Working towards social change. Where most civic organisations - investmend funds, NGOs, knowledge institutes, etc. , still opt for the conventional project approach, this book offers a fascinating alternative.
Hubert Schreurs is a cultural anthropologist with international experience in the education and social welfare sector. After a long career at the Bernard van Leer Foundation in The Hague in the Netherlands, he looks back in personal and compelling stories on his experiences and acquired insights, gained in the most diverse countries, including Israel, England, Jamaica, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. He soon experienced that the standard project method did not help him to tackle structural social problems such as urban poverty or child mortality.
In his search for an alternative, he discovered that developing thought experiments - conceivable scenarios that left options open, offered the best chance of effectively addressing issues of social change. He used that concept as a starting point for bold initiatives in the United States, Indonesia, the Caribbean and India, focusing on the different perspectives of practitioners, policy makers, scientists, advocates, media, etc. Initiatives that required a holistic approach, broadly supported solutions, and implementation over a longer period of time.
The book was previously published in the Netherlands, where both the strong argument and the eloquent writing style were received with praise by many readers.
