What I Learned From "How To Change The World" (A Course Offered by Wesleyan University via Coursera.org)

Poster for Creek Clean Up by author

I thought the course, How To Change The World*, had an audacious ring to it. That was why I took it. I wanted to find out if it was possible for me to make a difference, wherever I happened to be in my life. I’m so glad I took the course, despite some hesitation (and distractions) at the start, because I ended the class with an actual project that will make a difference in my immediate community.

It directed my focus on action

The course was divided into six weeks, with the fourth week serving as “rest” week so students could catch up with the readings (which were voluminous!). These were the topics, in order, that covered the first, second, third, fifth, and sixth weeks:

• social goods and the commons (resources belonging to a whole community, or even the whole world),
• poverty and development,
• climate change and sustainability,
• disease and global health care and,
• women, education and social change.

It was a broad coverage but it pretty much captured the biggest issues we face as human beings. I liked how the whole course started with the premise that we human beings share a commons, whether it is our biology, our planet, or our systems. It was a good springboard and context for tackling everything else. With every topic, the main questions that we were asked as students were:

What do I know?
Why should I care?
What can I do?

The course was not theoretical though it did not lack in theory. We were challenged to read the facts (I confess that I was really not able to finish all the PDFs and papers that were presented in the syllabus) but beyond that, we were challenged to take action. This, I believe, is where knowledge matters most: when it is put into practice. All the knowledge in the world will not be able to make positive changes. After learning new insights, new methods, new approaches, it makes sense to apply it immediately to one’s life. This was the value I saw in taking up the course. It was designed for application. At one point, I realized that I made a mistake in submitting a multimedia presentation for peer review. It meant that I would not get extra credit. I complained on the forum and one TA (teaching assistant) reminded me that doing the work counted more than the grade. What a wake-up call. Because I’m such a nerd, I wanted that “with distinction” certificate. But the certificate won’t matter if my participation won’t create any actual change in my community. I drew the line and, from then on, I focused on the quality of my work, whether or not I got a good grade.

I looked around with new lenses

All the topics were very relevant to me, coming from a developing country that seems to face all of the issues presented in the syllabus. While the course directed me where to look, what became clear to me were immediate opportunities in my own neighborhood. In the first week (when the commons was the topic), I was able to zero in on a polluted creek across the condominium where I live. I started contacting people I never thought to contact before: a foundation that helps rehabilitate rivers and creeks, the kagawad (local officials) in my barangay (smallest local government unit in the Philippines), and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

I was pleasantly surprised by the reaction from my local government. They were very willing to work with me to organize a clean up. This initiative snowballed with the DPWH volunteering a crew, despite the fact that they work on a national and not on a local level, and a small business offering to donate effective microorganism (EM) solution to be applied to the creek. I was amazed at what actually could be done in my own neighborhood. Citizen action didn’t seem like such an overwhelming task anymore. My barangay eventually got in touch with a company that does corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, Li & Fung Ltd., a multinational supply chain management supplier, and, all of a sudden, we got 20 more volunteers for the creek clean up plus food donations. All in all, the project that will be implemented on August 16, 2014 will have 55 volunteers coming from both government and private sectors.

I appreciated the beauty and necessity of the grassroots and “the small”

In the course of taking up How To Change The World, a friend of mine (who also happens to be one of the volunteers for the creek clean up) introduced me to a book, Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered by E.F. Schumacher. I immediately felt an affinity with the book. Schumacher believes that using economics as a measure for development or progress is a mistake. There must be better ways for measuring wellbeing. Also, these measures must take sustainability into account. This book was published in 1973 but I find that it is very relevant today. It pointed me to the answer to “how to change the world.” The answer is: one village/ neighborhood at a time. While sweeping movements do make a difference, touching hearts is very essential in creating lasting change for the better. This can only be done at close quarters. Modern technology favors the “mega,” the “big,” and “scale” but going back to the “small,” the intimate, the community-based is actually what will make the difference in creating a sustainable structure that favors actual people and our environment.

I now see that it’s time to change our measures

It made sense that the last topic that we took up in the course focused on gender equality. Empowering women and girls not only improves the lives of everyone but it gives women the opportunity to contribute from positions of leadership (either in private business or in government). They call attention to things like child care and the environment. From this topic, I discovered the work of Marilyn Waring, New Zealand feminist, politician and author of If Women Counted, a feminist analysis of modern economics. She advocates changing our measures for progress.

In business parlance, there is a saying that “what doesn’t get measured doesn’t get done.” Even in matters of development, I believe the same thing also applies. However, our tools for measurement reflect the kind of societies we want to build. If we measure for economic factors only, we will not take into account such things as wellbeing and sustainability. I believe it’s time for human societies to change their measures. And once again, we do this one community at a time, until it becomes the model that we use for larger structures like countries and regions.  And so, to close, if you ask me: how do you change the world? My answer is: one community, one village at a time. It takes focus, it takes really seeing and observing what will make a difference to people in my immediate neighborhood, and it takes work at the grassroots. It takes you and me doing something about the things that matter to us most. When it comes to changes we want to see in the world, it will not be about GDP (gross domestic product) but about our wellbeing and the wellbeing of our kids, our planet.

Go take the next course and see how *you* can change the world. 

