youth

20 October 2017

Posted on October 20, 2017 Leave a Comment

The Economist’s “China’s leader Xi Jinping declares the start of a ‘new era’” neatly captures the ambition of the 19^th Chinese Communist Party Congress held this week: “revise the party’s constitution, reshuffle the leadership and set the tone for policymaking in the next five years”. The ‘new era’ is one where China becomes a “great modern socialist country” by mid-century. I found Bill Bishop’s “19th Party Congress Work Report” [shared by Guy Taylor and which just added a paywall] very useful in pulling together articles from diverse sources and structuring some of the key take-aways. They include the positioning of Xi Jinping in the legacy of Chinese leaders, the characteristics of the “new era”, the strategic opportunity for China to “take center stage in the world”, the clearly articulated leadership on climate change, and the strengthened role of state enterprises. All of which very relevant to our work either directly or indirectly (through South-South and regional/international organizations).

I recently suggested to a young female professional who introduced herself as “just an intern” to consider introducing herself as a “reverse mentor” instead. That was based on the fact that pretty much every millennial who has been in my team has opened my horizons. And as Kevin Roose reports in his “Executive mentors needed. Only millennials need apply”, reverse mentoring schemes are trending in many industries. As an organization servicing the young, shouldn’t we formally develop such as system?

My graph this week if from IFPRI’s “2017 Global hunger index”. While broad numbers are positive, the index report presents important inequalities between and within countries, illustrated below for child stunting rates. It also argues that 52 out of 119 countries for which data are available, are in serious risk of hunger or alarming states of hunger. Together with FAO’s “2017 State of food security and nutrition in the world” showing that the absolute number of hungry people rose in 2016, it rings the alarm bell on a possible reversal of long term (taken for granted) trends.

My quote this week is from Muhammad Ali’s 1971 Parkinson interview: “When one man of popularity can let the world know the problem, he might lose a few dollars telling the truth, he might lose his life but he is helping millions. But if I keep my mouth shut just because I can make millions this isn’t doing nothing.”

7 July 2017

Posted on July 7, 2017 Leave a Comment

Jackson G. Lu and al’s “‘Switching On” creativity” provides new and counter-intuitive evidence on how to boost creativity. While many focus on the negative impacts of multi-tasking, this paper demonstrates that frequent back and forth between tasks can increase one’s capacity to produce novel, unique, and useful ideas. This is because task-switching prevents “cognitive fixation”, i.e. getting the mind stuck on one path or a dead end. People do not typically select task-switching as a work method. And they don’t naturally realize when they reach cognitive fixation. So, task-switching for increased creativity needs scheduling. This is useful evidence as creative thinking is an increasingly big asset in the workplace. But as we embrace task switching, let me add two personal notes: (i) not all assignments require creativity, and (ii) the positive benefits identified by this research are valid when switching between two creative tasks (not between one creative task and [insert social media of choice]).

Maria Popova’s “10 learnings from 10 years of Brain Pickings” distills the substance of her blogging decade into 10 lessons. I am sharing these because I often find her blog inspiring: Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind; do nothing for prestige or status or money or approval alone; be generous; build pockets of stillness into your life; when people try to tell you who you are, don’t believe them; presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity; expect anything worthwhile to take a long time; seek out what magnifies your spirit; don’t be afraid to be an idealist; don’t just resist cynicism — fight it actively. Each lesson is unpacked with accompanying book recommendations that make a good summer reading list.

My graph this week is from the World Unplugged study. It summarizes how 1000 students in 10 different countries felt after unplugging for 24 hours. Note the super high levels of negative emotions. This is old news as the data came out of a 2010 survey. But as we enter the summer season, it is a good reminder of the need for regular digital detoxes.

My quote is from Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad which is on my summer reading pile: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime”.

23 June 2017

Posted on June 23, 2017 Leave a Comment

Youseff Mahmoud et al’s “Entrepreneurship for sustaining peace” is the curtain raiser for one of the International Peace Institute conversation series on prevention and sustaining peace. Mahmoud is argues that the UN refocus on prevention be accompanied by a shift away from deterring conflict towards sustaining peace. Conceptually this means moving away from a highly politicized and securitized approach to prevention. Operationally this means moving away from crisis management tools only. Adopting the sustaining peace approach, this article looks at how economic opportunities contribute to peaceful societies by offering more dignified lives and countering sentiments of marginalization for entrepreneurs, their families, and their communities. It uses two examples to illustrate how that works: Colombia and Tunisia. It highlights the unique potential of youth entrepreneurship by pointing to the correlation between positive peace and the Youth Development Index and arguing that the demographic dividend could also contribute to sustaining peace. And it provides 3 operational recommendations for UN field operations and country teams: map existing entrepreneurial initiatives that have explicit peacebuilding benefits; develop an integrated entrepreneurship development strategy; and encourage host countries to create environment supportive of youth-led social entrepreneurship as part of peace operations.

Several people shared the IOM’s “UN-biased” video with me this week. It speaks of decision biases in the work place and how they affect hiring decisions, in the United Nations. Some numbers. Where equally qualified candidates are considered, mothers are 79% less likely to be hired. Women take 5.4 years to be promoted to a P4 level whereas men take 4.6 years. In performance reviews, women receive 2.5 times more feedback about aggressive communication styles than men. Overall 62% men work in hardship duty stations, and while 30% of applicants are women, they are not selected. At senior level, 16% of males versus 40% of females are more likely to be divorced, separated or single. The video also suggests 5 very practical recommendations to counter biases in recruitment. Just take 5 minutes and watch it. Go IOM!

