TKS Session 10: Bottom Billions
This session was about the “bottom billion” group in the world and the problems they have to face. We had some prep work to do for this session, which included two documentaries to watch. Both of them were about the quality of life in Ghana, one on its secondhand clothing market, and one on tomato farming. Both documentaries talked about how those in Ghana depended on those to make a living, but how it was much more difficult to sustain any real benefit from them, and how other countries’ interference only made things worse. We had to post our takeaways on the documentaries, and here is what I wrote:
Fashion:
Firstly, I didn't even realize that this was a way to make a living in Ghana, so that on it's own was a revelation. But it also shocked me that since so many of these articles of clothing shipped to Ghana weren't able to be sold, it actually contributed to a lot of waste buildup and had negative impacts on the environment
Not only is the problem that the donations aren't up to standards, but there are too many quantities of those low-grade clothing bundles being shipped to Ghana, which not only poses an economic challenge because of (cost to ship over), but also a negative environmental challenge
Tomato Farming:
I didn't realize how global trade could actually have negative impacts on the farming prosperity and markets in Ghana. But, it makes sense, if there are so many "better quality" products coming to Ghana, then why should people pay more for the ones being farmed there
Overall, pretty basic takeaways, but that should also give insight into what the documentaries specifically covered. We would be performing a systems thinking analysis on these documentaries later. But first, we talked about the MotW, perspective.
This is a new mindset that is covered in the Activate program. The past few mindsets had been covered in Innovate, so it was good to have a new mindset to practice for this week. The mindset of perspective is all about reflecting on how you came to develop your own perspective, and how it influences the way you perceive and interact with the world around you. Not only is it important to understand what makes up your own perspective, but also to get a feel for how the perspectives of others make up the world we live in and how it functions. We all went around and reflected on a pivotal moment that happened to each of us that created a change in our perspective. For me, it was when I had a big tournament in June of my grade 8 year, and it was North American wide, and I had lost after months of training, even though everyone (and I mean everyone) told me I had won. What that taught me was that no matter how hard you try and how deserving you are, that doesn’t mean you are going to get what you’re owed. I learned not to let my victories or my goals become someone else’s responsibility, and that I needed to be the one to make those decisions for myself, not let that fall into anyone else’s hands (for example, I went back to that tournmanent next year and finished both rounds by TKO, winning the entire thing and making the “decision” for the judges).
Only after we did that exercise for the mindset did I realize that I don’t reflect much on what makes me the person I am, and how important it is to take the time to do these reflections once in a while, both to learn more about yourself, but understand what fuels you and what influences the decisions you make.
We then dove straight into learning a TKSkill, which was systems thinking. Systems thinking is sort of what it sounds like, where you analyze a problem as if it were a machine. Each factor and each consideration of that problem is just a moving part; some are levers, some are gears, some are just parts that need to be there, but all of them are connected like one machine. Systems thinking uses that visualization to help you earn a better understanding of what you’re analyzing by connecting everything together and learning what influences what, and which factors are more important than others. It helps to break down problems this way because it gets you closer to understanding what makes this a problem and why it’s hard to change.
We used systems thinking to analyze the problems in Ghana that we watched the documentaries on. We could either focus on the secondhand clothing problem or the tomato farming. We would create a “systems thinking map” as a way to showcase all the components and factors of the problem. We got into breakout rooms to start this analysis. Our group decided to focus on the secondhand clothing market in Ghana and the factors there.
We first created a systems thinking map on our own, creating the connections based on what we learned in the documentary and our takeaways. It looked like this:
Systems thinking map on secondhand clothing market in Ghana
What we then did was input this screenshot of our finished systems thinking map into Gemini and asked it to create a more refined version of this map. What we got in the end was this:
Systems thinking map based off original screenshot, formatted by Gemini
We used our systems thinking maps not only to highlight all the components, factors, levers, and parts of the problem of the secondhand clothing market in Ghana, but also to identify and understand why this is still a problem, and why nothing has been done to change it. The main takeaway from our systems thinking analysis was that the reason this problem still exists for Ghana is that so many countries, including Ghana, have come to rely on this system that has been in place for so long. What happens in Ghana’s secondhand clothing market is that:
Secondhand clothing is shipped from other countries to Ghana
People in Ghana are able to purchase this merchandise for sale
When the clothing isn’t sold or isn’t of the proper quality to be sold in the first place, that clothing ends up in Ghana’s landfills
This process continues because other countries always have clothes they need to “get rid of,” and Ghana still has a dependence on this market for its citizens to make a living
What has been happening recently is that the quality of the goods shipped in from other countries to Ghana has been declining, so that means that a lot of these people are essentially paying for unusable merchandise. That merchandise gets thrown into Ghana’s landfills. But, because the infrastructure for waste in Ghana doesn’t support the amount of waste they are getting, there are environmental problems that have come about and have impacted Ghana for a while.
The economic burden on Ghana is that they continue to pay for these shipments, but ends up losing money because they aren’t able to make a profit. The ratio of sellable clothes to poor quality clothes is unbalanced, with more poor quality clothes than sellable clothes, leading to them losing out on remaking what they spent on the merchandise. This, unfortunately, forces them to keep trying their luck with the merchandise and keep the shipments coming.
Outside of Ghana, other countries that are sending in the shipments rely on this method because big clothing companies tend to “over manufacture” clothing, and there ends up being a lot of clothing that goes to waste. There is nowhere for that clothing to go besides areas like Ghana that might be able to make use of some of it and have even become dependent on these shipments.
What has happened is that so many stakeholders have become dependent on a system that, at its core, doesn’t work. If we were to pause or change this system, everyone associated with it can’t afford to wait for a new system because consequences and difficulties will arise in the meantime. In order to come up with a new solution or process for this problem, it needs to be done in phases where the change is gradual, nothing gets heavily disrupted, and the shifts in processes can occur quickly for speedy adaptation. With too many requirements for a solution to even be implemented, a new solution for Ghana’s secondhand clothing crisis can’t be tested easily or for long unless it’s practically guaranteed to work.
After everyone else shared their systems thinking analysis of either the secondhand clothing or the tomato farming in Ghana, we ended the session there. I really enjoyed this session because I felt like there was a lot to discuss and engage with. I enjoyed the systems thinking analysis because I really like diving deep into a topic, but also finding the connections that may go unnoticed, which leads to interesting perspectives/takeaways like these. Next session is going to be a challenge sprint that lasts for the weekend, so I’m excited to see what that will be and get started!
