Let’s provide young people a platform to act!
On the 3rd of June 2021 the Active8-Planet project delivered an “elevator pitch” in the On-line Consultation Meeting on Higher Education Transformation, organized by the European Commission. Key aim was to demonstrate the relevance of the Active8-Planet for the new higher education transformation agenda. The pitch was specifically focusing on the Slovenian case study.
At the very beginning something which struck us is that a great deal of products and services that are around us are still mainly “designed in isolation” or with only a superficial consideration of “needs and expectations” of actual people. They are over-reliant on technological innovation, ignore the particular values, lifestyles and socio-cultural specifics of people. In short, the world is saturated with meaningless products that we do not need. And this costs us a lot.
We can observe a sort of a battle between utopian and dystopian way of perceiving the world. On one hand side, industries and engineering education frequently rely on people as passive consumers of the technology. But on the other side the social sciences and humanities are criticizing the development initiatives mainly solely through theoretical lenses without offering suitable alternatives. Europe needs social sciences and humanities is a cheesy slogan – but why if the majority of them ends up working in public administration, governmental institutions or – when they eventually get employment in business sector – their skills are mainly used for marketing purposes; trying to persuade other people to buy products they actually do not need.
So, we basically want to demonstrate to students, higher education teachers, industries and society at large how social sciences and humanities in general and anthropology in particular could be directly involved in the industrial product and service development processes. How this knowledge and methodological approaches can bring and involve actual people as co-creators towards developing more sustainable and meaningful products and services. And we are doing this through forming interdisciplinary teams of students, teachers and industry professionals working on concrete, real-life and industry-relevant cases and environmental & societal challenges.
On one hand side we enable social sciences students to gain valuable practical skills to complement their theoretical education. And after the project they will be able to pitch in a clear and confident manner the practical value of their skills as anthropologists towards businesses. But on the other hand, industries and engineers also start to realize and appreciate the added value of people-centred methodologies.
We were already able to make a shift from the expert mindset to the people-centred mindset. But we still need to make another step and this implies upgrading the people-centred mindset with the planet-centred mindset – moving from ego to a more eco-centric paradigm.
And if we have to provide one key message for the new higher education transformation agenda this would be that it is not enough to only teach about change but we as higher education institutions and knowledge alliance projects also need to contribute to real change. We must respond to the “power and will to change” that exists in young people today (there is no doubt about that). So not only teaching and equipping students with the skills that our fast-changing society needs – but giving them a chance and a suitable platform to mobilize and activate their passion and knowledge for future-oriented climate and sustainability actions and interventions. Let’s provide young people a platform to act!
