TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I'm DOING

As a pediatrician, I’m grateful that it’s in my consciousness nearly everyday, but it deserves saying over and over again, that the true impact of our actions now are actually tomorrow’s realities for today’s children and young people. Now, with so much going on in the world, and since last week was thanksgiving here in the US, I wanted to take a moment to think critically about what we are doing to accelerate prosperity, health, and fulfillment for future generations, especially in India, where both the gaps and potential opportunities for youth are simply enormous. And like it or not, even though we are so globally connected, creating structural change requires a thoughtfulness that acknowledges that we often start these conversations from the outside looking in and need to really understand vantage points and local context before asking the who and why and how much questions. A few weeks ago, I had the chance to sit down with Matthew Spacie and Will Straw. Matthew is a former rugby professional and entrepreneur and the founder of Magic Bus, a non-profit he established nearly 25 years ago after what began as an afternoon rugby game with local youth transformed into a community based ecosystem of engagement through mentoring, sustainable vocation and life-skill training, education with activity-based curriculum, and ongoing support for marginalized youth across India and South Asia, to go from childhood to livelihood. In 2023 Magic Bus will work with about 1 million children and will place 120,000 young people in grey and white-collar jobs. And Will Straw is the CEO of Prince’s Trust International, where he leads their work delivering education, employability and enterprise programmes to young people around the world synchronizing with local delivery partners, like Magic Bus. Prince’s Trust International currently has 40 partnerships in 18 countries and has directly supported over 28,000 young people in the last year to gain employment and life skills for the world of work. Together, the aim in India and South Asia is to impact 7 million adolescents by 2027 and build even more programs for women and rural communities.
We caught up as Matthew and Will were sharing their work with potential donors, and we had a chance to chat about their ongoing challenges and opportunities, defining success and lessons learned, and even the optics and reality of colonial history and race as it factors into building trust. But I started by asking Matthew to reflect a bit on what’s changed and even what’s remained the same with Magic Bus since he began.