*Note: I took up a course boldly called How To Change The World offered for free by Wesleyan University (via Coursera.org) from June 21 to August 14, 2014.  The course was taught by Michael S. Roth, Wesleyan University President. It tackled major issues facing humanity and it was based on discussions brought up during the 2013 Social Good Summit in New York. There will be a 2015 version of the course based on the upcoming 2014 Social Good Summit.

ModPo 2013 #48 Crossing The Stinky Bridge and Keeping Art Alive: On O'Hara's "A Step Away From Them"

Pre-colonial barangay scene from islamalaya.com.

A STEP AWAY FROM THEM


It's my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets
on. They protect them from falling
bricks, I guess. Then onto the
avenue where skirts are flipping
above heels and blow up over
grates. The sun is hot, but the
cabs stir up the air. I look
at bargains in wristwatches. There
are cats playing in sawdust.
                                          On
to Times Square, where the sign
blows smoke over my head, and higher
the waterfall pours lightly. A
Negro stands in a doorway with a
toothpick, languorously agitating.
A blonde chorus girl clicks: he
smiles and rubs his chin. Everything
suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of
a Thursday.
                   Neon in daylight is a
great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would
write, as are light bulbs in daylight.
I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET'S
CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of
Federico Fellini, è bell' attrice.
And chocolate malted. A lady in
foxes on such a day puts her poodle
in a cab.
             There are several Puerto
Ricans on the avenue today, which
makes it beautiful and warm. First
Bunny died, then John Latouche,
then Jackson Pollock. But is the
earth as full as life was full, of them?
And one has eaten and one walks,
past the magazines with nudes
and the posters for BULLFIGHT and
the Manhattan Storage Warehouse,
which they'll soon tear down. I
used to think they had the Armory
Show there.
                   A glass of papaya juice
and back to work. My heart is in my
pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.


[1956]
From Lunch Poems. Copyright © 1964 by Frank O'Hara. City Lights Books. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
--------------------------------------------------

I, too, always keep poems in my pocket, well my proverbial pocket since I'm not a man and I don't keep things in my pocket but rather in my purse. I keep a short poem by Jane Hirshfield in my wallet. And I have another poem by Robert Hass in a small cosmetic kit in my purse. Why do I keep them there? There was once a poem-in-your-pocket day and I never took them out again. It (the act of keeping a poem close to me all the time) reminds me that poetry is my life, that life is poetry, that if I stop keenly observing the moments of my life it will slip me by...un-lived.

That was why I liked this poem. For that last line. I found the attempt at diversity a bit awkward. I don't like seeing the word negro, especially when it's connected with an agitating one. It might have been politically correct at that time. Now, maybe, it's more polite to say African American. But why say African American? What about white people? Are they English Americans? I know there are Irish Americans and Italian Americans. But no one ever says English Americans... the first migrants from England. And it's funny that people say Native Americans or American Indians. When they're not really from India and were just mistakenly called Indians by Columbus (a persisting mistake). And they are technically the most American Americans by virtue of having been born there way before the first migrants came. But I digress.

I spent some time looking up the people mentioned in this I-do-this-I-do-that poem. And I appreciated the video discussion's identification of said dead people as bastions of Modernism. Also, I wouldn't have caught the transition from the mostly "I" activities into the reflective "we" in the last stanza. I appreciated that: the idea of finding one's place in a teeming world. I liked the question: Is art dead (through the deaths, one by one, of artists)? No, art is alive in the city. And then the reflection reaches out to the end of the poem where he identifies his heart in his pocket, a fitting end. Art is never dead. It is not only in the city, it is also constantly in your pocket if you choose it.

I should try writing writing a lunch poem. However, I don't live in NY and I feel sadly bereft of art unless I really look for it. The only decent museum I can think of is all the way in the next city. And no, I haven't really studied the art movements and I don't know the art movements here in my city. Over here, we have great artists, the potential of great art (they end up migrating) but we are more concerned with surviving.

Crossing The Stinky Bridge

It is the brunch hour. We wake up, skipping
breakfast. It's time to vote for barangay officials.
Our maids are off for a funeral and to vote as well.
We wake the kids, help them take their showers.
We cross the street, wondering why there are tents in front
of the NEDA building. It's not where people vote. There's
a sign that says "INFORMATION" but no one is asking
any questions. There are coolers with juice in them and
boxes of Jollibee meals waiting to be served to "volunteers."
We walk over to the university covered court and look
for our names on a printed roster taped to a blackboard.
The kids stray towards the boxes of footballs as we
figure out where exactly we should vote. We vote
for incumbents because our daughter gets free daycare
in our barangay. And that's enough.
                                                         On to Pancake House
in Pearl Drive with our index fingers stained with
indelible ink. We pass the stinky bridge that cuts across
Gold Loop leading us straight from Escriva Drive
to Gold Loop. It's stinky because loads of trash are rotting
in the canal below the bridge. And no one will ever
fix this.                                        
            We order a Halloween pancake, a couple of
cheese pancakes, a salted caramel pancake tower and
a waffle. I don't know what we're celebrating. Maybe
just the holiday. I don't know anyone who died today.
But the death toll count from the earthquake in Bohol
and Cebu is at 185.
                               After brunch, we cross the stinky
bridge again. We quiz our son about why we need
to vote. "Because we need to choose the leaders
of our barangay," he says, dutifully. I wonder about
that, inhaling the stink that won't go away.
                                                                    A glass of
water and I'm back on the computer. This is the only
art I'll see today.