Aesop Creative Director Marsha Meredith familiarises us with the Aesop ‘Atlas of Attraction’ Gift Kits 2018/2019
EMPOWERING WITH EDUCATION
“IT’S NOT BECAUSE I’M TRYING TO BE, LIKE, POYO
OR WHATEVER,” Teacher Raj Ridvan Singh explained his unconventional title. “The whole idea is to so of get people to respect or recognise the field of teachers.”
In 2000 he founded Science of Life Studies (SOLS) 24/7 with his father and brother, an NGO which educates and empowers underprivileged societies throughout the world.
At the tender age of 17, Teacher Raj was easily gearing up to be a technological prodigy. Instead he has since channelled his experiences and expe ise into what has now become an award-winning social enterprise. FOR SOMEONE SO YOUNG TO HAVE SUCH STRONG EARNING POWER TO LEAVE IT BEHIND TO DO HUMANITARIAN WORK FULL-TIME, WHAT WAS THE DEFINING FACTOR FOR THAT? Because my family had travelled a lot. When I was three I went to Papua New Guinea, and then I went to a boarding school in India for six months when I was seven. So you really get to see pove y and you understand pove y. It doesn’t make sense how, here I am, I have my video game in my hand and I have food to eat, and these people are struggling, collecting rubbish just for income. And you see this trend everywhere. To me, it just didn’t seem fair, when I was young. That’s such an unfair environment because no one chooses to be born into a family, or into a country, or into pove y. HOW DID YOU APPLY YOUR EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE TO YOUR PROGRAMS UNDER SOLS 24/7? Many ways, so one, technology has been a very big part of my life. And I always believe technology can alleviate poverty 10 times faster than anything else. But somehow technology is constantly used to make, you know, college kids rich, or billionaires, but never really used to transform those in poor communities. And they are the ones who need it the most. So I always try to make sure that in whatever we do, we constantly try to innovate. WHY DO YOU PLACE A LOT OF FOCUS ON TEACHING ENGLISH TO THESE COMMUNITIES? If you want to help someone get out of pove y, you have to get them a job. So we wanted to figure out what was the fastest skill that could enable them to do that. We found out by teaching them English, very, very quickly they would get a job - almost immediately. And their salary would double or triple that of a person with a technical background from a poor family. And we had developed a methodology that could teach someone with zero English how to speak what we call employable English, in a hundred hours. So that’s how we rapidly grew from Cambodia, with literally 24 kids living in my home, to a few thousand within three years.