Something in an article I was reading reminded me of the acronym CIA when used to ‘deal’ with the stuff that happens around us.
C – can I Control the situation? If the situation does turn out to be controllable then do so and get on with life. Most likely it isn’t (we can’t even control our own breathing, heart rate etc for more than a few minutes) so get on with life…
I – can I Influence the situation? Always (yes, always!) a matter of choice. A little fella called Ghandi decided to influence the Brits out of India when others gave up. Conversely you might decide not to influence the situation (I did/do not agree with the Iraq War but decided not to go on the million man march in the UK). If you choose not to influence then accept and get on with life…
A – am I prepared to Accept the situation? (See Iraq above) If I am going to accept the situation, and if I cannot control nor choose to influence then I have no other choices, then accept it fully and get on with life…
Friday 20 August 2010
Education, education, education...
I have shamelessly ripped this piece off from a piece written by John Wood that I read in "What Matters Now", a free ebook distributed via Seth Godin's blog.
Education has a ripple effect. One drop can initiate a cascade of possibility, each concentric circle gaining in size and travelling further.
If you get education right, you get many things right: escape from poverty, better family health, and improved status of women.
Educate a girl, and you educate her children and generations to follow.
Yet for hundreds of millions of kids in the developing world, the ripple never begins. Instead, there’s a seemingly inescapable whirlpool of poverty. In the words of a headmaster I once met in Nepal: “We are too poor to afford education.
But until we have education, we will always be poor.” That’s why there are 300 million children in the developing world who woke up this morning and did not go to school. And why there are over 750 million people unable to read and write, nearly 2/3 of whom are girls and women.
I dream of a world in which we’ve changed that. A world with thousands of new schools. Tens of thousands of new libraries. Each with equal access
for all children.
The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.
The second best time is now.
John Wood is Founder & Executive Chairman, Room to Read,
which has built over 850 schools and opened over 7,500 libraries serving 3 million children.
For those of us who have the chance of education, make sure we take it; for those hundreds of millions who do not, what are YOU going to do to help make it happen?
Education has a ripple effect. One drop can initiate a cascade of possibility, each concentric circle gaining in size and travelling further.
If you get education right, you get many things right: escape from poverty, better family health, and improved status of women.
Educate a girl, and you educate her children and generations to follow.
Yet for hundreds of millions of kids in the developing world, the ripple never begins. Instead, there’s a seemingly inescapable whirlpool of poverty. In the words of a headmaster I once met in Nepal: “We are too poor to afford education.
But until we have education, we will always be poor.” That’s why there are 300 million children in the developing world who woke up this morning and did not go to school. And why there are over 750 million people unable to read and write, nearly 2/3 of whom are girls and women.
I dream of a world in which we’ve changed that. A world with thousands of new schools. Tens of thousands of new libraries. Each with equal access
for all children.
The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.
The second best time is now.
John Wood is Founder & Executive Chairman, Room to Read,
which has built over 850 schools and opened over 7,500 libraries serving 3 million children.
For those of us who have the chance of education, make sure we take it; for those hundreds of millions who do not, what are YOU going to do to help make it happen?
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