I recently gave a talk in small town Ontario.
It's how I pay for these, by the way, for those of you who keep asking,
I give talks. Often about this series as well, which makes the whole thing feel very circular
This particular audience, I would say the average was
72 years old and that includes me dragging it down. These were people in their twilight years
just trying to leave the world a better place than whenever they'd found it.
They were scared for the future,
during the question and answer period they asked me: why doesn't the current generation have the same level of commitment that we did?
It's almost as if the charitable bone has evolved vestigial, and I disagreed at the time, but whatever answer I gave, it was subpar.
For the next month or so I went around trying to find some way to answer this question.
And I believe I found the answer, her name's Heidi, and she runs a school here in Belize.
But before we dive into Belize, I just want to take a minute to talk about my great-grandmother.
She was such an incredible person.
She was a schoolteacher and a pioneer at a time of a new dawn of a new land.
She taught at a one-room schoolhouse at a time when Canadian women were only just being considered capable of educating others.
I was too young to appreciate her in her time, but as I've grown and learned more about her,
it's hard not to see her outsized role in my family's success.
The education she was able to provide for her daughter living in a tiny farming village was pivotal in
creating the astronaut her grandson became. It was pivotal in my making this series.
Education trickles down through generations.
But it was more than family, to her community my great-grandmother was not just a teacher. She was a foundation stone.
Her very existence
meant that children who would have otherwise have spent their entire lives in the fields, could think their way out of a box. It was
her life's work, her form of charity.
But all that said, I don't believe that her dedication was greater than that of many teachers in my country today.
Canada is filled with dutiful men and women working dozens of hours of unpaid overtime
every week.
Spending their last few dollars to make sure that their least fortunate
students come to school
just as supplied and ready to learn as anyone else. But I can virtually guarantee that she was more aware of her role.
She couldn't help, but see that she was changing things without her there was no school,
it was that simple. But if she were born today
I wonder if we'd even notice her, or if she'd be just another teacher struggling to get through Beowulf with her class,
smiling calmly as abuse is hurled at her in a parent-teacher interview, or on supply waiting for Mr.
Morgenstern to get sick just so she can take a few days of math this week.
It's almost as if just like the farmers in the community that surrounded her, the job holds more weight when you needed her harvest.
In Caye Caulker Belize
Heidi leads that harvest. Her work as well as the work of a number of incredible women alongside her has changed this community
just as profoundly as my great-grandmother had her own. Here, she found a soil rich enough to plant something that could grow long-term.
Caye Caulker as it stands today is an island dedicated to tourism. The local mantra is 'Go slow,'
but some things here are only speeding up over the last 20 years. Caye Caulker has gone from a quiet fishing village to a booming
vacation destination. The resident population although still only around 1600 is leagues larger than it has ever been.
With each new boatload of visitors another local family trickles and alongside setting up lives in the burgeoning service economy.
Repeat visitors routinely comment upon return that they barely recognize the place. The old shacks of the fishmongers are now modern houses of hotel maids,
electricians and restaurateurs. There are a few complaints on either side.
This is the Belizean dream.
Well elsewhere poverty in this country dips into the extreme, the entrepreneurial spirit thrives in this community.
People are prospering. There are jobs here,
but growth has brought about new problems. Probably the most important,
but least sexy is a lack of infrastructure. As Caye Caulker has blossomed from a few dozen seasonal fishermen to multiple thousand year-round residents,
the community has begun to push up against the walls of its own expansion.
Not just the physical needs of sewage water and sanitation,
but also the metaphysical. There came a time when the island had a thriving high school population, but no high school.
Nobody could afford to send their kids to Belize City so their education simply stopped in elementary.
But paradoxically much of the islands growing economy required workers to have that education.
Moving your family to this island would deny that to your children. Unless something changed when they grew up
they'd be forced from their lives.
The government of Belize had neither the money nor the will to care. After all, this isn't a wealthy nation and
education isn't free here to begin with. If anything was going to change it would have to come from within the community.
