Creating Brighter Better Futures through Sustainable Business practices at scale to positively impact the lives of One Billion People, is my mission and the stated objective of The Positive Transformation Initiative (PTI).
Visiting the Delft Township in Cape Town, South Africa, really helped me form the basis of my understanding, that to have that kind of impact regardless of the country, there must be a vehicle for Connecting Corporates with Communities (CCC) locally, nationally, and then globally to drive measurable Positive Transformation.
My ideal for that vehicle is The Positive Transformation Initiative (PTI) identifying where the impact of existing initiatives can be widened through collaboration with the right people, resources, technology and funding to Connect Corporates with Communities (CCC) locally, nationally, and then globally to drive measurable Positive Transformation.
To impact the lives of One Billion people globally, everything must be delivered through a lens of empowerment, education, improved well being, and safer decision-making, aligned to a real understanding that INCOME, INVESTMENT, AND IMPACT must NOT be mutually exclusive, and we MUST deliver equally on all three in everything we do.
To enable this, I have made the focus of Positive Transformation firmly on understanding the needs of communities and businesses to drive competitive advantage through a new era of change and transformation, where investing in social value, is investing in business value.
To give an illustration as to why this is important to local communities, and more widely the global economy, I have tried here to provide some insight to the challenges of living through a technology revolution from the perspective of living in abject poverty, real poverty, and with all of the daily life challenges and threats to well-being that brings.
What does the technology revolution mean to people living in poverty everywhere in the world? It means a very harsh reality looms on the back of the ultimate raw deal.
In the Delft Township and across a huge and growing population of poverty stricken townships across Cape Town, most jobs rely on retail, construction and very low skilled manual work, which as we all know across all countries, is now being decimated by technology. The reality here in Cape Town is that 65% of jobs in retail will be lost along with 85% in construction being totally eradicated. These are scary numbers for the real people living with this prospect every day, a prospect that paints a very different picture of the golden era of technology advancement that most of us like to think of as we go about our daily lives.
Unfortunately for the billions of people around the world effected by this, and certainly for those living in the townships of Cape Town, these challenges are hopelessly combined with inaccurate perceptions, prejudices, ignorance along with outright racism. These issues and many like them apply not just in Cape Town, but to billions of people around the world every day living outside of the technological utopian fantasy of westernised society, and ironically, to many people in the west who are suffering more now than ever in the same way.
The scale of the problem can’t be underestimated, just think about this for a moment as one small example.
You have no money, no food, shelter is scarce and you live in constant fear of violence. You need help and so you use your very scarce resources to try and make a call to the government helpline. To actually make that call you need a mobile phone with 140 rands (£8) in credit on your phone just to get through to the city. A city by the way, which instead of helping you and showing some support and compassion, drop 60,000 calls per month from those very same people in need of help. Not hugely different to the the way we are going in the UK.
If you are one of those lucky enough to have or be able to access a mobile phone, and the £8 you need for that one phone call, before you can likely get through to anyone, all your hope will be demolished along with your funds, by someone in an office that simply can't be bothered to pick up the phone. Funds gone, no help, square one, repeat. Imagine that daily.
There is no real concept of community safety in a township, it is a very challenging environment and due to difficult economic circumstances there is little or no connectivity, data is expensive and everything needed to drive change needs to be driven from the bottom up. This is incredibly hard when you can’t even make a call to the people in charge, and through the frustration and desperation which frankly is understandable, violence, rioting and other social challenges become increasingly threatening as daily life considerations.
Corporations who may offer employment want to absorb people into the cities like Cape Town which is ultimately setting people up to fail due to costs of travel, child care and a host of other factors for people who need a hand up, not a handout. Sounding familiar?
Perpetuating the problem is the circulation of currency and reinvestment in communities, to make any kind of impact money needs to circulate in the community, not be sucked out into the cities. A 20 rand note will circulate 17 times in an affluent area like Sea Point and only once in a township. Stating the obvious, the system is broken, not just in Cape Town but for everyone living in poverty including the UK who is in need of support, compassion, help and the means to create a way out for themselves.
People are ignored because of their colour and position in society, particularly in the townships. The perception is that if you are poor, you are lazy, and most likely stupid which is all plain wrong on so many levels. It is also simply inaccurate. This is a view propagated by people who can't be bothered to visit, won't go to see for themselves or speak to the communities directly. Frankly, if you are not prepared to get off your sofa, put down your social media and form a view based on experience, or at the very least well research information, then you should not have an opinion.
