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Trustee Insights: Charles Leadbeater
Posted by admin on February 17th, 2012
Charles Leadbeater, talks about his journey as a Trustee of CDI Europe.
A couple of years ago I found myself sitting with the organiser of a cultural centre in one of the many favelas that ring Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
The favela was mainly controlled, he explained, by paramilitary gangs. They provided a measure of safety to the community but at a considerable cost. Their candidates were the elected local politicians. They controlled access to utilities and ran the shared taxis that shuttled people into town. Nothing of any significance happened in the community without their approval.
The favela was poor. People eked out a living as best they could. Conditions were in some places primitive. I wondered what gave him hope in the face of such apparently desperate conditions.
“Education gives us hope,” he answered. “Education to get skills and better jobs and technology to connect us. That is what gives us hope.”
The recipe – education + technology = hope – is one you find people clinging to all around the world.
The centre in Rio was lucky because it was an affiliate of the inspirational Brazilian social organisation CDI, which had provided computers, internet connections, classes and tutorials. CDI’s mission was to allow people to learn and take greater control over their everyday lives, through the creative use of technology.
I was lucky enough to be shown around by Rodrigo Baggio, CDI’s founder, who then asked me to join CDI Europe as a trustee and advisor.
When CDI came to apply its principles to the challenges of motivating young people to learn in the developed world, it quickly found it needed to adapt to a world where computers were more common and young people were turned on by smart phones.
So through the painstaking work of Iris Lapinski, CEO of CDI Europe, we managed to create Apps for Good, a programme that uses smartphones to pull young people into an intensive programme of creative design and entrepreneurship, as they research, create and make prototype apps for mobile phones.
All around the world people want education. But everywhere you go people also realise that much of the way we provide education is dull and unengaging. Young people, especially at secondary school, are often physically present but psychologically absent. The skills and knowledge they are being taught – to recount facts, recall information, repeat answers – often seems disconnected from the world they already live in, one which demands the ability to adapt knowledge and information to new contexts, to work with others to devise better solutions to problems. Very few schools make full use of the creative potential of new technologies but instead use computers merely as a new tool to deliver traditional forms of learning.
Apps for Good attacks all those issues head on. It aims to draw more people into learning by creating a highly motivating programme that offers the right mix of structure and experimentation, creativity and self-discipline, challenge and support. In its own small way the programme is a model for a new way to learn, together, with support, learning by thinking and doing, making and then presenting and selling your idea. It is a little gem.
The Origin of CDI Europe
Posted by admin on February 7th, 2012
Rodrigo Baggio, Founder and Chairman of CDI Global, reflects upon the origin of CDI Europe.
The idea to create CDI Europe came about in Salvador, Brazil, at the meeting of a large financial company. CDI was invited to discuss the area of social responsibility and technology, during the discussions it emerged the bank’s CSR offices were located in the UK. From there the idea to set up a CDI office in London was born.
Soon after we started to mobilize to create CDI Europe. The initial idea was to a set-up a fundraising branch, similar to CDI’s office in New York, whose objective it would be to gain resources to support CDI’s work in Latin America.
Several months into the process of establishing CDI Europe, carrying out studies, road shows and networking, I started to realize that we were generating significant interest in CDI’s methodology and the concept of transforming lives through technology. Soon organizations began to ask about the possibility of bringing the methodology to the UK. This question inspired us and we began the process of imagining how we would apply our proven model from the developing world, to the developed world.
The requests from organizations and individuals continued. However, the process was put in motion when Esmée Fairbairn, a leading UK-based foundation, decided to invest in a feasibility study. The study focused on how CDI could replicate its methodology in a way that would create positive impacts for individuals living in low-income communities in London.
Over several months a team of people from several regional and international CDI offices helped to co-create this proposal. The study found that smartphones offered great potential to generate digital inclusion amongst young people, from where the concept of Apps For Good was developed.
Soon after the feasibility study, we gained the support of a big partner – Dell. Dell believed in the power of the idea and decided to invest in a pilot. For me it was a moving moment to see close-up the reality of High Trees community organization in London and to see the young people enthused and engaged in the project. Through this experience of learning while doing we carried on developing the Apps for Good concept.
Apps for Good continues to inspire me and the CDI network through its embracing of our mission to transform lives and communities through technology. The use of smartphones on the program indicates to us the future path for digital inclusion, as millions of individuals are gaining their first access to the online world through these mobile technologies.
