120 – Reflections on Past and Future New Years

[00:00:00] David: Hi and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. I’m David Stern and I have the pleasure of being here today with a school teacher, Santiago, he’s also a member of IDEMS. Hi Santiago.

[00:00:19] Santiago: Hi David. I am indeed a member of IDEMS and I think I had now five different job titles at IDEMS. And it’s wonderful that IDEMS has had the flexibility to adapt to my different needs at different times. But I am now currently, as you say, a school teacher working in a school in Argentina, where I’m very pleased to say I just started the summer holidays.

[00:00:47] David: Absolutely. It is now, of course, the new year. So although it’s not the new year now when we’re recording it, this episode is going out as a New Year special, and so it is now the new year. Happy New Year. Nobody knows we recorded this one in advance, but it’s a New Year Special.

[00:01:04] Santiago: Happy New Year to you as well, David.

[00:01:07] David: And really, I’m delighted to have you back for this special episode. And I’m actually going to remind listeners who might have heard before that you are IDEMS employee number one, you first joined IDEMS in the beginning of 2020 or the end of 2019 at a New Year time, which is of course five years ago. You had been working part time but not as an employee before that.

[00:01:37] Santiago: Yes, I joined formally IDEMS five years ago. But I was collaborating with IDEMS for over a year before then.

[00:01:47] David: Absolutely.

[00:01:48] Santiago: So yeah, my contract started on the 1st of January 2020.

[00:01:54] David: Exactly, and this is the thing, I’m thinking now it’s 2025, that’s five new years, six new years, because although this one hasn’t happened yet, it will have happened by the time the episode goes out, that you’ve had with IDEMS.

Sometimes in, sometimes out as you are now, but I’m wanting to reflect on the fact that a new year has been a new beginning for us as a young organisation. Every year has been different and it’s good to reflect back on some of those new years past and look at the new year ahead. And so I was looking forward to doing that a bit with you and going back to your first new year when you joined us formally, having worked with us and collaborated with us before then. What was the outlook in 2020 when it was literally myself, Danny, and you suddenly?

[00:02:51] Santiago: Yes, it started wonderfully. We did an amazing project in January the 21st Century Skills course in Kenya. And It was a beautiful project that had great prospective to grow and scale. We actually managed to get some interns doing really nice work. Really started capacity building properly in certain ways.

And we sneaked off to South Africa for the inception meeting for the PLH app, which was nothing like what it ended up becoming.

[00:03:33] David: But it was incredible in terms of the thought process that started there and what’s that led to. This is where I was thinking back, what we were starting, what we were thinking about, in 2020. And looking forward then to all these things, they’ve got a little bit disrupted for some reason.

[00:03:51] Santiago: Yeah, just a bit disrupted. Covid hit, of course, and it changed absolutely everything. Of course, 21st Century Skills was something that really could only work in person. And that was no longer possible. So that was put on hold and I believe it’s still on hold and we just need to find ways of funding it, which is always a challenge.

But the app work continued and also the STACK work that I was doing became increasingly important.

[00:04:26] David: Absolutely. And if you think about back then, when it was just the three of us and we just sort of were about to recruit our first programmer to join the team this was a really small team with a big dream. And we’re quite different now.

[00:04:42] Santiago: I would say that description still applies in different ways, but it still applies, we are a small team still, and we still have big dreams.

[00:04:52] David: That is true. We’re now an award winning social enterprise, of course.

[00:04:57] Santiago: Of course we are, and, that award came from the app work that started back in January 2020.

[00:05:05] David: It’s true. It’s true, five years in the making I suppose.

[00:05:10] Santiago: Yeah, yeah, and of course that work got hugely disrupted due to COVID.

[00:05:14] David: When you say it got disrupted I really believe that disruption was both positive and negative. I think that disruption totally changed the way we developed the app, what the app now is, and so many other aspects. But some of that disruption was positive, some of it was negative.

The fact that the 21st Century Skills approach didn’t continue. That was one of the negative consequences, but the remote working habits that were built in, they were fantastic.

[00:05:47] Santiago: Yes. And you referenced a 21st Century Skills program to the app. And there was direct link because the interns that we got through that 21st Century Skills course were, interns in Kenya working on the initial bits of app development.

