News feature published in Ceylon Today newspaper, 28 November 2012
L to R – Margaret Lowman, Rodrigo Jordan, Adrienne Corboud Fumagalli & moderator R Sukumar
Social and technological entrepreneurs shaping a new world By Nalaka Gunawardene in New Delhi
A new wave of social and technological entrepreneurs is reshaping our world, blending the best of enterprise, innovation and compassion.
The old divides of for-profit and non-profit are fast blurring in this brave new world where emerging economies of Asia are taking the lead, a global gathering of change-makers heard this week.
The Rolex Leadership Forum, held at the New Delhi Municipal Council Convention Centre, was convened by the Rolex Awards for Enterprise. It heard from inspirational innovators, scientists and adventurers – all of who shared their personal journeys and passions as they discussed their views on leadership and enterprise.
The core values identifies by these remarkable individuals as guiding and sustaining themselves were passion, integrity, resilience and a sense of humour.
“Follow your passion, think outside the box and seek solutions,” was how Margaret Lowman, pioneering US canopy ecologist summed it up. “Early on, I realized that you expend the same amount of energy to complain as to exclaim. I’ve chosen to do the latter, making things better as I go along!”
She emphasised that solving problems is far more important than simply gathering and analysing data or publishing technical papers. As head of North Carolina’s new Nature Research Centre, she is heavily involved in taking children and youth back to nature, and in public engagement of science.
“I would recommend that we try not to blend in, but stand up and stand out,” said Adrienne Corboud Fumagalli, Swiss economist, media and technology transfer specialist.
Rodrigo Jordan, Chilean social entrepreneur, educationist and mountaineer, who in 1992 led the first Latin American expedition to Mount Everest, has been applying team building skills to business, education and social development. His recipe for successful teams: right proportions of passion, expertise, a sense of purpose and generosity among team members.
“It is imperative for good teams to have members with a good match of technical and personal skills,” he said. “I climb peaks not with climbers but with human beings.”
Nandan Nilekani speaks at Rolex Leadership Forum 2012
“Giving people a purpose larger than themselves usually leads to extraordinary results,” said Nandan Nilekani, the Indian techno-preneur best known for co-founding and building the IT giant Infosys Technologies.
He described challenges involved in his current public sector assignment as chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) – which is building the world’ s largest digital identification system that is web-based. When completed, it will store information on all 1.2 billion Indian residents.
Young change-makers
The forum also heard from three outstanding young Indians who have pursued their own passion for excellence, innovation and service.
Piyush Tewari, who was a Rolex Young Laureate in 2010, has left a lucrative corporate job to devote all his time to SaveLIFE Foundation that trains police officers and volunteers in roadside trauma care. His group responds to the highest road accident fatality rate in the world – an average of 15 deaths every hour. Yet, 80 per cent of victims don’t receive any emergency medical help within the first vital hour after injury.
Deepak Ravindran founded and heads Innoz, a tech company that runs SMSGYAN which serves 120 million users to access several Internet functions from simple mobile phones through text messages. By making every mobile phone smart, he aims to bring Internet within reach of more people in a country where Internet use is currently around 10 per cent.
Ishita Khanna is a social entrepreneur who runs EcoSphere that promotes community participation to achieve sustainable development in remote Himalayan communities through eco-tourism, renewable energies and indigenous wild produce.
These three mid-career professionals epitomise the new generation of Indians who are combining modern management methods and technologies with age old values of caring, sharing and taking on responsibility.
As Rebecca Irvin, director of Philanthropy at Rolex, asked: “The choice for today’s young people is: do you just want to do well in your lives, or do you also want to do good while pursuing your passions?”
The Rolex Leadership Forum 2012 in New Delhi was attended by over 300 people who came from all parts of the world and all walks of life. The distinguished gathering included past winners (laureates) of the prestigious award and its past judges along with journalists, activists and researchers.
Dr Wijaya Godakumbura, inventor of the safe bottle lamp and a Rolex Laureate (1998), was among the invitees.
Rolex Leadership Forum in Delhi, Ceylon Today 28 Nov 2012
In this week’s Ravaya column (in Sinhala), I discuss the brutal, almost inhuman pressures the formal education system — schools, teachers and most parents — exert on our children.
