Blog #1: Education’s domino effect to solve social issues

This past week I was tasked with coming up with a social venture. Like any good founder (at least according to Paul Graham’s article http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html), I decided to think about the problem first by creating a mind map of all the social problems that I could conceive of. Mind maps are supposed to be a helpful tool (Read: http://mindmapsunleashed.com/the-mind-mapping-concept-and-how-you-benefit-from-this), but in the case of social issues, the mind map overwhelms you with the sheer number of issues that so many people in the world face. I realized that since an “average” person like me doesn’t face these problems nor thinks of them (at least as much as I should), I live in a distorted reality where other problems such as ‘not getting WiFi/internet access’ seems like the biggest problem in the world (See ‘First World Problems’ - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/09/firstworldproblems-ad-campaign-new-ground). To compensate for the guilt caused by my inaction towards real problems, I wanted to come up with a social venture that solves ALL the social issues. But, I quickly realized that it’s a fool’s errand to try to solve everything at once, so I decided to pick an issue that has the largest social impact potential, Education.

The domino effect that education has on solving social issues is astounding as economic literature corroborates the claim that education is the impetus driving the eradication of poverty, facilitating capital accumulation, and pulling up median and average wages over time. According to studies from UNESCO, if all children in low-income countries left school with basic reading skills, 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty, which is a 12% reduction in global poverty (Source: http://bostinno.streetwise.co/channels/tembo-education-aims-to/).

Do you agree with the domino effect that education has on solving social issues? What other issues apart from diminishing poverty, bridging the wage gap, and improving the quality of life can you think of that education (100% global literacy) could potentially solve? What other problems do you think have a similar domino effect?