We feel our monocultural factory like schooling system produce consumers more than citizens whose humanity is layered with fearful pursuits of material excess. And that is one of the reasons we face such a crisis in our world. The education system was developed for a particular socio-cultural context where Industrial Revolution was rising, colonialism was the order of the day and the paradigm of man’s relationship with nature was to control it. The context and our understanding has much evolved but the education system still continues to be the same, more or less.
The Crisis at Individual Level
The Connection between the self and the world severed
The narrative of you or me or The mindset of scarcity
Losing touch with inner self
Lack of understanding of the multiple realities of the outer world
Limited definition of success
We see the breakthrough for this is within each individual. Hence, Youth Alliance aims to intervene there but we don’t want to do it in the right and wrong paradigm, because that’s just in the head. We wish to take individuals on a journey of rediscovery - to find and speak their own truth, to listen to each other and build a common language. Journeys that engage the faculties of head, heart and hands. Each journey has following aspects:
The process lets individuals to reclaim the connection between the 'self' and the 'world' and see how we are all interconnected. And shift the narrative from 'you-or-me' to 'you-and-me'. Gradually a community of such individuals has come to be that supports each and is creating ripples of change in the world around it. We see this as the work of leadership based in the consciousness rather than just in the intellect.
References:
1 Oxfam International Report (2014)