[vision] Sustainability education and entrepreneurial activities

Hi This is Takeshi, CEO of su-re.co ;-)

One of the activities I started at the same time as the online salon I wrote about yesterday is online sustainability education for high school students. This is running in conjunction with our Japanese partner TigerMov and Clark High School. We spend about two hours every Friday afternoon to learn sustainability with 200+ high school students of 10 campus in Japan. The focus is sustainability, but I tend to talk more like a social entrepreneurship education. This is based partly on the fact that I run a company (besides my role as a researcher), but it is also on the fact that contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) inevitably requires a social enterprise mindset.

The SDG is a dreaming dream: 169 targets crossed in 17 areas needed by achieved by 2030. And compared to its predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), it tends to bring the rate of achievement much higher. To achieve SDGs, we need to imagine the future we want to have and running towards the imagination, before judging whether we can or cannot do that. This is so-called backcasting,

The first step of my entrepreneurial education is to think about the vision, and from that vision, we set a shorter-term target that specifies a specific deadline and the level of achievement. We then determine what the current situation is in similar areas. Since the gap between that goal and the current situation is what we have not achieved, it is defined as a problem. Finally, a solution to the problem will be developed.

It seems the highschool students are not familiar with vision. In normal schooling, the problem is given to us by the teacher and the focus is on solving it. However, in my sustainability education, the focus is on finding the problem. I'll try to draw on my education a little by little as time goes on. That's all for today for now!

Besides, Mr Pierrick, who is the Director-General of the R&D division in the European Commission, came to our class today for an online visit. I teach this class too, so it's nothing strange, but a year ago this would have been impossible.

Mr Pierrick woke up the high school students with the following message Thank you. Please come back to Bali again ;-)

Congratulation to this high-school initiative! Sustainability thinking is the matter of everybody, especially new generations are directly concerned. They are the actors of tomorrow but with the ideas we need to raise from seeds today!