- I think it's time to change the way that we
think about solving the world's problems.
We often think that it's who we vote for
in a particular election.
Or supporting one particular non-profit.
Or, buying from ethical businesses.
But what we know from every example across history
of where we've really seen change in the longer term,
it's required collaboration across sectors.
Take polio for example.
Back in the 1940s and '50s, it paralyzed or killed
nearly half a million people per year around the world.
And in 2018 there were only 33 reported cases of polio.
How did that happen?
It happened through the innovation that was required
to come up with the vaccine.
To the advocacy from communities and businesses.
To the different organizations ensuring that there
was a vision and a plan.
And then finally, philanthropy played a key role
around both the innovation around the vaccine,
and then also delivery of the vaccine.
Based on this example and many others,
I started to see the tremendous potential
that philanthropy could have.
Not alone, but in collaboration with others.
(electronic whirring)
I'm Olivia Leland and I am the founder and CEO of Co-Impact.
(upbeat electronic music)
I think the one constant throughout my entire life
is that I always question everything.
After college, I became really really interested
in this question of
how can we have more impact in the world?
Starting in 2015, I spoke with people around the world
from philanthropists to social change leaders,
who were asking the question,
what do we know about what drives more impact?
One of the lessons that came out of this work
is in fact, that money is not everything.
It's about so much more than that.
Through my research I found three main challenges,
and I have some ideas about how to address each one of them.
So challenge number one.
We're failing to listen.
Our instinct is often to go and start something new.
What we really need to do is find people in communities
who are already working on these problems every day,
listen to them, and then see what's possible
through our support of it, to reach millions of people.
The second challenge is that we tend to work in silos.
The reality is actually most social change leaders
want to collaborate.
What we really need to be doing is making it easier
for organizations, government, and others
to come together and drive more impact in the world.
The third challenge is that we're thinking too short-term.
We are so focused on what's possible in one year,
two years, three years.
And the reality is, the issues that we're working on
are enormously complex.
We have to be looking at five years, 10 years, and beyond
to scale impact in a meaningful and longterm way.
- [Olivia] So, take for example,
Pratham and teaching at the right level.
They applied these lessons,
and they're making a huge difference.
They saw that even though kids were enrolled in school,
they weren't achieving the kinds of outcomes
in numeracy and literacy that they had hoped for.
They developed a simple methodology.
Rather than grouping kids by age,
they decided to group kids according to the level
that they were at.
And the results they saw, were really striking.
After just 50 days, the kids in the program
were able to read.
(applauding)
Most recently, they've been partnering
with the Jameel Poverty Action Lab
to take this work to scale.
So first, it's about listening and taking
what's being proven.
And saying, how do we apply this?
Second, it's about the collaboration between J-PAL,
Pratham, and Ministries of Education across
multiple countries in Africa.
And finally, they started to think longterm.
With funding from Co-Impact as well as from other funders,
the ambition for Teaching at the Right Level Africa,
is to reach three million children over the course
of the next five years.
(children singing)
And Teaching at the Right Level is but one example.
What we're seeing is these coalitions of actors
that are coming together,
taking something which has been proven,
and saying, what does it take to truly embed these
in systems in a way that we can address some of the most
complex challenges of our time.
So, our job, each of us, is to go and find those
organizations and those individuals and to support them.
We need to collaborate.
We need to listen.
We need to take the longterm view.
And that's what will actually drive the kind of
change that we wanna see in the world.
(clapperboard snapping)
- Hey everyone.
For more thoughtful solutions focused videos
like this one,
please subscribe to us here on youtube.
And thanks for watching.
(upbeat classical music)
Hey everybody, for more thoughtful solutions focused videos
like this one,
please subscribe to us here on YouTube.
And thanks for watching.