water because she’s selling what she’s cooking. That’s really unsafe for a baby; you get a lot of accidents.’
Or ‘you see a lot of adolescents, young adolescent girls with a baby on their hip during the day running around in unsafe places and traffic with the baby’s head kind of bobbling around. But think about what it means for the baby…..on the converse side, you get them in safe, affordable child care, that baby can thrive.’ This view, in particular, received significant backlash on social media, writes the author.
After reading this, it’s unsurprising to find that the Gates Foundation is not amongst the leading 15 philanthropic organisations who have joined a pledge on strengthening locally-led development, following USAID’s lead.
Particularly worrying was the rapture that many in the media and government are prepared to pay at the throne of Gates, and how the Foundation has managed to ensure that all institutions are beholden to them as a result of their financial largesse. The author recounts how funding to every institution from media to the World Health Organisation ends up dictating their priorities. He refers to the ‘weapon’s grade nuclear material it has in its arsenal to win influence’ through donations to newsrooms, international policy forums and lobbyists. One example given is the $12 bn USD to organisations around Washington DC, more than the amount spent in the whole of Africa.
Outcomes are always difficult to measure in philanthropy, but one thing that Gates has majored in is the impression that evidence matters. Widely wielded success statistics, like the millions of lives saved as a direct result of Gates’ work, are headlined in all of the materials from the foundation, and through the messages passed through the media. However, Schwab provides evidence from multiple expert sources that much of the acclaim in based on dubious claims about cause and effect.
The problem, says Schwab, is that none of these statistics are verifiable through independent sources because of the unaccountable nature of the organisation. The lack of scrutiny is ensured for anyone wanting to engage in Gates, as staff, affiliates, contractors and grantees all have to sign non-disclosure agreements that threaten anything they say externally, even long after they have left the organisation.
‘Schwab touches throughout on the unaccountable nature of philanthropy, noting that of 100,000 foundations in the US alone, only 200 per year are ever audited. And that the rules of the game haven’t changed since the 1960’s.’
What has eluded Gates is a day of reckoning. Unlike others who were exposed for their affiliation with Jeffrey Epstein, many who had to resign or apologise, Gates managed to shrug this off, in spite of maintaining a friendship after Epstein was convicted in 2008. Though Foundations like Ford and Rockefeller have apologised for questionable past funding, population control, these have entirely passed Gates by. He has successfully purchased, cultivated, and permanently secured the halo effect of the ‘good Billionaire’. So much so that his wealth has grown by at least a third since stepping down from Microsoft, as Schwab draws a blurring line between Gates’ ongoing corporate and philanthropic interests.
Schwab doesn’t like philanthropy, at least not billionaire-led philanthropy. The conclusion of the book is a damning indictment, not just of Bill Gates and his foundation, but of billionaire philanthropy as a whole. Schwab touches throughout on the unaccountable nature of philanthropy, noting that of 100,000 foundations in the US alone, only 200 per year are ever audited. And that the rules of the game haven’t changed since the 1960’s. He calls for a long-overdue change in how philanthropy is regulated, like a requirement to draw down on endowments faster, something that has started to gain some traction; a new era of transparency; as well as appointing boards who are independent of the founders, drawn from intended beneficiaries of the foundations.
And mostly, he calls for far higher taxes on the rich; why do we allow so much wealth to accrue into the hands of a few, he asks? He cites the example of Meta’s Mark Zuckerburg who isn’t using the tax breaks allowed for philanthropy, but has instead set up Limited Liability entities to give away his money, a method even more opaque than Gates. Regulating philanthropy, argues Schwab, isn’t enough. ‘As long as Bill Gates maintains his extreme wealth, he will remain a canker on democracy.’ ‘If not through his private foundation, then through other means.’
It’s a brave journalist who takes on the job of exposing the Gates Foundation, and Schwab’s book is a must-read for any of us who are working in this sector, anyone who regulates the sector and anyone who cares about equality. Even if we haven’t received Gates’ funding directly, we will have been influenced by their work through some means or other. The question isn’t how to direct Gates’ funding better, says Schwab, it’s to not allow him to have so much wealth and power in the first place. And we’re all complicit, to an extent, in enabling that.
Deborah Doane is Partner at Rights CoLab and Convenor at the RINGO Project.
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The realities of social movement legitimacy and resourcing
Social movement especially with a feminist approach is the new sexy term in the funding and Civil Society Organisations (CSO) space. While this is a win for social justice activists, it coincides with the co-option of the word by anti-feminist and anti-social justice actors. Funders and governments …
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Nippon Foundation ramps up Japan earthquake relief efforts
The Nippon Foundation says it remains active in relief efforts in the Sea of Japan, five weeks after a 7.5 magnitude earthquake destroyed over 43,000 homes.
