Postings from the front line - All Comments

re: Poverty of thought?

Clara Hawkshaw — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:46:13 GMT

KEEP THE PROMISE EVENT – London 4th October 2008

The biggest-ever event to end child poverty

Today, 1 in 3 children in the UK lives in poverty despite living in the fifth wealthiest country in the world. This is outrageous. Unfortunately whilst the government has promised to end child poverty by 2020, they are in danger of missing their targets. We are calling on the government to Keep the Promise and invest £3 billion in tax credits and seasonal benefits to halve child poverty in the UK by 2010 so that they will be back on course to end it by 2020.

The Keep the Promise event plans to be a great day with inspiring speakers, family fun and much more in Trafalgar Square throughout the afternoon.

Keep the Promise - where and when?

- 11.30am assemble on Milbank, near Lambeth Bridge

- 12.30pm march through Westminster to Trafalgar Square

- 2pm an afternoon of family fun and speakers in Trafalgar Square.

The event is being organised by the Campaign to End Child Poverty, a coalition of more than 120 charities, trade unions, faith groups and other organisations all working towards the same goal.

But we need as many people as possible to come and join us! Public pressure is the greatest way to convince the government and make the change.

For more information visit: www.endchildpoverty.org.uk/keepthepromiseevent

re: Don't leave young people holding the baby

Mike Amos-Simpson — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 01:11:04 GMT

I don't think a divided family necessarily has low expectations for its children (depending on what you mean by 'low') - very often I think they hope for better for their children.

I don't think theres anything wrong with 'parading' happy & normal families other than whether you yourself decide to bias your opinions about potential candidates on that basis (if so the issue lies with you). But I do think theres nothing wrong with 'happy & normal' as an aspiration and therefore its fine to promote it. As for the young girl keeping the baby and marrying the father isn't that a dilemma that faces a great deal of young people who find themselves in similar situations?

re: Poverty of thought?

Dean Johnstone — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:34:02 GMT

Recent research by the Institute of Education found that the aspiration of children and young people was correlated to the aspirations of their parents, with those from socio-economically disadvantaged groups tending to have lower aspirations.

They also found that aspiration tends to lead to better outcomes (although they noted significant exceptions to this).

futureopine.blogspot.com/.../determinants-of-aspirations.html

re: Poverty of thought?

Mike Amos-Simpson — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:51:47 GMT

Poverty of thought is very relevant in the third world - in fact I'm tempted to say they're even more aware of it than we are in the UK, or at least more concerned with the need to value education and opportunities to get on in life.

A 'poverty' that does need addressing in the UK is a 'poverty of responsibility' - there are far too many who are unwilling to attempt to determine their own life and take advantage of the opportunities they are very fortunate to have (no matter how poor).

That isn't to dispute that many need a bit of extra support to do that - but at the same time the 'blame it on the Government' attitude is one that needs challenging.

re: Poverty of thought?

Tim Davies — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:48:34 GMT

Hey Adam

I'm not sure that poverty of thought is only an issue for the wealthy west.

Oxfam's definition of poverty has long been about poverty not simply being about a lack of material wealth - but also fundamentally being about a state of powerlessness

Poverty of thought is a key component of powerlessness. And ensuring people, in the west and in places of great material want have access to opportunities to overcome poverty of thought is crucial.

The recent book 'From Poverty to Power' talks about those linkages - how individuals need to be empowered to overcome their oppression and to claim the changes, be they material or social, that lift them out of all poverty. Duncan Green, the author, introduce it here www.youtube.com/watch and more info is available at www.oxfam.org/.../from_poverty_to_power

My point here is not to say that the issues are exactly the same between developed and developing world - but is to say that (as I'm sure Paulo Friere and others would concur) that dissempowerment across the world often has similar roots in educational oppression and need.

re: Boris confounds the doubters

Cathy Wallace — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:42:30 GMT

We interviewed Ray Lewis for this week's magazine. www.cypnow.co.uk/.../Interview-Discipline-city---Ray-Lewis-deputy-mayor-London-young-people

Will be interesting to see how he gets on. I have heard that the success of Eastside, his academy for boys on the edge of exclusion, is very much testimony to Ray himself, his vision and his input. Do we think he can recreate this success London-wide?

re: Future leaders

Mike Amos-Simpson — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 12:12:18 GMT

lol!

Yes thats really interesting about whether its possible to have a different style of 'world leadership' or leadership of the masses - makes me wonder too about whether the resistance to that kind of political leadership is practised by many people in this country ie. they don't vote because they're not interested or they don't see that these people are important to them - how many of us see Gordon Brown as our true leader?

Personally I never really think of politicians as 'leaders' - in my eyes they're accountable back to me - I see them as public servants which I guess is on the same level of thinking as what you're saying.

I think some of the key things about political leadership are representation and accountability (both lacking?). Theres a real question at the moment about the professionalism of politics - we've done some work with the UK Youth Parliament and its very revealing seeing young people who are potentially really good leaders with genuine changes they'd like to campaign for, and its interesting how these compare to young people who are very much 'acting the politician' - they have the moves, they speak in a certain way and they look very much the clone of MP's. More worrying than this is seeing the change in some young people after they've been involved with the UKYP and how much more of a 'professional politician' they've become. I think all of this media training & professionalism somehow detaches politics from the people its supposed to represent - we're not seeing community leaders emerge and going on to fight our cause - instead we're seeing people enter into a professional industry (which they may study & train for for years) in which we have some limited interest or concern.

Anyway what I really meant was I don't think political leadership is the interesting part - leadership at a local level is much more interesting and maybe more important too?

