Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Which resilient future? As many as we can imagine.
“I’ll be dead by then. Shot.”
Large brown eyes stared back at me as he spoke, with a sincerity and certainty that tied my stomach in knots.
I was learning that it’s really hard talking to twelve-year olds about the future, particularly this little guy. Thinking ten years out is a stretch for many of the adults I work with at the Institute for the Future. And now my colleagues, and our collaborators at Collective Roots and East Palo Alto Charter School, had set out to help a class of seventh graders envision their futures—their actions and their surroundings—in a decade....
How could a child live without hope for a future? What can “resilience” possibly mean in the face of such a personal future?
Read the rest of my piece on resilience, alternative futures, and kids saying the darndest things at Shareable.net. I met the editors at Design 4 Resilience, and I'm grateful for the chance to reflect on the pilot of the Amara Youth Voices project.