Hello everyone. It's Ryan!
Today I wanted to discuss something that hit me the other day when I was sitting in on an SSE Taster Day. Wale was talking about his business and the SSE…something he mentioned was how the SSE brings in all sorts of different people…different age groups, different backgrounds and ethnicities, and just people with different ideas overall. He said that it is so important that the SSE keep doing this as this experience is so important in life because these people all bring something to you. These different exposures not only make you a better and more cultured person, they bring new ideas, different approaches and perspectives to the table that wouldn't ever occur to you, as a student, without the exposure. In the context of the SSE, it helps all the students to be better social entrepreneurs as it helps them open their mind to so many different ways of going about creating a business.
I thought this was interesting as I agree it’s also so important in life to be able to do this… it just opens your mind completely and you can never understand how it will change you until you are exposed. For example, I can’t relate to a person living in bad areas until I have lived in bad areas or at least been exposed to the thoughts, the culture, and the people from these areas. It brings this idea…you can’t judge anyone on anything because the reasons behind our actions are based on how we are raised and in what conditions.
With this in mind, it also brings up the importance of how the SSE recruits people from all over London. There is an idea that was shared with me by someone on the staff and they said something along the lines of, "The people who know how to fix the worst areas of London are the people from the worst areas of London." It's a thought that never even crossed my mind, yet makes so much sense in context, especially anthropologically.
For example, it's great that people all over the world want to help refugees in Africa by making 'Westernized' schools and such, but perhaps this is the wrong approach. If we were to do this the SSE way, we would go in and support people from Africa that have ideas on how to make Africa better instead of applying our own cultural needs to theirs. It makes me think about the different ways I could help my own community at home… perhaps the people I would be best at helping are the homeless and less well-off people of the suburbs where I live, not necessarily the people from inner Chicago!
I hope you can understand my major 'brain dumping' here! Thanks for reading!
Ryan
