Making change in turbulent times | Henry Azubuike Ojuor | TEDxESCP London
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbmXQq9W-UQ Video ID: nbmXQq9W-UQ ============================================================ good evening so in August 2005 Hurricane Katrina swept through Louisiana 80% of New Orleans was underwater thousands of families were displaced and it caused a damage of $160 billion it was the single most expensive natural disaster in the history of the United States and that begs the question what if Oran Katrina which is a catastrophic display of Nature's destructive Powers is actually triggered by a Creator not even as big as my P The Humble butterfly well an awardwinning mathematician and climate scientist has demonstrated that this could actually be the case so um Edward Lawrence a winterday 63 years ago while working on a weather program had modified a data range in his model uh basically reducing it by three decimal points right so 1 2 3 4 56 is reduced to123 more like around in AR but the impact of this minute change was massive over the course of data collected over the course of two months the outcome of this data was completely transformed and the idea of the butterfly effect came to become popularized when Lawrence had suggested that the flap of a butterfli Wings could leave with to today more than any time in history is really the time for us to explore how to make use of this idea today more than any time we desperately need small actions that can transform Society scale and in case you're wondering why I'll sh you examples you few examples that reflect just why we absolutely need small actions at scale a few examples that demonstrates the big turbulence that faces the societies today the finger pointing that you see the divisive rhetoric that you hear of I'll show you a few examples so you look at the the the recent happenings in the world it feels like the world suddenly grew a massive appetite forward everywhere there seems to be some sort of armed conflict happening I will give examples I'm sure we all have uh we've seen too much too much news of all the AR conflict doing on already but the one thing that I want to point out is that every year 500,000 and more people die from the violence that results as a result of this armed conflict and these people die for no fault of their majority of them for no fault of their beyond having The Misfortune of Being Born into this water on areas but it doesn't end there here in the UK the West generally a lot of divisive rhetoric a lot of extremism the right way a lot of hate but most importantly much troubling is the general feeling of solution a study was conducted in May 2023 and it basically asked over 2,000 respondents the simple question do you feel that the social contract in the UK is broken 62% of respondents said yes compared to 8% that said no 62 to8 that's TR then and when I dog a bit deeper I went and stalked Twitter to see what I would get around this there was a particular Trad where people were talking about um their experience of the social contract being broken and this fellow had said oh when I'm getting out of trains people don't even wait for me to to come out it's like they they would push me back into the train and I remember thinking oh yeah I can relate to this happens to me a lot actually happened to me when I was coming here anyway so um but this and all these other examples point to a big troubling situation in the society and at the heart of a lot of this a lot of the fers that gets pointed it's migration a lot of the rhetoric a lot of the blame is around migration and there is both sides there is a whole lot of sides to the whole migration story and we put slides and Di but that 281 million people who call themselves migrants and also knowing that migration predates Humanity we can clearly understand that it is almost impossible to stop and we have to find a way to balance it and I'd like to share a few stories especially mine since I happen to be a migrant myself and um sure that having lived in several countries to continents before finally coming theuk calling the UK home before I began to move around I used to be really vocal about my lack of preference for lack of bhood for economic migration I preached against every chance I got as a matter of fact I drew some reputation around my inner circle of friends for being very quick to jump on my and to brain drain sobx whenever the the opportunity presented itself and then enas happened now you see nsas is one of the biggest protest in Nigeria by young people against police brutality and watching the way the elder population really refused to understand and validate our struggles dampened My Hope a lot and before this time I would always make excuses for clear cases of incompetence and mediocrity basically because I was trying to cling onto Hope by all means but during answers watching young people my agates get massacred by the very security agents that are supposed to protect them basically destroyed whatever hope I had left I knew I had to leave and I knew that I had to basically reconsider my Approach now I'm a big believer in Africa needing her best brains to stay back and build and contribute to her developments I still believe that I still stand by that but I knew that I had to explore different ideas to do this contribution because how am I going to contribute to Africa if Nigeria ends me first so something had to be done about my Approach long story short I decided to listen to my sister and appli for the Global Talent visa and arrived here and called okay home and granted I mean I'm I've s inste for the occasional challenge with accents and the weather but I'm I'm I'm I'm cing I'm fine um but the he never left me the desire to contribute every opportunity that I get never left me it's always been a part of me and and and I always wanted I always looked for opportunity to contribute and to give back and then I had a fast boy so fast boy is a coastal farmer region in Sagal that has become the better of illegal migration because young people's despiration to get to Europe through the Mediterranean and in search of opportunities I could relate to them because I I understand what it feels like to desperately want to cling to Hope by all means and it's not what it feels like to be young and to want to have a p a pathway to Opportunities so I could relate to their struggle and I could relate to their desperation and I could relate to that drive that converts even the stest anti-migrant fanatic into a desperate economic migrants so I knew I had to do something I knew I had to do something to contribute to reducing or changing the mentality around migration and I had a plan I knew that it had to be Market based Innovation is it had to be sustainable and I came up with this plan reached out to Founders and funders in our Network and try to mobilize some resources to support them and to build on the plan that i' had come up with but red tapism and bureaucracy in big organizations can be painful at times so we stayed waiting around for movement to happen but traged strug first we had 60 young people from farway some as younger was 12 years old had died when their K capsized on the Mediterranean journey to Europe I knew it was no longer time to wait I had to act immediately and I jumped into it mobilized my team we went out mobilized about 25 F into a pilot and launched our initiative so the first thing we did was to to take some of the St Technologies in our Network and the first one we did was to basically create Implement A system that allowed us to grow the productivity by monitoring in real time the health of the soil and the crop and then also complimenting this with a solar Cod storage enabl tricycle were able to preserve the Harvest of this farmers as well as extend and take it to buers in theand side as far as 130 km away from the immediate community what this did was to really give them more options give them better Market opportunities but of course using the limited resources we had very very small action the results mindblowing we did not just increase the income of farmers we grew it by almost five times and we created about 30 jobs and these were jobs that paid better than the minimum the national minimum wage but the biggest win for us the big win that I'm super proud of is the change in mindset the young people suddenly realized that this could actually be where the opportunity lies there could actually be a life of them here contributing to planting her vesting and of course contributing to the local economy and the dream could be here nowhere and that tells us that small AC can indeed have really big impact now everyone of us here would be wondering we're not all going to have a passway moments so how can we contribute and we do need everybody to think and contribute to small actions to society good Society benefit so I'll leave you with a few words on how you can contribute the first step is to recognize the power that you have through small actions well Tau out small actions and the second step is to remember that small actions are typically not small when you think of small actions just do it because the impact is definitely not going to be small and whether this means standing up for what you believe in taking a stand against Injustice being more welcoming of people who are different from you showing a lot more gratitude empathy or as a migrant showing a lot more gratitude courtesy and decency to your host all of these are ideas that we can practice as small actions that can have far reaching consequences and remember that at the end of the day the goal is not to have far reaching consequences at scale because if your small action is able to touch just one Soul it would have been wor it thank you very much