My daughter was six at the time, and I was hoping she would be spared the worst of the Lankan educational system as she grew up. Alas, things have only become worse in that decade. I’ve tried to buffer her from the worst excesses: while she does not have parental pressure to ‘get ahead at any cost’, she is being driven by her school to ‘perform’ so as to ‘maintain the school’s glory’!
In this week’s Sunday column in Ravaya newspaper (in Sinhala), I’ve written about polar explorer Sir Robert Swan’s 2041 campaign to preserve the Antarctica as the world’s last great wilderness.
I have an interview (in Sinhala) on science communication for their 25th anniversary issue, which can be found here.
I have followed up with an expansion of some of these ideas in my Sunday column in Ravaya newspaper. My theme this week is science journalism (a subset of science communication) — why is it important for modern societies and what challenges are faced by Lankan science journalists.
Vidusara at 25 – web banner from Facebook Group
The weekly Sinhala science magazine Vidusara, a publication of Upali Newspapers Limited of Sri Lanka, completes 25 years this week.
Sustaining any publication for that long is no mean accomplishment, so everyone involved – journalists, editors, publishers – deserve congratulations.
The current editor has done an interview with me for the 25th anniversary issue, which is out today. In it, I discuss the challenges faced by all science communicators, but especially by science journalists working in the developing world. The interview is in Sinhala. Here it is, in pdf, in parts 1 and 2.
I had a marginal involvement in Vidusara at its very inception, in late 1987, which was within a few months of my entering journalism. I take no credit for what the publication has accomplished, and am sometimes exasperated when long-standing readers associate me with it. But after clarifying such nuances for years, I now accept the inevitable association!
As reader comments warranted, I responded as follows:
Vidusara 25th anniversary issue – cover 7 Nov 2012“Vidusara was launched in 1988 [correction: it really was in Nov 1987] by Upali Newspapers Limited as an experiment in popular science communication. I was at the time working as a science correspondent for that company’s English daily, The Island, and the managing director asked me to advise and guide the new publication. I welcomed this as I was a bilingual writer (Sinhala and English). However, the founder editor of Vidusara was extremely apprehensive about my association with his project and went out of his way to exclude me. I have never tried to understand or analyse the reasons for this; such insecure and insular mindsets are far too common in Sinhala language journalism, even today.
“All in all, I must have written no more than 10 – 12 Sinhala science articles to Vidusara during its first few months of publication in 1988. When I compare that to the several hundred I’ve published in The Island (1986-1995: none of it available online) and many dozens for other English language media outlets – print, broadcast and online – over the years, my writing in Vidusara represents only a very small proportion of my combined media output. However, I must have done a few things well in those articles for discerning readers to remember and refer to it more than two decade later. I’m naturally pleased with such reader recollections.
“It also reminds me that we who work in the public space don’t get to choose how we are remembered. Our audiences will form their own impressions, and select their own memories.”
News feature published in Ceylon Today newspaper on 4 Nov 2012:
Wanted: Young Lankans for Antarctica!
By Nalaka Gunawardene
Sir Robert Swan, polar explorer
Environmentally inclined young Lankan men and women have a new opportunity to broaden their horizons: by joining an international youth expedition to the Antarctica!
This open invitation came from the polar explorer, environmental leader and motivational speaker Sir Robert Swan, who is in Sri Lanka on a short visit.
“Going to the Antarctica – the last great wilderness of the world, twice the size of Australia – is a life changing experience. We want more young people to experience it, and be transformed about what is happening to our environment, and what we can do about it,” he told a packed audience at the Galle Face Hotel on Saturday morning.
British born Swan, the first person in history to walk to both the North and South poles, has dedicated his life to the preservation of Antarctica by the promotion of recycling, renewable energy and sustainability to combat the effects of climate change.
His non-profit foundation, 2041 (www.2041.com), operates the world’s first educational base (E-Base) in Antarctica. Since 2008, it serves as a resource for teachers and an inspiration to young people around the world.
Swan introduced Imalka de Silva, said to be the first Lankan woman to visit Antarctica, who was part of an international team of youth who spent two and a half weeks at E-Base in early 2010.
“I want more young people to have that amazing experience, so that they too can champion the local environmental initiatives in a global context,” Imalka said.
She will soon be launching a new project that seeks to link the business community and environment conservation. Already, MAS Holdings (which organized the Robert Swan talk), Coca Cola (which sponsored his visit to Sri Lanka) and Millennium IT are interested in supporting competitively chosen young Lankans to visit the Antarctica, she revealed.
