Learning of Social Innovation

I struggled a little bit with finding one of these that could help *me* change the world...But a couple of them resonated enough, after reading and re-reading, until I could recall an insight I have--a kind of dream of how to make the world a better place.

Here's the idea: it's about setting up an organization that would help people--ideally teens--travel to third-world, developing nations and directly experience the poverty and lack of infrastructure that we take for granted here in the USA.

The help could take the form of providing scholarships and plane tickets as well as setting up contacts in these countries for participants to meet, have a place to stay, etc.-- kind of like be a short-term "peace corp." (the Peace Corp requires a long-term commitment and few ties to jobs, families, etc.).

This idea comes out of a personal experience I had of traveling to Ghana about six years ago. I met a native Ghanaian at a conference about water privatization. When he mentioned he was going to the country, I said that I would like to go, and he invited me to travel with him. So for 10 days in late August, I "shadowed" a native as he traveled about visiting his family and taking care of business. There were no stops at tourist locations, just hanging out with the locals and interviewing ordinary people about their experiences.

This was such a powerful experience. I thought I was preparing myself for the visit by reading the history of Ghana and literature by famous writers and looking at pictures of the country. Nothing could prepare me for the experience of *being there*. It was "immersive education" at its best.

I wasn't there long enough to observe any problems that I could help solve, but I experienced the first of the seven hints at the end of the list: "Understand by observing the environment, infrastructure, culture, and lives of people by being there." Amy Smith in her "rules for design in the developing world" was also there when she was in the Peace Corp trying to carry water on her head...

So my idea is about getting people over there in the first place.

There's a woman in my church who travels to El Salvador, to the same village, twice a year. Before she goes, she collects shoes. Simple. Why? Because the kids in the village who don't have shoes get ringworms, which consume the calories that can help the children be healthy and grow. The simplicity of this was stunning to me, but she was able to understand that problem because she was present and observant...

To conclude: what if, instead of going on "vacations," we went on "vocations"?