I really like the Zeus description - and the idea he created youth workers ;-)

re: Future leaders

Tony Taylor — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 09:30:29 GMT

Just to say I meant specifically that there are no experts in the realm of politics. There's an old Greek proverb that goes something like this:

Zeus is sorting out the world and giving out talents. So he grants that this person will be a musician, another a carpenter, even a youth worker and so on.. But when it comes to the matter of politics, what decisions should we make together for the common good, he makes everyone equally talented.

You're obviously right to stress the importance of young people, all of us developing particular expertise, but, you must forgive me, if I remain deeply suspicious of the cult of the expert, which pervades contemporary life. Again when it comes to issues of democracy and participation, the idea that there are experts in the form of politicians is patently absurd. There is a significant difference between the idea of the expert and the concept of having expertise.

As for needing people that we admire and respect, you are right, but again this is not straightforwardly to do with looking up to experts.

I agree with you about the fluid nature of leadership. In my own experience one moment I I may be leading, the next being led. Although I think that in describing the people I mentioned as good leaders [if not good people] you are sidestepping my point about what might be the vision or motivation of the leader.

Best get out in the open air and do some reconnaissance, I'm leading a walk on Saturday!?!

re: Future leaders

Mike Amos-Simpson — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 08:54:47 GMT

I'd agree that its that impression of leadership that people find off putting - the idea of a single person leading the masses preaching from the front.

All the people you mention are good leaders (not necessarily good people!) - but that style of leadership is a very limited one.

Leadership is much broader and its not always about being the figurehead at the front - sometimes its about planting seeds, or supporting others to take action. Its also not always about leading large groups of people - when you're being treated badly do you take control of the situation and take the lead or do you allow others to dictate to you? When you do try to take the lead do you do it by bossing people around or by trying to empathise with them and appeal to their better interests?

I agree to a point that good leaders will readily relinquish their leadership - but they'll do so at an appropriate time - and equally to their willingness to relinquish needs to be their willingness to embrace it - if people can work together this way it will be far more effective than groups wehere nobody takes the lead (and arguably where only one person does).

What I do disagree with is that 'none of us are experts' - our interpretation of expertise may be relative but I think thats a very bad message to put across to young people - everyone should have dreams and ambitions and everyone should strive to master something - be that their job, their hobby or simply getting on with people - without these people to admire and respect who do we aspire to be?

re: Future leaders

Tony Taylor — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:56:03 GMT

The very concept of Leadership begs more than a few questions as, I think, you suggest. Crucially, the issue is leadership in the service of whom and to what purpose? There is an important tradition of collective and circulating leadership, which is more or less ignored. Leadership as practised in this hierarchical and exploitative world is not something I'm that impressed by. To be honest do you really want any young person to turn out to be a cynical, ruthless egotist like Branson? Are you suggesting that figures such as Bush[or indeed Obama or Clinton], Blair or Brown, Sarkozy or Putin, for they are our world leaders, understand the world any better than ordinary folk do? In this context it might be more useful if we educated ourselves and young people about the dangers of leadership, about the consequences of hubris and power. It might be interesting to have a National Institute of Collective Resistance and Solidarity.

The true leader wishes to relinquish her leadership at the very first opportunity.

All of which rant is not to ignore that Mike makes more than a few good points, so let the debate continue.

But, for the moment, No Gods, No Bosses, No Leaders.....

and so we ask who the hell are these experts from all sections of civic life and add, when it comes to youth work and politics, No More Experts! None of us are experts, we merely express an opinion.

re: Future leaders

Mike Amos-Simpson — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:08:10 GMT

Good luck with that. We do a lot of leadership training on our courses too and most often the initial response to the idea of 'leadership' is negative - people think they don't want/need it and people who are clearly good leaders (this includes young people AND adults) fail to accept the role - or very often with adults they'll hide it under the misguided idea that by not taking a lead they're "empowering young people".

We use a facilitation approach too and try to demonstrate that leadership can be fluid in style according to the situation and also that in some cases it can be fluid in who the leader actually is at different times.

On the other hand we also see lots of people who think they're good leaders (and often they are the 'loud' ones) but actually have little respect from the others in their group - sometimes this too is adults and so can be quite tricky to challenge (especially when our own trainers are young people - which in itself presents interesting situations where we have young people leading training but adults will exclude themselves from the process because they don't want to be 'led' by young people (so they fall back on the 'empowering' thing as above)).

I think the adult thing is very relevant because while the focus may be on youth leadership who do they look to for their examples? Who leads their clubs and activities? And are those people effective leaders and do they understand the different aspects of effective leadership? Something to consider maybe if a 'youth programme' is going to have a real impact on young people.

re: All we want for Christmas

Tim Davies — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 18:08:18 GMT

Hey Adam

A challenge indeed.

But a good resolution. I wonder how many other people are including 'managing data better' in their new years resolutions.

I've recently been exploring different solutions for not-for-profit organisations and youth organisations creating databases to manage their contacts and keep track of what they're doing.

One of the biggest lessons I've learnt is about growing systems as organically as possible. Getting a database and expecting it to fit your way or working from day 1 is unlikely to work - but choosing a system that can grow and evolve with you - and building in the time to review, develop, retrain and pick up tips and tricks from colleagues if far more likely to make database building a positive experience.

In that light - I was really impressed to find a free Contact Relationship Management system (3 different log-ins or less - then you start paying monthly) from Zoho.com at http://crm.zoho.com/.

I've worked with a system called CiviCRM quite a bit (which is designed specially for not-for-profit organisations) - but where that takes time to set-up technically - the only time taken with the Zoho option is time to learn to use it and mould it to your needs. Might be worth a look?