[00:06:05] David: But you may not remember this, but the whole point was to use that 21st Century Skills to build a whole team of developers doing that. And it’s true that we didn’t succeed at doing that because the hope there was to use school leavers in the development. And in the end, the app work in Kenya was built from university graduates.

And so we did have those shifts that came, but the people who have developed the skills now in Kenya, who have come in with a different skill set slightly, but then we’ve capacity built them up, they’ve grown in amazing ways. And that sort of being a different approach, which evolved because we had to be remote and we couldn’t, as you say, do the 21st Century Skills and support the school leavers to build those skills, whereas we could work remotely with graduates.

And so these things where there’s been changes, there’s been shifts, but it is what it is and it’s become what it’s become.

[00:07:01] Santiago: And of course that gave us the skill as well to train a team of recent graduates on STACK fully remotely. It was almost a year into their training that we met in person, that members of IDEMS met them in person. Georg met them before me.

[00:07:20] David: And I think the key point you’re saying there is exactly the fact that we had to transition to that remote approach for graduates for the parenting app work, is what created the skills to go and do that for the STACK interns.

And this is where there’s no way of really pinning it down to say that, you know, this hasn’t been, this has caused these problems because every problem has had its flip side of opportunity which has emerged.

[00:07:51] Santiago: And that’s very much down to your positivity and your mindset that always finds solutions or positives in every situation. Yes, COVID was a tragedy. And a lot of people suffered hugely from it. And a lot of people are still suffering hugely from it. And it’s impacted us, IDEMS, is still impacting significantly. But you have that natural ability of being positive and find the, what’s it called?

[00:08:26] David: Silver lining.

[00:08:28] Santiago: Silver lining, that’s what I was looking for, on pretty much any situation. And that is what helped, I think, IDEMS adapt so much to what was needed and helped us grow in the way we managed to do so, and still contribute to socially impactful work.

[00:08:53] David: And I think just to take your personal perspective on these New Years since, 2021 as a new year, your outlook was a lot less positive than 2020 because of Covid where you were now much more isolated. You were stuck working on work, which wasn’t having you interacting with people in the way you wanted and in the way you enjoyed. And it led to you taking time back in the classroom in 2021 and 2022. And then so 2022, you were on a zero hours contract with IDEMS while back in the classroom.

And then 2023, of course, was just after you rejoined. And now again there was a real positive outlook as we were trying to build up the education work. And of course the beginning of 2024 that outlook for you personally again had flipped around because we hadn’t been able to build up the education work and that sort of meant you were again more isolated getting involved in other work.

[00:09:53] Santiago: And 2023 going on to 2024 was a particularly difficult time for IDEMS and we even considered stopping a lot of the education work, which meant that myself and other IDEMS members had to think quite hard about what to do and how to continue contributing to these projects.

[00:10:17] David: Exactly, and how to get involved in other elements, where you were able to contribute in different ways because the financial situation around IDEMS was it could no longer support that additional work which wasn’t getting the income to support it.

[00:10:32] Santiago: And of course one of the things that I started contributing to was this questionable idea of doing a podcast. And I jumped into that opportunity because I love podcasts and because I thought that’s something different, I’d like to learn a bit about it and I have some ideas on what could be done. And here we are.

[00:10:57] David: Absolutely, over, well over a hundred episodes later, we’re still going strong, two episodes a week, and looking forward now, as we’ve just come out from the previous episode, where we were looking forward to new types of episodes, which are maybe involving more voices, bringing in new ideas. It’s exciting.

So that brings us to now and 2025, looking forward. You’re back in the school again. And so you’re now looking forward to coming back in, in a new role again, probably in six months time.

[00:11:32] Santiago: I would like to finish my Impact Activation Fellowship. It’s meant to be two years, I asked to pause it temporarily. It was meant to be a couple of months for my mental health, then this school opportunity came up, and I did probably 15 months, something like that. So I still have a bit left of that, which I would like to finish and maybe then look at a new role, new opportunities, there’s potential here in Argentina to bring some of the work.

Many things that we do at IDEMS cut across needs that are everywhere. In different ways, they present themselves in different guises, but the underlying issues tend to have a lot of commonalities. Of course, they’re very complex issues the solutions need to be adapted and the initiatives need to take into consideration local contexts, local innovation and all that.