From the moment in which we first saw the applications designed by these young people, the strength of their ideas and the changes in their thinking brought about by the course, learning to think critically about the use of technology, we were inspired and motivated to expand the program’s reach. Today we are in over 40 secondary schools throughout England.
Now, I would like to invite and mobilize individuals and organizations in the UK to get behind the Apps for Good movement, so that we, together, can increase the impact and quality of our work.
CDI Network Annual Meeting
Posted by admin on January 23rd, 2012
Luisa Gockel reviews her last trip to Brazil, for the CDI Network Annual Meeting.
The 13th CDI Network Annual meeting took place in November 2011 at Itaipava, Rio de Janeiro. Sixty leaders from various CDI regional and international offices discussed pressing issues such as electronic waste, the role of mobile technology in our programmes, social media, cloud computing and changes to our methodology. For the first time in 13 years, the agenda was 100% built by their participants using Facebook. Tim Berners-Lee bless the social media!
Two task forces were created; one to look at e-waste and the other one at the revision of CDI’s methodology. The network unanimously decided that we need a unified plan led by the headquarters to tackle the e-waste issue. CDI Brasilia is leading the advocacy efforts to pressure the Brazilian government for more regulation on who should be responsible for discarding electronic waste such as computers and mobile handsets.
CDI Campinas is leading the efforts to publish an updated version of our renowned 5-step methodology. The idea is to bring ICT training and community action to the 21st century trough the use of social media, blogs, mobile, tablets and video. The work is very advanced and CDI Campinas’ presentation was one of the highlights of the Annual Meeting.
All leaders left Itaipava with the commitment to improve the information flow between all CDI offices and to make a better use of the different expertises present at CDI network. Because we are stronger together!
CDI was recently selected as one of the Top 100 Best NGOs in the world by The Global Journal, once again showing the strength of the CDI as leading NGO.
CDI Europe at WISE 2011
Posted by admin on December 6th, 2011
In November Interim CEO and Head of Partnering Debbie Forster attended the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE). WISE is an international initiative and platform for a multitude of established and new educational actors to collaborate proactively all year round. Here is her round up:
Going to Doha, Qatar was an exciting change for the start of November and I think I’m still working through all the things I saw, learned and people I met. CDI Europe was invited to give a presentation at the World Innovation Summit for Innovation. It was a great opportunity not just to share with others what we were doing on Apps for Good, but a chance to listen, learn and work with education innovators around the world.
With over 1200 people in attendance, every session, workshop and even the coach rides to and from the conference venue gave me an opportunity to talk about what was happening in education, what problems different countries were facing and the exciting innovations which were taking place to address those problems around the world. This year’s theme was “Changing Societies, Changing Education” and each day had a different focus. The first day looked at how innovation and change happen in different sectors, the second focused on innovation in the education sector and the final day explored a vision for the future.
It was both comforting and daunting to realise how universal the problems were, how much everyone agreed that most education was not preparing young people for the challenges for tomorrow and how hard it was to change direction for education systems. More inspiring was seeing the many programmes and initiatives which were springing up around the world to address this. Apps for Good fits in that overall drive and it was great to see how much interest there was in the our programme outside the UK. This opens some exciting opportunities for us in future.
It was also interesting to see how many programmes around the world are starting to focus on teaching young people about problem-solving, innovation and entrepreneurship. Everyone seemingly agrees that this is what is needed to address the increasingly complex set of problems facing us; there is growing concern that current education systems are rarely developing this in our young people. The key challenge discussed by all centred around how to scale these programmes, how to learn from each other and to leverage this to get the maximum impact from these innovations.
The discussions of innovation and scaling going on throughout the conference made the conference worthwhile in its own right. But what it really resonated was the fact that this was Doha, in the Middle East, after the Arab Spring. This flavoured every discussion, challenged assumptions and offered both hope and threw down a gauntlet to all at the conference. The status quo is no longer unchallengeable–talk of an “education spring” echoed throughout the week to varying optimism, caution and cynicism, caution and cynicism mostly from the middle-aged attendees (like me!?). More interesting was the input of the younger attendees. One young woman, a newly qualified doctor in Doha, offered the challenging observation that these innovative programmes did not empower people so much as accepting and helping the young people see how much power they already possess. We hear that echoed from the young people who have completed the Apps for Good course. Many admit they come to the course lured by the exciting technology but what makes the real difference is the realisation that they can find, define, and create solutions themselves…and “the real world” listens to them and takes that seriously. It is a powerful concept for young people, and one we want to continue to build on in Apps for Good.