Hi guys, I'm Brainy in Uganda developing a design ant Technological Altruistic university to build the EA movement on the African continent.
A brief four years plan for Spectrum School of Design and Technology Altruistic university in Africa with a possible outline of what students will do/learn to cultivate their inner world at an altruistic university:
- The science of altruistic human flourishing,
- Study into the nature of happiness,
- Study into the practice of altruistic human flourishing, this subject mainly focuses on the practical side of how to overcome, let go, live above, and give up oneself.
- Teachers who have spent their life learning the science of altruistic human flourishing could aid students in the foundation and techniques of living altruistically.
- This knowledge helps students to understand what they need to do to be able to choose the growth choice over the regression choice.
- Study into the importance of altruistic human flourishing, It’s about the “why” of altruistic human flourishing. This subject aims to help students explore the joy, beauty, and meaning of living an altruistic life.
- Mindfulness Meditation,
- This should be practiced daily. There should also be a one-month silent retreat at the beginning of each school year for both students and teachers.
- Daily Self-Reflection
- This could come in any forms such as journaling, goal-settings, contemplation, etc.
- Mentorship,
- This should be done on a regular basis whereby older students mentor newer students on their progress of living altruistically and teachers too should mentor students who they are assigned to look after.
- Living a Life of Service,
- Charitable Giving,
- Duty/Service/Volunteer/Chore.
Throughout the four years of learning at an altruistic university, students will get a chance to do and learn all of these to cultivate their inner world. However, the emphasis and the degree of freedom will vary from each school year and each student. The focus for new students is to lay down the basics of living an altruistic life. The first year of the altruistic university will mainly concentrate on assimilating students into the altruistic culture. The shared language, habits, and routines will set the right tone and right message of what altruistic school is all about and what everyone will do within their four years of education. Humans typically live life in accordance with what we want. But altruistic education aims to train students who live above and beyond what they want or don’t want or to be higher than themselves.
Expectedly, the first year will most likely be the toughest year due to the drastic change in both the student’s inner and outer world. Nonetheless, tough times when suffering together can create a sense of togetherness and comradeship. Thus, it is also important that intimacy and a sense of family or companionship among students as well as all the other members of the community is formed within the first year of school. The goal is to make sure that every member of the community feels they are a part of the community and that they are not alone on their path toward altruistic human flourishing. Theodore Roosevelt once said, Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty … I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well. (Roosevelt, n.d.) Nothing easy is worth pursuing. And altruistic education is meant to be extremely tough but at the same time extremely rewarding.
The focus in the first year is getting accustomed to the altruistic culture, but in the second and third year, the focus will be more balance between intrinsic learning and extrinsic learning. The goals within these two years are:
(1) the integration between intrinsic learning and extrinsic learning,
(2) the self-discovery of who the students are and capable of,
(3) the exploration what the world needs, and
(4) the rigorous study of the arts and science or in short extrinsic learning.
It should matter little which goal the students would like to begin with since eventually they should all lead to one another. For example, by opening up the world to the students or by encouraging students to take the initiative and be proactive in exploring the problem around them—locally or globally, students might feel moved and called for to help. Once students are inspired to make a difference, they will want to start building the necessary skills and learn the appropriate knowledge to be able to solve these real world problems critically. DM on LinkedIn if this what you can mentor or advise
Tentative Power Point Presentation
I urgently need help with advisors. Learn more more: Website
Note: This is probably going to be pretty harsh, but the way I see it is - your website is actively accepting donations, so I should look at this with the same standards I would evaluate any other project that might be a good choice to give money to.
It would be nice to see a lot more specifics in this post.
Firstly: What is your and your team's background and experience that would lead donors/stakeholders to put their faith in your ability to do this?
Secondly: Creating a university sounds really hard. What stage of this are you currently at? Is this a vision for what could be, without any practical steps yet taken? Is it a plan you have sufficient funding and stakeholders for, and need help shaping the details? Some hints at this are present in Slide 13 of the PowerPoint, but it's still very low on actual specifics in terms of what resources you have (time, money, staff), what resources have been promised to you, and what resources you need to make this happen. Concrete numbers are good here. How many students do you want for the 2023 Q1 demo? What level of funding/staff do you need for this to be achieved? How does this compare with what you have?
Based on this post alone, I would assume this was still in the idea stage, but the PowerPoint suggests a team and concrete timeline already exists for this. That said, the timeline is very short on low-level details of the plan, while sounding quite fast to my uneducated eye. Do courses usually go from your current stage to national rollout within two years? Do you have evidence of this being completed before, especially by teams similar to yours? I don't even know if the Spectrum School of Technology is an existing university to test your university courses, an existing high school to test your high school curriculum, or the name of your proposed university.
Thirdly: You also mention that you need help with advisors - what, exactly, do you need advisors to advise you on? What expertise do you need that you don't have? Also, what do you NOT need advice on - what do you and your team already have completely under control? (This goes back to the first point around background and experience)
Fourthly, the one month silent retreat each year seems like a massive undertaking and radical change, but it has no elaboration either in the post or in the PowerPoint. Why would this do so much good that it's worth it? Are teachers supposed to teach classes without speaking? How? Has this successfully been done before? Without these details, that makes the idea feel very idealistic and impractical. It honestly sounds like someone said "You know what would be amazing? If we had a silent meditation retreat every year!" and everyone just went along with that without really thinking through the costs and benefits. If the team has thought through the costs and benefits and judged it worthwhile, that evidence should be front-and-center when delivering this idea.
