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We're back again this week with Andiswa and Christine from RLabs.

Hi, guys. Hi, good to be back.

>> And this week, we're talking about system change.

About the big picture of how little projects can create really big results

in challenging and shocking the system that they're in.

So, in some ways, RLabs benefits for people are very immediate and obvious.

A person comes in through a course here, and their life is changed.

But in other ways, RLabs is challenging the system itself.

The social system, the beliefs, the rules, the roles,

the structures around us, in this community and beyond.

How do you guys see RLabs as a challenger of systems, as a system change agent?

>> Sure, I think that even in the beginning, that's one of the things

that they started with, changing things like with the mobile counseling.

They were not professional counselors, but here they were counseling other people.

We've got a lot of examples of how they just challenged the system.

With, even now our training and development section, we're facilitators

and did not go through varsity, but they have been in the class and been taught and

the next thing is they're facilitating and doing it for someone else.

>> So this is in a world where most of us believe you have to have this kind of

credential to do this kind of role.

So if you're going to be a teacher, for example, you have to have lots of

university-level training and expertise and you have to be a certain age.

And here, you can come in, teach from what you already know in your own experience.

You can take a course and then be teaching that course very quickly right after that.

>> It's not your qualifications or

your academic qualifications that qualifies you.

It's really your experience that qualifies you.

That's what makes us so different.

Also, where in the world will you find a 20-year-old teaching a 20-year-old?

And it's just, really again, just to emphasize on the fact that, it's

to experience, because the one 20-year-old might of not gone through our programmes but

the other 20-year-old has.

And so that's what really sets the two apart.

Yeah, and if you think about our entrepreneurs as well,

where does the business ideas come from?

It's from the person's personal experience that I needed this,

or what wasn't improved?

>> So you guys are talking a lot about

challenging the formal qualifications that are often needed.

You're also talking about challenging ideas that we have on age, and

what young people can do versus what you have to wait until you're older.

And you're saying no, a younger person can start right away.

You're talking also I think about background.

If someone who has been in gangs or has been on drugs,

we often think that person can't operate as a professional teacher or

a manager of a large organization like RLabs or a member of a board of directors

or someone doing something creative like being on the radio.

But here, I think we see that a lot,

people making radical shifts in the roles that they're playing in the world.

>> To be honest with you, it's not really a shift.

It's a positive shift because they always mean, if you think about the gangsters,

and you think about the specifically, the gangsters and how they operated.

That their mind has always been strategically,

they've always had to think about the things strategically.

How am I going to break into this person's house?

How am I going to approach someone and rob them?

It's all strategic thinking.

But, in the same way, now they're using that very skill within the work that

they're doing, so it's just now that it's for a good purpose, it's a good use.

>> So it's just a mind shift, it's not actually transforming the person,

They are smart people,

But surely this is challenging,

kind of, the external world that sees- Of course.

Gangsters Of course.

Or people from these circumstances suddenly playing these different roles?

What kind of pushback has there been from external environments

around systems don't like to be challenged?

Yeah, they don't, and sometimes it gets challenging because you're

sitting with a professor and they want to know, so how do you do this?

And it's, this can't be happening, you're not qualified enough,

even in that context, so there's still a lot of judgement within what you do.

But what you do is working because I was at you level,

so therefore I know exactly what you're going through.

And therefore it's okay, you can do it.

But we still get resistance from some other people that kind of think that's not

the way that we should be doing things.

And how do you push through that?

How do you push through, because it comes in the form of judgement,

very often and for most of us that shuts us down.

How do you keep going when the first reaction people are having is,

you're not the right age or you don't have the right background or

you don't have the right qualifications even to be in this room or

to be sharing your expertise in this space?

I think the homely feel

is what gets us through because we're kind of like a family here.

So we support one another, we encourage one another, so if at in

a moment encountered with all of those things, then we are there for each other.

We support and we're okay with not doing what everyone else is doing.

We just want to be the green Jelly Babies when everybody wants the black

Jelly Babies.

So for us, it's nice for when people say you shouldn't be doing it.

Then it means that we should be doing it because we see the results.

One of the other things I've seen at RLabs is challenging also these

ideas of different groups that we have in our society.

And so, so much of RLabs is focused on youth and technology.

But we see that around the world, and kind of one of the other things that RLabs has

done was invite moms and grandmothers into technology training.

Kind of challenge the idea of which groups should

be involved in certain kinds of activities with technology.

What did that create in terms of connecting or identifying different

groups, but then allowing them to shift into different spaces?

I think it first it had to be a shift for ourselves.

Because the reality is all of us, we come from a situation where it would be like,

if our mothers would ask us to help them with the mobile phone I know it's always.

Mommy, why?

Mommy, really?

That's their normal reaction, so having started out at RLabs and

working with our grandmothers, we needed to first make the shift like,

okay, so it's older people, but we cannot look at the age.

We look at the hunger for learning, so it doesn't really change,

because it's just the level of hunger, and that is what's been happening.

So the age is gone, I mean, if we look at our oldest

co-facilitator she keeps us motivated.

84 years old. -84 years old.

She was invited to Google.

And none of us has been invited to Google, so there was a challenge for

our ego [INAUDIBLE], really?

I like this idea of that often when we're doing system change,

this big challenging thing, we're actually having to start with ourselves, and

our own beliefs and our own habits of thinking about even our mothers,

or people around us.

How else have you seen yourselves, you two, change personally?

What of your own system, your own habits, your own ways of thinking,

has really been shocked into a different way of thinking

here in your journey at RLabs?

I think when I got here I did not know what I wanted to do.

I was already about 25, and I didn't know what my passion was, really.

So, who do you want to help, what do you want to do.

And you get challenged in terms of thinking,

really putting some thought into it, like what is it really that gets Andiswa going?

What is the reason Andiswa has to wake up in the morning and continue with life?

And I had to change because my thing was I need money, I have to work for money.

And I had to change now, it was no longer about me, it was about the people.

It was about serving.

So there were like, why am I now all of a sudden was there whole

change in my mind in terms of I need to be helping someone else.

So it sounds like that change was provoked not, and

I think this is true of a lot of system change, not just by

someone saying this is what you should be but by questions by questioning how you're

thinking what the world is like right now- Yes.

And how else it could be.

Not giving you an answer, but

just shocking you into examining it and rethinking it, your own life in that case.

Exactly, I mean, you're not just sitting there and just going someone is

asking you these questions and you have to put a lot of thought into them.

And you get there by yourself.

The only thing that we need to do is to question.

And that's what we do with the students within the academy.

We question, okay guys, how can we better this?

What do you need?

So it's, what do you need?

And then we provide.

Not, what do we think you need?

That has always been a winning thing for us.

What about you, Christina, how have you changed?

I think firstly, I love people, okay,

I'm a people's person, I do and I love serving.

It's something with my background, absolutely, but something that I needed to

change was I needed to reflect, okay, so at work this is what I do, okay.

I serve, I do, I love young people, I love to have one on ones

with my students because that's just something that I love.

But then when I went home, I didn't do it at home.

It wasn't there, and I needed to reflect, you know what, how real am I?

because that's what I want to be.

And so that is something that I needed to change at home, is be more patient

when my seniors speak to me or ask me or approach me about things.

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Reflecting with RLabs: changing the system

Becoming a changemaker: Introduction to Social Innovation

Meet the Instructors