The Japanese cities of Wajima and Suzu, where the earthquake damage was the greatest, are located near the tip of the Noto Peninsula. Damage from the earthquake has made these areas inaccessible by road.
As of the beginning of February, more than 10,000 people still live in emergency shelters. People are still searching for bodies.
Essentials such as kerosene, diesel fuel, power generators, water tanks, showers and sinks with self-contained water systems have been delivered by the foundation.
The Centre for Disaster Philanthropy (CDP), which has a global recovery fund for donors to meet ongoing events, says that though Japan is well equipped for disasters, support for mental health and psychosocial support services is critical.
Disaster experts recommend cash donations, says the CDP, which enable on-the-ground agencies to direct funds to the greatest area of need.
Meanwhile some of Japan’s biggest crypto firms have provided “tens of millions of yen” worth of tokens to charities aiding earthquake victims, according to local media. Eight blockchain networks have also set up donation channels.
Crypto donation platforms became much sought after in February 2022, following the outbreak of war in Ukraine.
Philanthropy and natural disasters have a long history in Japan, particular in the modern era.
The Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011, however, marked a turning point for many parts of Japanese society, including its philanthropy sector.
“In particular, people changed their views of social innovation. This resulted in the rapid development of strategic philanthropy and impact investing,” Ken Ito, AVPN regional head for East Asia, told Alliance back in 2014.
Three impact investing funds were set up in response to the 2011 disaster which, says Ito, “created public confidence at a time when people were starting to question if donations to large government-affiliated charities really helped the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in their long-term recovery”.
Shafi Musaddique is the news editor at Alliance Magazine.
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Victoria Monét and Coco Jones’ Grammy Wins Highlight the Importance of Staying the Course as Black Women
Victoria Monét and Coco Jones’ Grammy wins prove that, in spite of the obstacles that are in Black women’s way, we still manage to thrive and succeed.
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MUSIC MONDAY: “AfroStones” – A Blues and R&B-Filled Rolling Stones Collection (LISTEN)
by Marlon West (FB: marlon.west1 Twitter: @marlonw IG: stlmarlonwest Spotify: marlonwest)
Back in the fall of 1981 when I was in my first semester at Columbia College, I became friends with a fellow from a Chicagoland suburb.
He was a dyed-in-the-wool Rolling Stones fan. One afternoon their version of “Just My Imagination” played on the radio near us. I recall mentioning it was a Temptations cover, and with some level of indignation, he told me that Jagger and Richards wrote EVERY song The Stones performed.
I was shocked. We were decades away from being able to Google such matters at the moment. I was forced to leave him to the dubious opinion. I can only hope in the decades since that he’s come to know better.
Not only was that song a cover but the Rolling Stones, for better or worse, have been the heralds of Blues and R&B for generations of Americans who would rather enjoy Black music through the filter of whiteness.
Here is AfroStones, a collection of essential songs performed by Black artists that the Rolling Stones covered.
You will find Chuck Berry, Robert Johnson, The Drifters, and Solomon Burke to name a few. Throughout this collection, the original songs are presented back to back with the Stone’s covers.
Needless to say, along with touring as the opening act for Little Richard, the Stones learned a lot from these songs and built a 50-year career on them.
Mick Jagger has long acknowledged his debt to Black America, but is not a one-way street. This collection also features Black artists covering the Stones.
Sharon Jones, Musiq Soulchild, Etta James, and others. Merry Clayton, who’s featured prominently on “Gimme Shelter”, is present with her own version of the Stones classic.
I’ve also included tracks by De La Soul, Little Simz, Snoop Dogg, and others that feature samples of their music.
As Muddy Waters said in an interview, “They stole my music, but they gave me my name.” Yet he also provided them with their name when they adopted the title of his song, “Rollin’ Stone.”
And as always, stay safe, sane, and kind.
5 Tips for Getting the Best Payday Loans
Unpredictable financial demands, like medical crises, car breakdowns, and home refurbishments, can stretch your budget, necessitating a surge in cash. Payday loans emerge as an ideal financial recourse when caught in a tight monetary spot and require quick funds. These loans are short-term and easily obtainable, assuming you satisfy the lender’s fundamental criteria. Presently, there’s […]
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Strategic Planning for Employee Training Budgets
Effective training programs are critical for businesses and need meticulous planning. In today’s fast-paced and competitive business world, investing in training and development is no longer a luxury but rather a need. Training programs are critical for developing employee skills, raising morale, increasing productivity, and accelerating corporate growth. Statistics show that companies are 17% more […]
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Financial Planner, Financial Advisor, or Financial Coach: Which Financial Professional Is Best for You?
Overcoming economic disparities and achieving financial freedom is no small feat. For many of us growing up, financial literacy was not a part of our academic curriculums, and money was barely talked about in our homes (aside from the fact that we didn’t have enough of it). Whether you’re a recent graduate who just landed […]
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