In summary - if you have answers to most or all of these questions, you or a team member should invest some time in making much more comprehensive documentation that answers them. If you don't have answers to these questions, that's not a great sign for the project.
Hi Bailey, thank you for your questions. I'm working with Dr. Martin Rayala , Tamas Simon and others to develop this project to redesign not duplicate education. The Enso Circle team from USA will be visiting Uganda next year for our first public gathering and fundraiser for the project. The PPT as stated in this post is tentative not final. Starting a University is not really hard everything that has ever started took great effort. I have already refugee students. I started with a traditional secondary school this year that has 32 students. Only 5% of refugees attend tertiary institutions globally, so we are focusing on refugees, though everyone. We will start with 200 students on our existing land provided by UNHCR and Office of the Prime Minister though we plan to buy bigger land size in future. We decided to redesign our traditional secondary school and start a new university to enroll our own high school graduates. I'm currently enrolled in the EA in-depth Program to hone my EA knowledge and how to apply it to do good the most. Someone with experience in EA courses and EA movement. Some of the questions you're asking here, are questions we need advice on-in order to develop comprehensive curriculum and programs. Honestly the University will start with EA , design and Tech courses. We're not receiving donations for the school, the website is brand new not shared with donors yet. The timeline is tentative and we'll update with details in few months from now.
Small detail: If you're not currently receiving donations, you should probably take the donation button off your website for the time being, or remove its functionality. It appears to be functioning on the homepage (though not other pages.) While I didn't try to actually complete a transaction, I was able to access the Flutterwave transfer screen.
It's good to know you've got existing land and are starting at a smaller scale, first 32 secondary-school students and then 200 tertiary ones.
I still do believe quite a lot more documentation is needed to properly answer the questions above, however. They aren't meant to be answered in a day. While not all the questions above need to have answers, a potential advisor/donor looking through the project should be confident you've at least thought of everything and identified gaps where they are present. I'm not saying that you have or haven't done this, but the documentation I've found doesn't yet reflect this.
Having an existing high-school curriculum being taught is a great step. If that ends up working well according to measurable metrics, that should definitely be highly-placed in the site's promotional materials!
That said, I do hope the project succeeds!
Thank you for your GREAT input. I will definitely take your advice.
For more details, we can have a zoom chat if you schedule one. Thank you again for your beautiful comments.
According to your LinkedIn you completed your Bachelor's Degree in 2017, and you have been CEO of a company since 2017. Because it is astonishingly rare for a fresh graduate to have the required skills to be an effective CEO, I'm guessing that you are CEO and founder of your own little company. Thus, I'd want to know what qualifications/skills/background make you competent to found and run a university.
The fact that you describe it as "in Africa" rather than as in any particular country gives me a bit of a negative feeling, but I'm not exactly sure why.
This seems like a "pie in the sky" kind of plan. I want to be supportive, but it seems like there isn't much of a plan here. I'll end with this: while there are a LOT of details missing and MANY things should change between now and the actual implementation, the idea (of building a better university) has merit.
Thank you Jay. I have founded a refugee secondary school this year from scratch with 32 students and by the end this next year we'll have more than 200. On same space we'll start the University courses. The team that complements me has experience in working with State and private education projects like design and technology curriculums, starting new schools in USA and around the world. Together we're developing a global curriculum (education)-2030. We're still developing the curriculum and programs this year. We've got curriculum, program and advisory board committees meeting monthly. We need to develop these details before implementation. Steve Jobs cofounded Apple in his parents’ garage in 1976, without a degree, was ousted in 1985, returned to rescue it from near bankruptcy in 1997, and by the time he died, in October 2011, had built it into the world’s most valuable company. Along the way he helped to transform seven industries: personal computing, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, retail stores, and digital publishing.
Near the end of his life, Jobs was visited at home by Larry Page, who was about to resume control of Google, the company he had cofounded. Even though their companies were feuding, Jobs was willing to give some advice. “The main thing I stressed was focus,” he recalled. Figure out what Google wants to be when it grows up, he told Page. “It’s now all over the map. What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you down. They’re turning you into Microsoft. They’re causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.” Page followed the advice. In January 2012 he told employees to focus on just a few priorities, such as Android and Google+, and to make them “beautiful,” the way Jobs would have done. My point is I want to focus and then we'll have great results.
It is possible for a person to build a successful organization from scratch; it is a very rare thing. The base rate of being a "Steve Jobs" is quite low, approximately one in 7 billion.
Don't forget to give credit where credit it due. The source of most of the text here is an HBR article from 2012: https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-real-leadership-lessons-of-steve-jobs
Yeah, thank you. Inspiration takes most part.
For more details, we can have a zoom chat if you can schedule one. Thank you again for your interest.