[00:12:32] David: But I think the key point here is that you’re potentially moving from in the past, very much being on the global side of that local innovation to actually really looking at being embedded in a community where you are focusing on being the local side of local innovation.

And that’s something which more and more, as we sort of have been discussing, as you’re settling back into Argentina and observing the needs and the opportunities, I really get that sense of you wanting to get stuck into the local side of local innovation, which is very interesting and it’ll be interesting to see where that takes you.

[00:13:11] Santiago: Yes, I’m afraid the UK is a bit too cold.

[00:13:15] David: Yeah.

[00:13:16] Santiago: And being in Argentina, pretty settled now, not looking at being back in the UK for a while, at least. I’m starting to observe what’s around me and identify so many areas where, you know, the work that we do elsewhere would be so valuable. And looking at the STACK work with universities, how much of an impact that could have, there’s so many state universities that struggle with resources and have very similar problematics to the ones that we have discussed multiple times in Kenya with big classrooms and not enough staff.

It’s a bit different in here because university lecturers tend to work at multiple universities and not do so much research work. Research work comes from research institutes more than universities in here. And the people who work at the research institutes also teach at university. I have a colleague at school who’s a full time teacher but also teaches at university on the maths education courses. So it’s a very different landscape with very similar problematics.

[00:14:40] David: Yeah and the landscape you’re describing in Argentina is very different from the UK landscape, but actually quite similar to the Kenyan landscape in certain ways, where again many Kenyan lecturers would teach in multiple universities, and so on. So there’s similarities with other places where you have had interactions.

But the difference is, as you say, the context, the local context, each has its own peculiarities, each has its own needs. And understanding and being embedded in a local environment is exactly what enables that local innovation, which we value so highly, to be able to fit options to the context. Yeah, very exciting.

[00:15:20] Santiago: Very exciting. And also I managed to develop a small network of very interesting people who are doing work on social issues that very much relate to some of our ideas and principles. Let’s see what the new year brings.

[00:15:34] David: Absolutely. And I suppose this is for myself as well, looking into 2025 if I think about back to where we were in 2020, taking you on, and it was such a big responsibility to take on staff, to have the financial responsibility for other people and for their jobs and for their salaries.

And I look at where we are now and the responsibilities we’re taking on and the need to continue growing to be able to achieve more and to take on the ambitious new opportunities which are presenting themselves. We’ve come a long way and yet I think you phrased it quite well at the beginning where we’re still a small ambitious team, which is just starting out.

[00:16:18] Santiago: Well, I think we are a fantastic team. I have to say well done, David.

[00:16:24] David: I mean you make your own luck on this and being able to attract the staff we have and the people who are engaged and wanting to be part of this team, the motivation, the skills, we do have a really good team. It’s interesting that one of my biggest fears as I look forward is, if we continue to grow, are we going to continue to be able to keep the standards of our team in this sort of way?

[00:16:53] Santiago: That’s a fair comment, because a lot of people came in with huge skill sets, but the way they’ve grown, the way they’ve progressed is remarkable.

[00:17:05] David: The way you phrase that is not the way I would see it. It’s not that people came in with huge skill sets. It’s people who came in with immense talent. They were really talented in different ways. The skill sets they’ve got have been grown from within because every single person in our team has been pushed out of their comfort zone to gain skills which are outside their natural or their immediate areas.

You know, the first task that I gave an anthropologist is to work on a database. It doesn’t matter what it is, the first task somebody has had coming in, has been something which has challenged them, put them outside their comfort zone and that’s helped to build the sort of breadth of skills and appreciation of one another, I feel, within the team.

How we can institutionalise that as the organisation continues to grow, I don’t know, but these are the challenges for the year ahead. Maybe not just this year, but that’s where it’s exciting. Looking forward, we still have challenges and yeah, it’s exciting.

[00:18:15] Santiago: It is indeed.

David, happy new year again and happy new year to the audience.

[00:18:20] David: Absolutely. And great to be discussing with you now while you’re on your summer holiday. We might not get too many more opportunities to do this, but we’ll slip in a few more episodes before you go back to school and then join us again in our summer.

[00:18:35] Santiago: Yeah, David, don’t worry. You won’t get rid of me that easily.

[00:18:40] David: I’m delighted. All the best.

[00:18:42] Santiago: Thank you.

[00:18:43] David: Happy New Year.

[00:18:45] Santiago: Happy New Year.