The State of Things

In recent news, there have been rumblings within the economies in mainland Europe. This goes to show, that the Government's cheerful message that we are 'coming out' of the Recession just isn't true. The empty shops; the number of homeless people on our streets; food banks; and the sheer number of applicants for jobs in all of our cities, should have been obvious clues to this. So rather than wait for disaster to strike again, I suggest that we take action.

In the film Margin Call, which captures the events around the beginning of the Recession, the fictional company's CEO (played by Jeremy Irons), recounts the previous economic downturns in the last few centuries. "What can we do?" he concludes dismissively.

What we can do, is to take a few common-sense measures to help our economies:

• Student-Alumni networking should be brought up to full capacity. Colleges and universities are information powerhouses, with students and teachers from around the world. This knowledge should be put to good use through knowledge transfer between students and Alumni. If every student worked as an intern in his/her chosen industry, then this would allow these students to put their knowledge into local businesses, and hence, into their local economies. The Alumni in turn would be able coach and mentor the students, in readiness for their careers. This would be a win-win scenario for both sides.
• Qualified Assessment should be used to assess the skills of Non-Graduates. The apprenticeships system has been a proven success for all professions: and this same system can be used to assess and qualify all 16-24 year olds who are not in education or training. This would ensure that their grades reflect their skills, so that talented non-graduates are still able to build careers: and non-graduates of even average ability get a chance to develop their skills.
• Business start-ups should be enabled as much as possible, to create new jobs. Crowd funding has given a huge boost to investment for small businesses. What we need now are the mechanisms to get the right people and ideas together to set businesses up. I believe that a new Toolkit for start-ups will be a good way to achieve this.

If this were done in all countries whose economies are struggling, then I believe it would go a long way to strengthening them, so that when the next financial Tsunami hits us, we stay standing.

I invite you to make it happen.