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Learning to Change the World in Action
Most nonprofits are born out of a desire to change the world in some way, whether on a grand or incremental scale. Specific examples, though, provide inspiration while simultaneously grounding the grand idea of learning to change the world in practical, everyday experience.
We’ve chosen to spotlight four programs that illustrate how powerful learning can be as a tool for change:
Young Entrepreneurs Alliance
As Julie Nessen sees it, one of the most important outcomes of learning is the realization that “there is virtually nothing that exists in black and white.” Nessen is co-founder and executive director of the Maynard, MA-based Young Entrepreneurs Alliance (YEA), a nonprofit dedicated to supporting teens at risk for criminal behavior in turning their lives around through business ownership, job training, financial education, and academic support. Learning, she says, is at the core of the organization’s mission:
At YEA, as we work with teens, it is our mission to help them begin to discern the shades of grey in their small worlds and in the larger world that they are preparing to enter as adults. The YEA program model uses business as the lens through which they first shift their vision. But, in a short time, they discover that everything they are learning has meaning in their personal lives.
This discovery is, in many ways, more important than the specific vocational skills that YEA participants gain through the program, and it is an outcome that is often not achieved in more traditional, classroom-based educational settings. As one educator explains, “Many of these students have not had personal success in their lives, and YEA has given them the first taste of this. They have been given the opportunity to take responsibility for their lives.”1
Wildlife University
While different from the Young Entrepreneurs Alliance in its overall focus, the National Wildlife Federation’s Wildlife University is also built on a desire to give people the “opportunity to take responsibility.” In this case, the responsibility is for wildlife, and the target audience is anyone and everyone who will listen.
Given the need to reach as many people as possible, the Web is a natural platform for Wildlife University. Users with an Internet connection and a standard Web browser can easily access the site, sign up for a variety courses, and participate in online discussions. The online courses are divided into two series: Creating Places for Wildlife, for people who want to learn how to attract wildlife to their yard, community, or schoolyard, and Endangered Species, for those who want to learn about the issues facing endangered and threatened species and what individuals can do to make a difference for them.
More than 4,300 learners have registered at Wildlife University since its launch in late 2003, and the community is growing daily. According to Stephanie Eskins Gleason, NWF’s director of distance learning and learning communities, many learners “start out taking the courses to ‘try an online course for free’ and then end up getting involved in ways that are great for us as an organization.” This ongoing involvement is one of the essential elements in measuring Wildlife University’s ultimate success. “It’s great for people to come and take a course,” says Eskins, “but what you really want is for them to do something with what they learned.”2
OneWorld TV
At Wildlife University, the National Wildlife Federation shares its expertise by providing the majority of the content. At OneWorld TV, the approach is different--anyone from across the world can contribute content and help weave the rich tapestry of stories available on the site.
Part of the larger OneWorld International organization, OneWorld TV relies on an “‘open documentary’ concept, where stories are collectively built.” Visitors to the site can learn about basic tools for creating and viewing Web-based video stories, upload stories they have filmed, and view clips created by others.
So far, at least 5,300 members from 99 countries have registered at the site, and their stories cover topics from HIV and AIDS to genetically modified organisms to water quality. As OneWorld TV staff put it, “We encourage films that challenge old ideas and offer new ones. We like to see films that provoke a response and get a debate going--we’re interested in diverse views, and in looking at issues from different angles.”
OneWorld TV exemplifies accessibility and diversity in successful learning initiatives. Many of the stories told on OneWorld TV would not be told otherwise because the people telling them do not have access to the standard media and educational outlets. By using the Web as a distribution media, users need only have access to a computer and a 56K modem to participate in “an interactive exploration of global issues.”3
Accessible Internet Rally (AIR)
While accessibility is one component of OneWorld TV’s efforts, it is the central focus of Austin, TX-based Knowbility, an organization dedicated to the independence of children and adults with disabilities through accessible information technology. As the organization puts it, “The potential exists for technology to transform the lives of 55 million Americans (750 million worldwide) with disabilities--IF it is designed accessibly.”4
Sharron Rush, Knowbility’s executive director, recognized early that a key to making technology accessible was to get to the people responsible for building the world’s most pervasive and rapidly growing platform for information technology--the World Wide Web. With this aim in mind, the Accessible Internet Rally (AIR) was born.
AIR is a Web design contest, in which all the sites designed are accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities who may use assistive technology to access the Web. AIR is more than a contest, though; it’s a learning event. Participants in the AIR competition--professional Web designers, public school teachers, and student apprentices--receive training in accessible Web design and then compete in teams to build accessible sites. Depending on the AIR track chosen, the beneficiary of the site may be a nonprofit, a college or university, or a public institution such as a school or government agency. In the process, the designers acquire new skills, public awareness about accessibility issues is raised, and the Web edges closer to full accessibility.
Learn, Share, Repeat
One of the most compelling aspects of the AIR model is that it is replicable. After its start in Austin, the contest is spreading to cities across the United States. This potential for replication and scalability is a characteristic of each of the learning efforts highlighted here, and it is critical to any learning experience that aims to change the world.
The specific knowledge and skills acquired by AIR Web designers, YEA entrepreneurs, OneWorld TV community members, or Wildlife University learners are taught using methods and media that can be used again and again to teach new learners.
At the same time, each of these programs is consciously designed to produce broad, systemic change through the accumulation of individual learning outcomes over time. As part of the larger community impacted by these efforts, we may not even be conscious of the longer-term process that is occurring and may never be able to measure it accurately, but slowly we become a world where at-risk teenagers succeed, fewer species are endangered, important stories are told and heard, and the Web is accessible to everyone. That is learning to change the world in action.
1 See http://www.yeaworks.org/testimonials.html.
2 For more on the Wildlife University initiative, see http://www.isoph.com/nwf_interview.htm.
3 See http://tv.oneworld.net/subjects/index.shtml and http://tv.oneworld.net/tapestry?article=38.
4 See http://www.knowbility.org/main/.
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