Скачать или смотреть GSF Learning Festival: Leslee Udwin, Founder and Executive Chair, Think Equal

In this video, Leslee Udwin, founder of Think Equal (https://thinkequal.org/) and an award-winning filmmaker, shared a profound professional and existential failure related to her life’s work.

🗯️"I realized I was wasting my time. Do we really need more awareness about gender-based violence? What difference will this film make?"

For decades, Leslee dedicated herself to filmmaking, believing it could drive social change. Her last film, India’s Daughter (link in comment below), focused on the brutal gender-based violence of the 2012 Delhi gang rape. She realised her medium—film—was ineffective at creating lasting change. ‘Awareness alone, she argued, doesn’t transform deep-seated mindsets.”

From a feeling of despair, a shift was experienced to a compulsive need to understand the root causes of violence, leading her to interview the perpetrators in prison. The shock of discovering that the rapists and murderers were not "monsters" but ordinary men shaped and programmed by societal norms that devalue women, later gave birth to Think Equal.

💥Reflection:
. Violence is a symptom, not the disease - the root cause is a mindset that dehumanises others. “The disease is the belief that some lives are worth less than others."
. Education’s broken model - Schools focus on literacy and numeracy but ignore teaching the value of human beings. “We mandate math but leave empathy as optional."
. Neuroscience of change - Mindsets are formed by age 6. After that, interventions are Band-Aids.

✨Wisdom applied (Think Equal model):
. Systemic intervention: Leslee created a free, evidence-based SEL curriculum for 3–6-year-olds, now adopted in 38 countries.
. Focus on early years: Targets the "habits of response" before they harden.
. Policy advocacy: Worked with governments to make social-emotional learning compulsory and has succeeded in doing so in 25% of countries to date and counting.

🧶Provocations that resonate across contexts:
. Purpose of education: How can we mandate numeracy but leave humanity’s lessons or learning to build healthy relationships optional?"
. "We are all complicit in the violence we condemn. We programmed these men."
. Can a curriculum alone dismantle systemic inequity? What partnerships are needed?

Leslee’s work reframed education as the ultimate tool for societal alchemy—turning prejudice into empathy, and lasting change requires dismantling the systems that breed violence.

📌About Global Schools Forum
Global Schools Forum (GSF) is a collaborative community, innovation accelerator, and partnership builder for non-state organisations working to improve education at scale for underserved children in low- and middle-income countries.

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