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This uncertain world is our curriculum: tertiary education meets social activism

What a few years it has been for young people demonstrating leadership on a global scale. Issues such as gun violence (March for Our Lives), climate change (Strike 4 Climate), and social justice (Black Lives Matter) have all profiled youth taking action for a more just future. From an intergenerational perspective this begs the question: how can we support our students and young people who want to become leaders of much-needed social and environmental change?

We wanted to go still further. Young people are facing complex, inter-related challenges; they need useful knowledge about leadership and faciliating change that we can share with them.

One of our team once asked late US Congressman John Lewis, who was a leader of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, what advice he had for young people who wanted to make a difference. He replied that they needed to develop a passion and be prepared to apply it to right any wrong that they saw.  

In an era of increasing engagement in higher education, universities have a necessary contribution to make in enabling young people in this ‘application’. After all, in our role as critic and conscience of society, who better than a university to equip young people to underpin their social action with a solid base of intellectual understanding?

We consulted closely with inspiring local and international community leaders in taking our next steps. Social innovators in Christchurch provided us with examples of how they applied their passions to directly influence the community. The creators of the Student Volunteer Army, Gap Filler, the Riccarton West Community Garden, Greening the Rubble, and Cultivate Urban Farm have all contributed to this initiative. Due to our reputation as a resilient and innovative university and city, giants in the field of activism such as Prince Harry, Dr Jane Goodall, President Obama’s sister Dr Maya Soetoro-Ng, Richard Feldman and Janice Fialka from Detroit, and the student leaders from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (where the 2018 shooting occurred), have all spent time with us and are part of the new developments.

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