It came from an immigrant,
Heidi, and when I say Heidi. I want to clarify that actually mean a number of people for whom
I'm using Heidi is a representative symbol. I'd be remiss in not mentioning her co-founder Joni as well as their incredibly dedicated
administrative and teaching staff. But when it comes to creating symbols for online consumption
there's a hard and fast rule: always highlight the person with the Texan accent. They put their money where their mouth was.
Ocean Academy started as a card table in the street.
It was a thing two women were doing because they saw a need, a no room school.
But once they opened the door to personal empowerment
it was a feeling that was hard to turn back from. As the lessons grew so did the
responsibility, the potential. They were bringing education to children directly, while simultaneously
pressuring the government and their communities back in North America for funds to build a year-round
Schoolhouse. Just over ten years later the second iteration of that school is open for business.
Multiple stories tall with a computer lab and an artistic decor supplied by the students themselves. They have become an irreplaceable
foundation of this community,
but even beyond its origin Ocean Academy is special. Due to their size and relative cutoff from the central government
they've always been able to adapt to uniquely to their community's needs. As wealthy as it is by Belizean
standards, Caye Caulker doesn't really have jobs so much as it has opportunities.
Entrepreneurship and self-reliance are the two main drivers the local economy.
People here are paid by the hour just as much as they are by the job.
For most students high school will be the last form of education they'll ever receive. For the island to prosper
they need to know how to find work on their own. On top of that the school needs to be self-reliant too.
So Ocean Academy began to employ a system called social enterprise where students earn money by working in school run internships.
In turn they've been able to generate a substantial
portion of the school's operating budget in a way that also prepares the students for a uniquely challenging
job market. Be they bike tours or fishing lessons the skills they're applying will immediately be useful upon graduation.
It's a success that has drawn educators from all over the world to this tiny island.
And we're taking part in this as well, you and I, by watching this video
you're actually joining one of our internships Preston behind the camera, Aldair on the GoPro,
have actually helped out with a lot of the footage for this series.
So thank you to the both of them. Their work can only exist because two immigrants decided that their new neighbours
should be educated. They are the promise of Ocean Academy.
They're the grandchildren of a card table, and you're doing a great job guys well done.
Who are you, and what do you do?
My name is Heidi Curry, and I am the founder and principal of Ocean Academy High School on Caye Caulker in Belize
And I thought I would, you know, home-school five kids on my front porch. I called Ministry of Education in February of
2008 and they ...I always say I
was ...it was a sort of a lucky blessing that the person who answered the phone was as naive as I was about how,
...what it would take to open this school so we went for it and it was extremely challenging.
And then you know there's just always been
so much reward that comes from educating a child who would not otherwise have an education, that you never put a price tag on that.
So we have 25% unemployment for young persons in Belize,
and it's very challenging to get a job and then often the job one gets is not something that is
something that they love to do. And I, ...I just am so thankful every day of my life that I
...it's not an easy job. I have lots of challenges, but I know that I am doing what I'm meant to do.
I am putting my skills to um...
...I'm using my skills in ways that matter to me, and that's my I wish for all of my students
and so we expose them to
all kinds of opportunities. Whether it's scuba diving or fly fishing or culinary arts or coding on computers or... um...
You know some of them are doing flight simulators, we want them to feel that whatever
they might think they want to do is within their reach. It's very challenging and many years ago, I...
...felt inside that I wanted to figure out how we could earn the money, instead of ask for the money
and from that was born an idea that we use, called social enterprise.
Which basically means using business to solve or fund social needs.
So 50% of our students earn some or all of their school fees and I haven't mentioned this, but no education is free in Belize.
So anything that, you know in North America it's something that everyone takes for granted, that you can just go to school.
Here the books are not provided, the
education is not provided, so we have about 50% of Belizeans in high school. Our
percentage is much higher here on this island.
We've had over 90% of the students in primary schools enrolling in high school.
and we work very hard to keep them in school.
So we... So social enterprises a way for them to immerse themselves into learning,
into entrepreneurialism,
and we let those ideas come from them. So if they are passionate about computers then...