My graph this week is from CBInsights’ “Google is ramping up pharma activity” and shows that google has made as many pharma deals (6) in the first half of 2017 as it did during the 2010-14 period. While all eyes are on Amazon investing in the food industry, google is moving in the healthcare space with expectations of transforming the sector. What strikes me is tech giants strengthening their monopolies with one hand while growing their philanthropic arms with the other: over the same week Amazon Bezos bought Whole Foods, he also crowdsourced ideas for how to spend his billions.

My quote is from Mark Zuckerberg’s opening speech at the Facebook’s first Communities Summit because, as flagged earlier, it marks another step in how the social media platform is being transformed into a new type of global governance entity: “The idea behind our new mission is to bring the world closer together. Ending poverty, curing diseases, stopping climate change, spreading freedom and tolerance, stopping violence: there is no single group or even country that can take these things on alone. So we have to build a world where people come together to take on these big meaningful efforts. This is not going to happen top down […] We want to help one billion people join [Facebook] meaningful communities and bring the world closer together.”

9 June 2017

Posted on June 9, 2017 Leave a Comment

The 2017 Millennial Impact Report just released “Millennial dialogue on the landscape of cause engagement and social issues” completing phase one of this annual study led the Achieve and Case Foundations. Although the study is US-focused and its first phase involves only a small sample of respondents, findings are interesting. Four main messages. One, millennials do not like to use “activists” to qualify their engagement. They prefer being called “advocates” or “allies”. Two, they do not have clear definitions for “cause” nor “social issue” but generally associate the former with action and the latter with politics. Three, interviewees are increasingly interested in causes promoting equity and impacting vulnerable and marginalized populations. Four, the cause engagement of interviewees has increased since end 2016.

Carmine Gallo’s “Google CEO does not use bullet points and neither should you”. Voila. That’s it. No more bullet point presentations. Share a piece of information and 3 days later people will remember 10%. Add a picture, they’ll remember 65%. I vaguely checked the credibility of this evidence and decided that it did not matter anyway. I have done bullet points and text-heavy presentations before, seen too many, and know that they make me dizzy.

My table this week is from Bruce Stokes’ “Global publics more upbeat about the economy but many are pessimistic about children’s future”. It presents results from a Pew Research Center survey conducted with 34,788 people in 32 countries from February to April 2017. The main message in the richest countries is that even when respondents perceive the economic situation as getting better, they still don’t think children will be better off financially than their parents. Results are not as bad in middle income countries. There is also a generational gap: young people (18-29) are more optimistic about the next generation’s financial prospects than middle age people.

My quote this week is from Amy Webb in her MIT Technology Review interview “How to think like a futurist”: “If there’s a way to make the future a little less exciting and a little bit more boring, that’s good for everybody because that means that we’re not continually shocked by new ideas, that we’re not continually discounting people on the fringe.”

3 March 2017

Posted on March 3, 2017 Leave a Comment

I am not sure I can speak rationally about Melissa Fleming’s “A hope more powerful than the sea: The journey of Doaa Al Zamel” given how much I cried reading it. Fleming walks us through Doaa’s life from the teenager in Daraa, Syria witnessing the Arab Spring and its violent repression; to the young woman who flees with her family to Egypt where they are first greeted with compassion but soon threatened daily; to the determined woman who tells her fiancé that “it is better to have a quick death in the sea than a slow death in Egypt”; to the amazingly strong and selfless human being who survives 4 days in the sea holding on to a plastic ring and two babies while 500 people drown around her. In a strange way, I was less shaken by Doaa’s own story than by the atrocities she witnesses. Maybe because I knew from the outset that she would survive or because it was not her own voice sharing the story? The worst parts of that story involve children. Their fate throughout the book is simply unbearable: from the small group of boys, as young as 12, who defy authorities and get arrested and tortured, igniting the revolution; to the unborn child whose pregnant mother wearing a fake life vest boards an unsafe dinghy desperate for a better future; to hundreds of horrified children being moved by smugglers from one boat to the next before all drowning. Fleming, UNHCR chief spokesperson, wanted to raise awareness about the global refugee crisis. She was searching for human stories that would “build bridges of empathy to the public” and give readers real insights into the Syrian war and the lives of refugees. She succeeded. It worked on me, but I was already on the right side of the crowd. Could this book change the perspective of someone who in principle opposes granting asylum, resettlement or work visa to refugees? How does individual storytelling lead to action beyond the life of the protagonist?

Will 2017 be the year of universal basic income (UBI)? As flagged over a year ago, a growing tech crowd argues that UBI is an effective response to the rise of robots, and could capture support from liberals and conservatives alike. In 2017, a good number of countries, from Finland to India, are piloting UBI schemes or considering replacing welfare programs with UBI. Last week end, Annie Lowrey’s “The future of not working” got the development crowd going on the web about the pros and cons for developing countries. World Bank quants said interesting-but-get-your-methodology-in-order, cash-transfer gurus said no-way, and development philanthropists said not-quite-yet. A fun debate to watch.

My graph this week is from the Varkey Foundation’s “What the world’s young people think and feel” and shows that on average young people are pessimistic about the future. Labelled “the most comprehensive and up-to-date attempt to understand the lives of Generation Z”, the paper presents results from a representative survey conducted with 20,000 15-21 year-olds in 20 countries in late 2016. It tells us that Indonesia’s youth is super happy while Japan’s is very unhappy; that young people do not think their leaders are doing enough to help refugees; or that young people are very supportive of the rights agenda in general but maybe not free speech (!).

My quote this week is from David Cameron’s “Even in an age of austerity, aid works. We have to keep giving”: “There are huge gaps in our understanding of what makes states fragile. That is why I am chairing the new Commission on State Fragility, Growth and Development. My co-chairs will be Donald Kaberuka, the special envoy of the African Union Peace Fund and the former president of the African Development Bank, and Adnan Khan, research and policy director of the International Growth Centre.”