If you think we are miles away from this, you are wrong. Simply look at the escalating living costs, fuel and water crises, unemployment, and devastating effects on many people as living standards decline, costs increase, and more is demanded every day to support a failing economy that has no interest in the day to day lives of actual people.
So how do we start to give people hope, and a meaningful way to benefit from, and engage with the technology revolution?
Welcome, Rev. Charles George. A man who sees the problems, talks to the people, facilitates collaboration, has a vision for the future of his community, and then gets it done.
It was a paradigm shifting time with Rev. Charles visiting the very deprived parts of South Africa’s townships, this particular township is the Delft Township just outside of Cape Town centre. I am still stunned in an overwhelmingly positive way at what is being done here using donated technology to drive employment and community safety. Helping people to find a way of engaging in a technology revolution that thus far, has left so many people behind.
This short video is Rev. Charles talking about how they have been partnering with a tech business to implement drone-based community safety using tuk-tuks. Just brilliant!
"We do nothing for the community, we do everything with the community. We are not taking ownership, we are offering people a chance to be accountable, with the right support from us".
It was incredibly interesting to hear what Rev. Charles had to say and try to understand the challenges and what could be done to support him to make the technology revolution work for everyone in his township and the other 110, yes 110 other townships just like it across the western cape. A very sad reflection of societies imbalance.
A big factor for the future here and across the other 110 townships in the Western Cape, and around the world, is training, retraining, education and re-education for future jobs. Not any jobs, but relevant future jobs while also incubating businesses to provide employment, along with a plan for the practicalities of the how to face old problems, with new attitudes, and with better implementation and use of technology that should be available to all.
Rev. Charles has aided thousands of people through training into thousands of jobs in what I now know as a world-first project that is simply genius. Importantly, this is a project we can all use as a way to think more innovatively no matter where you are in the world, to drive business value through better social value.
This project is amazing by any standard, the fact that it has been conceived and implemented under such circumstances is truly remarkable. Fibre connections for a future of connected devices to promote training, jobs, commerce, businesses and reinvestment in local communities to enable people to help themselves with the right support.
This is all about collaboration between businesses and communities, bringing people to a level of employability that will create jobs, change perceptions, widen impact and ultimately change lives for generations to come. The goal is for the centre to act as an academy and support network to allow people, once trained, to work from home avoiding all the show-stopping issues of being sucked into the big city and a perpetual cycle of decline.
This centre can improve education and provide pathways into employment, self-employment and the development of self-esteem, self-confidence and a much brighter future for huge sections of a society currently being ignored. The implementation of electronic wallets to transfer funds is already reducing crime and robbery. 4G cameras connected and the use of drones are also playing a huge part here in crime reduction and opportunity creation.
Rev. Charles is clear "We do nothing for the community, we do everything with the community. We are not taking ownership, we are offering people a chance to be accountable, with the right support from us".
This is so in tune with my beliefs and with Positive Transformation, providing a hand up not hand out, bringing people together.
Everyone here is aligned to a job, they are given 4 months training designed by the employer and once they are working live, commercially this is a huge cost saving for any business while also having a huge social impact. The technology provides accurate per-minute billing and the centre can provide a state of the art contact centre for typing and calls, inbound and outbound, voice recognition, face recognition, biometrics and direct access to the clients chosen cloud.
This is truly a blueprint for unlocking the knowledge-based economy and changing lives while working in partnership with inspiring people like Rev. Charles and tackling the hard problems. In my mind this is a great demonstration of how we create Brighter Better Futures through sustainable business practices at scale, to positively impact the lives of One Billion People.
My mission and the stated objective of The Positive Transformation Initiative (PTI) is to identify projects like this, enable the right people resources, technology and funding to connect through collaboration, widening the impact of existing initiative and creating the vehicle for Connecting Corporates with Communities (CCC) locally, nationally, and then globally to drive measurable Positive Transformation.
We urgently need more innovative thinking and projects like this focused firmly on understanding the needs of communities and businesses, to drive competitive advantage through a new era of change and transformation, where investing in social value, is investing in business value
The ultimate goal for me is to fuel my own creativity, learn and develop myself while cultivating a fulfilling existence. In doing this and removing some of the bullshit that negatively impacts our minds in daily life, I hope to support better brighter futures for everyone on a journey of Positive Transformation, Growth, & Personal Development. Including me!
Get in touch with me via the Website, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to share your little nuggets of wisdom and your personal stories of BEING RELENTLESS, BEING YOU, and how you are creating an OPPORTUNITY MINDSET on your own exciting life journey of Change, Positive Transformation, Growth, & Personal Development.
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