On legacy, learning, and one wise lady
Today’s challenges mean we’re always looking out for the ‘next big thing’, the newest solution. Associate Rachael Ibbott (October 2014), however, argues for a more historical perspective of our work.
At On Purpose, it can be easy to get swept away by the concept of innovation. And it can be tempting to try to measure success in terms of how much new ground we have broken each day.
Yet social action itself has a long history. My placement host, the Royal Voluntary Service, has been around for 77 years; many consider it a national institution. Our founder Lady Stella Reading was rallying groups of women to feed older people in their communities long before food banks were fashionable and indeed coined the phrase “Meals on Wheels”.
So how do we preserve this legacy, and everything we’ve learned from it, so that future generations can avoid endless hours reinventing wheels? The RVS archivist, Matthew McMurray, has documented the significant challenges that face charities simply to maintain their archives, let alone open them for public access.
Funding remains limited. Digital catalogues, such as Historypin, and grants from organisations such as the Heritage Lottery fund are helping, but much more is needed to preserve and share collections like that at RVS — something that offers unparalleled insights into the development of community-based organisations in the 20th century.
As an economist, I believe in incentives. If the benefits of designing better-informed solutions, because we build on other people’s knowledge, outweigh the costs of gathering the information in the first place, people will do it. The challenge, then, is to cut the cost of learning for those who follow us. TED is a great example of this, summarising the key messages from ground-breaking academic papers in easily accessible videos. At On Purpose, we experience this at a micro level when we hand over our placements at the mid-way point of the year-long programme — for the October 2014 cohort, we’ll soon find out how successful we’ve been in this knowledge transfer process.
The final word should of course go to Lady Reading, whose great wisdom still rings true today and could meaningfully inform current decision-makers: “The ultimate strength of a nation lies not in her trading, nor in the multitude of her financial transactions. It’s not found in her banking operations nor in the acumen of her leaders. The ultimate strength of a nation lies in the character of the men and women who are that nation and voluntary service is an integral part of that character.”
What more could we learn from pioneers like her — if only we took the time to dig around?