“Our concern for the environment needs to be broadened into a business opportunity, and only then will society change its ways,” she said.
Robert Swan, who has been spending time with selected youth groups working on environmental issues in Sri Lanka, added: “Sri Lanka can show regional leadership in motivating young people to act on environment and sustainability.”
Sir Robert Swan giving a talk in Sri Lanka – image by 2041.com
In Sri Lanka, mass kidney failure during the past two decades has been followed by what I call a mass media failure. Most of our media have failed to understand, analyse and report adequately on this public health emergency. Instead of helping affected people and policy makers to work out solutions, some journalists have become amplifiers of extreme activist positions.
I talked about this at at the International Science Communication Leadership Workshop, held as part of Association of Academies & Societies of Sciences in Asia (AASSA) General Assembly in Colombo, 16-19 October 2012. An English article based on my talk appeared in Ceylon Today a few days ago:
Mass Kidney Failure & Mass Media Failure: Go ‘Upstream’ for Remedies!
I have just written up similar views (NOT a translation!) for my weekend Sinhala language column in Ravaya broadsheet newspaper:
CKDu infographic courtesy Center for Public Integrity, USA
Meteosat 7 weather satellite image of the Indian Ocean – 30 Oct 2012 at 6 UTC As Hurricane Sandy hammered the US East Coast earlier this week, we had our own meteorological worries. A tropical cyclone — belatedly named Neelam — swept past parts of Sri Lanka’s North and East. It then headed to southern India.
The two atmospheric turbulences were not comparable. Sandy was far more ferocious. But Neelam caused enough disruption as well — it wasn’t just a passing gust of wind.
As I followed the two disasters through print, TV and web media reporting, I wondered: how come we had more about Sandy in our own media than on Neelam?
Is it because, as some argue, the global media were so preoccupied with Sandy, and provided saturation coverage? Or are our own media outlets unable, or unwilling, to cover a local weather anomaly with depth and clarity?
This is the opening of my latest op-ed essay, Your Disaster is Not My Disaster, published in Ceylon Today newspaper, 1 Nov 2012.
Another excerpt:
“In today’s networked society, commercially operating news media are no longer the sole gatherers or distributors of news. Some members of their (formerly passive) audience are now mini news operations on their own.
“What does this mean for communicating in disaster situations that requires understanding and sensitivity? In which ways can we find synergy between mainstream and new/social media, so together they can better serve the public interest? What value-additions can the mainstream media still bring to the coverage of disasters? And what to do about ‘Chicken Little’ reporters who try to link everything to a looming climate catastrophe? I don’t have all the answers, but keep asking these necessary questions.”
Here’s the full text, saved from the e-paper:
Your Disaster is not My Disaster – by Nalaka Gunawardene, Ceylon Today 1 Nov 2012
When I first met Karunathilaka three years ago, when he was experimenting with a model that measured 40 inches by 12 inches (101.6 cm x 30.5 cm). I interviewed him on Siyatha TV, showcasing his work in progress and discussing its future potential. He has come a long way since.
Ceylon Today newspaper has just published my article titled: Mass Kidney Failure & Mass Media Failure: Go ‘Upstream’ for Remedies!
It is adapted from a paper I presented last week at the International Science Communication Leadership Workshop, held as part of Association of Academies & Societies of Sciences in Asia (AASSA) General Assembly in Colombo, 16-19 October 2012.
In Sri Lanka, mass kidney failure during the past two decades has been followed by what I call a mass media failure. Most of our media have failed to understand, analyse and report adequately on this public health emergency. Instead of helping affected people and policy makers to work out solutions, some journalists have become amplifiers of extreme activist positions.
As health officials and policy makers struggle with the prolonged humanitarian crisis, partisan media coverage has added to public confusion, suspicion and fear. As a science writer and journalist, I have watched this with growing concern.
This is a critique of the Lankan media sector to which I have belonged, in one way or another, for a quarter century. I hope this will inspire some much-needed self-reflection among our media, which I feel over overstepped the boundaries of advocacy journalism in this issue. As I suggest, a return to first principles can help…
Full article below. Constructive engagement is welcomed.
Mass Kidney Failure & Mass Media Failure – Nalaka Gunawardene – Ceylon Today 25 Oct 2012
Open Minds! 