Importance of looking back and looking forward
By Valerie
It is important to both look back at the root causes of the challenges and look forward to the potential massively positive social impacts associated with reducing the challenge.
As I have been working over the last month on a consulting project that has the potential to support a large international company in having a true social impact in South Africa, my excitement for the trip to South Africa has been building. As I embark on the journey, I am eager to build on and apply the learning we have done in class. While the United States is vastly different from South Africa, I have spent the last couple of weeks thinking about how the challenges in both of these countries’ histories created and perpetuated the challenges that the countries face today and how moving the needle on these challenges can have a significant impact on multiple other social impact issues.
Professionally, I work in the alternative urban education sector here in Boston. Despite Massachusetts being one of the highest performing states in the United States, it still faces major challenges around educational equity and access (referred to as the achievement gap in the United States). In working to improve the educational options for some of Massachusetts’s most at-risk high school students, I have found that it is very important to never lose sight of the origins of the achievement gap. We can trace this challenge back to decades of institutional racism. Additionally, locally we can point to the challenges created by the Boston busing crises in the 1970s when Boston Public Schools were desegregated.
Given that the challenges facing the United States’ education system are complex and deeply rooted in country’s history, I also find it to be important to remember the impact that improving education system can have on our community. Reducing the number of high school students who dropout of high school each year, has the potential to positively impact the community in many ways beyond simply improving the educational system, including: decreasing unemployment rates, increasing lifetime earnings, decreasing teen birth rates, and decreasing the rate of incarceration and/or economic dependency.
While the challenges in South Africa are very different from the challenges in the United States, based on my learning to-date, the lessons from my work in the education sector apply; it is important to both look back at the root causes of the challenges and look forward to the potential massively positive social impacts associated with reducing the challenge. For example, through my work on the consulting project, I have been learning about the challenges with reliable access to electricity. While this is an issue for the whole country, it is only magnified in the rural areas. When visiting Johannesburg’s apartheid museum, I am looking forward to further delving into the history of South Africa, and connecting this important history to the country’s present-day challenges. Similarly, I am eager to learn more about how increasing access to electricity will stimulate positive social impacts in many other areas, including creating jobs, increasing access to education, and improving health related issues.