How much longer are we going to wait?

A few days ago, I was invited by a student-led movement at a local university to speak to undergraduates on empowerment and collaboration. Naturally my focus was on education. As part of the workshop activity, I asked students to identify a problem in our education system and come up with three solutions and collaboration efforts to solve these problems. The students highlighted problems we often talk about: lack of higher order thinking skills, teachers are boring, focus on scoring straight As, syllabus not competitive enough and a string of other issues that are all too familiar.

As I listened in to their solutions for these problems, I realised that most of them involved other people. Their sentences began with words like: “The government should…” or “Teachers should…” or “The system should…”
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But I wanted to know what they could do for the education system. I wanted to know what these students, in their capacity as leaders in their university, could do for our education system. How could they bring about change from wherever they were?

Their reaction towards thinking about solutions made me realise that solutions often come in the form of what someone else can do for the situation. This was the case for me as well. I often looked at a problem and linked the solution to change coming from the system, government or the people directly involved in it. I was never included in the solution. I was always on the outside, looking in and providing ideas.

Then a few months back, I had the opportunity to speak to a Teach for India alumni member who single-handedly started an initiative called Life Lab. He sets up science labs in low-income, under-resourced schools and community centres in India, directly benefitting these children by inculcating the art of questioning, reasoning and analysing. I was taken aback at how extremely brave he was to start an organisation from scratch and dedicate his entire time to working with economically disadvantaged children. He never waited for an initiative or a programme to be put in place for change to happen. He went forward and started something which in turn will benefit countless of children from the most underserved part of India.

Using his example, my call for action for the undergraduates is simple. What can YOU do? What are YOU passionate about? Whenever I highlight a certain issue, people come up to me and tell me there’s nothing I can do unless certain systems in place change. Every comment I get on the things I write about usually includes a detailed description of the people to be blamed. But how much longer are we going to talk about the same things? How much longer are we going to wait and wait for things to change? How much longer are we going to convince ourselves that we are not part of the solution? How much longer are we going to sit in front of our computers and talk about change, yet do nothing to be part of it?

Adam Braun started Pencils of Promise, an award-winning non-profit organisation that has built more than two hundred schools around the world, when he was just 25 years old. Shaheen Mistri founded Akanksha Foundation, a non-profit organisation with a mission to provide children from low-income communities with high-quality education in India when she was 20 years old. Today, Akanksha teaches 3,500 children in 58 centres and six schools in India. Both Adam and Shaheen have one thing in common: they didn’t wait for change. They were the change.
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And here’s my call for action for all of you reading this. Don’t stop at being a volunteer. Don’t teach for a day at a refugee centre. Don’t donate five books to a school. Stop giving out your old clothes and toys. Be an advocate for change. Commit yourself to truly making a difference. Teach at a refugee centre every week for an entire year. Gather friends to set up libraries at underserved schools in your community. Get your own children to teach kids at the orphanage to read every week. Speak to schools to see if you can carry out literacy initiatives with them to help kids improve their reading. Don’t read this article and wish you had the time to do these things. Go out there and do these things. Don’t wait. How much longer are we going to wait? – December 11, 2014.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.