Introducing 80:20

Today, approximately 80% of the world’s
people live in the underdeveloped world.
This contrasts with 70% in 1950, 75% in
1980 and a projected 84% by the year
2025.

… in 1960, the richest 20% of the world’s
people shared between them 70% of the
entire wealth of the planet. By the year
2000, this figure had increased to over 84%.

Colm Regan,
80:20 Coordinator, explores the idea …

I am always fascinated by that equation - the reality that the vast majority of people throughout the world do not experience life in ‘developed world’ terms. Their worldview, their terms of reference, their experience of life’s possibilities and opportunities are so utterly different to ours. And despite media reporting and aid agency fundraising appeals and images, their experiences are not automatically negative - just different. Obviously, there is much in the basic 80:20 world equation that should challenge all of us fundamentally - why are people’s life chances so different just by virtue of birth? Has it always been this way? Why does it continue? Where do I fit in or, at a more basic level, what’s it got to do with me?

As a registered educational charity, 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World was set up to explore and engage with development and human rights issues in this unequal world. To engage, not at the level of providing aid and assistance (however useful and necessary that may be), or at the level of abstract theorising or analysis, but at the level of direct educational intervention to not only understand that world but to engage creatively with changing it - here in Ireland and internationally.

For me, education is a form of intervention in the world - it involves deeply ethical, moral, and political as well as educational questions. How do I understand what’s happening in the world? How do I respond when faced with information or stories that are deeply disturbing? How do I deal with the guilt I regularly feel that I don’t ‘do more, care more’? Any educational activity that grapples with such questions is an intervention in the world. We, in 80:20, are about asking such questions and trying to answer them through discussion and debate with others. Because, it’s not always immediately clear what the ‘correct’ response is to much of what we see around us throughout the world. And, of course, when we begin to ask questions about responsibilities and accountability for much of what happens, we immediately come up against even more difficult and thorny questions.

80:20 is about opening up these issues for debate - 9/11 and how it is seen (differently) in different parts of the world, HIV and AIDS as seen from a Zambian perspective, para-militarism and its impact on young people in Northern Ireland, Genocide in Rwanda, Islam and human rights etc. So, ultimately, 80:20 is about raising questions about our values and about where we stand in the world.

In practical terms, 80:20 is about working with young people throughout Ireland, North and South, to explore and debate these issues. It’s also about promoting human rights education in issues such as gender, HIV and AIDS and human development in villages in Zambia (alongside our partners Women for Change) and it’s also about producing educational materials on such issues, organising and delivering workshops, painting murals and making ‘identity boxes’. At the end of the day, our job is to work with people to face a series of complex and challenging questions which are, at first sight, about the situation of others but, upon reflection, are really about ourselves and about what we stand for.

People can change their world

Education can enable them to do it

80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World is an Irish-based educational charity founded in 1996 promoting popular education on human development and human rights.

For 80:20, education is fundamental to understanding the shape and nature of our unequal world, to interacting with that world as well as to imagining and shaping a different world.

Education does this in 3 important ways:

It creates choice

When we understand what is going on in our world our range of choices increase. What action should we take? What action can we take? Education gives us greater freedom because it stimulates our ability to imagine the world differently, and it opens our eyes to possibilities we might not have considered.

It generates capacity

When we have been supported in doing something in a hands on way, we are better equipped to go and do it for ourselves. How do you take action? What are the dangers and the pitfalls? How do I do it effectively? When education actively engages with learners it equips them to take responsibility for themselves.

It supplies motivation

When we understand and feel what a denial of human rights means in people’s lives we will care enough to do something about it. When we understand that we can do something about it, our motivation to make a difference will be stronger.

80:20 believes in using education to enable people to change their world for the better.

80:20 Vision, Values and Themes

‘Through education, 80:20 seeks to realise a world which is more equal, more just and more sustainable than is currently the case. 80:20 believes that the concept of human development rooted in an international human rights framework offers the hope, as well as the basis for, such a world. The organisation is dedicated to pursuing educational strategies for developing international citizenship as a fundamentally important, although frequently neglected, priority in international development strategies.’

80:20 Values and Themes

As an educational NGO, 80:20 is dedicated to developing and supporting educational understandings of, and responses to, key development, justice and human rights issues. Through its work, 80:20 seeks to promote education as a necessary and vital positive contribution to local, national and international human development.

Additionally, throughout all its projects and activities, 80:20 seeks to promote the following values (or dispositions) and themes:

Annual Accounts

Click here to view the 80:20 Annual Accounts for the year ended 31 August 2005. (PDF)

Click here to view the 80:20 Annual Accounts for the year ended 31 August 2004. (PDF)

Values

Education
We see education as fundamental to human development and we promote educational values, principles and methods. We understand education to provide people with greater choice, with enhanced capacity and with motivation.

Themes

Human Development
80:20 endorses the concept and process of human development outlined in the Human Development Reports of the UNDP and underpins this understanding with reference to the 1986 Declaration on the Right to Development

Development
We are concerned with the challenge of human development in all dimensions and promote development education as key to this. We understand development to mean human development and are particularly concerned with ‘Developing World’ realities and perspectives on this issue

Human Rights
we root our analysis in a human rights framework and thus, in our activities, publications and projects, we promote human rights values and instruments as well as perspectives

Human Rights and Development
80:20 highlights the indivisibility of human rights and engages educationally with civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. In practical terms, this implies that 80:20 highlights the growing body of international legal, moral and political instruments through which a human rights perspective on development is increasingly realised

Internationalism
80:20 actively promotes an international perspective in all its work and, in particular, perspectives from the ‘Developing World’

Citizenship, Democracy and Development
80:20 views citizenship and education for international citizenship as core to its work. We emphasise the right of citizens to participation in, as well as ownership of, the process of human development. This is reflected in the make up and approach of its projects as well as in active citizenship methodologies.

Justice
We encourage ourselves and others to pose the question – what is fair/unfair and from what perspective

Human Rights, Reconciliation and Development
Arising directly from its work in Northern Ireland, the Euro-Mediterranean region and Aboriginal Australia, 80:20 seeks to promote the process of reconciliation rooted in a human rights framework. This implies dealing directly with the legacies of conflict in a human development context and in particular, the role of young people

Participation
In its methodologies as well as perspectives, 80:20 actively promotes participation and ownership of the education and development agendas. Public ownership of the agenda is a fundamental 80:20 value.

Action
80:20 sees education as a core action agenda item and encourages discussions and debate about the nature and ownership of action in response to inequalities and injustices.