"Let's help you develop a business where you can repair computers"
You're familiar with the Vital Purpose, that is something that we consider one of our school-wide social enterprises and has been a phenomenal experience for our students.
We always say it's not just to prepare for being a tour guide.
If you want to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or whatever you want to do
communication skills are critical,
leadership skills, confidence. And all of our students and our parents and our teachers are just so excited that when they see those skills
increase because these young people are getting to speak with people from all over the world,
and share their pride and passion for their Island. If they're interested in the reef and they take them and they show them
aspects of the reef. If they're interested in art, and they show them areas. And so it's not about being a parrot that's really important,
it's about showing visitors the island through their eyes. They come
and they show that their school
So whether it's art with purpose, kayak with purpose, bike with purpose, or cafe. All these are ways that
are a way of earning the money for their education instead of asking for it.
So not only do they earn money that goes towards their school fees, they earn money that goes into their bank account so they can
build financial literacy. Learning to save money
In a place where you can't go and get a loan to start a business is a really important tool. So you can say:
I can earn money to go to university or I can earn money to buy the
laptop that I need, or so forth. And then part of the money comes back to actually funding the budget of
the school. And the goal is, is that within the next few years, that we actually fund
50% of our education through social enterprise. Which has caught the attention of a lot of organizations
Internationally because that's the trend in nonprofits, is how can we earn the money?
There are many ways to get connected with Ocean Academy. So we have volunteers that come,
long-term volunteers are are fantastic because they can really get connected with
the students and understand what we're doing and there are so many areas.
I mean it can be someone who can help with marketing,
someone who wants to be in the class might be part of a teaching. And because of the style of our school
it could be that they share about what it is to be a veterinarian or what it is to...
...you know do research in the jungle. Whatever it is we
can generally find a way to connect them. Again it's easier if it's a long-term volunteer.
Other ways to get involved are in-kind donations, sometimes people, we will connect people who
maybe are coming
who someone else will send them items that they carry down and sometimes it might be that they're doing the opposite.
And it could be
certainly the funds are big deal
We have, you know, a shortage of about eight thousand US dollars every month.
Just trying to make all this ends meet, and I always feel proud that our
percentage of what we ask for decreases every year, and that's really important because
sustainability is what we're all after. No one wants to throw money into something where it just keeps going, you know, down the tubes.
We feel really proud that when people are connected to our school they know that they're building that foundation to the point where it can stand on its own.
But I didn't write this video because I wanted to explain the inner workings of a school
We all know what school is. Most of us are taking it completely for granted, including,
hopefully, Aldair. After all that's the goal. What I wanted this video to be about is what it takes to make a difference.
I don't think that the problem is our evolution away from charity as a society. In fact
I'd be surprised to find that the current generation donates any less than any previous generation.
I think the problem is in the reward. Working with Ocean Academy simply feels good,
and it's clear why, you can see how foundational their actions are to the local community. Talking with Heidi, her staff and their sponsors,
it's clear that everyone's favorite part is being able to see the effect
they're having. That's why they're here, and that's not to say that being foundational isn't possible in Canada,
it is, but it's certainly harder. My great-grandmother didn't have to search for her meaning.
It was provided in her work,
reflected in her society. Heidi could retire today knowing she's left an undeniable mark on the world. They were both needed for the harvest.
But we won't all be. We can't all move to Belize,
for most of us, the fruits of our labours are going to be much harder to pick.
To answer that question from my talk,
I think, if you want someone from this generation, or any generation for that matter, to volunteer their time willingly
they need to see clear-cut examples of their success.
I think most everybody wants to leave the world better than when they found it. It's just better when you can watch it happen.
This is Rare Earth.
I've been actually thinking about it, posting some of those videos on my YouTube channel. Oh, yeah? You got a YouTube channel yet? Yeah.
Alright what's your YouTube channel? It's name [??] number one.
Alright, we're gonna link to that. You did the filming for this, well done out Aldair. Thank you so much bud.