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Ep 28. Tim Howarth, Founding CEO United World Schools: Believing in the power of education to transform lives
63 Plays3 years ago
“If there’s one over-riding feature that has really driven success in the last 10 years, it really is that complete and utter belief in the Mission... (and) linking up with people who share that commitment, to the power of education to transform lives.”
Today’s is a very special episode: I am speaking with Tim Howarth, my predecessor at United World Schools and its Founding CEO.
Tim tells the story of taking United World Schools (UWS) from his family’s kitchen table to the global organisation it is today, with over 1,200 staff operating across 4 continents and reaching nearly 50,000 children in poor and marginalised communities. UWS builds and runs schools in remote areas of the Global South, providing primary education to children who otherwise would not have a school to go to.
With a Vision of a world where all children have the chance to go to school, the organisation aims to give every child access to free, quality and inclusive education, transforming life opportunities for children living in remote and marginalised parts of the world. UWS currently operates programmes in Cambodia, Madagascar, Myanmar and Nepal.
Tim shares key leadership lessons from the perspective of building an organisation from the ground up, as well as tips and best practices for charity leaders seeking to establish meaningful partnerships with local governments.
Tim also talks about how being bold, and having complete belief and faith in the Mission, has been key to the success of United World Schools over the past decade.
Recorded December 2021.
Guest Biography
Tim Howarth is the Founding Chief Executive of United World Schools (UWS). After ten years with the organisation, Tim recently transitioned the UWS CEO role to our podcast host herself, Dhivya O'Connor.
Under Tim's leadership, UWS reached almost 50,000 previously out-of-school children, establishing over 260 UWS Community Schools and learning sites in remote regions of South East Asia, and most recently in Madagascar. The organisation has been recognised with several awards and prizes: WISE Award in 2019, HundrED Prize for Educational Innovation in 2019 & 2020, and the UNESCO Prize for Ethnic Minority Literacy Programmes in 2020.
Tim is a trained teacher. Prior to his time at UWS, Tim worked in a number of leadership and consultancy roles, developing teaching and leadership capacity in UK and Australian schools. Tim is also an RSA Fellow and in 2019 was listed on the UK Social Entrepreneur Index.
Links https://www.unitedworldschools.org/
This episode is sponsored by EdenTree Investment Management
https://www.edentreeim.com/
Today’s is a very special episode: I am speaking with Tim Howarth, my predecessor at United World Schools and its Founding CEO.
Tim tells the story of taking United World Schools (UWS) from his family’s kitchen table to the global organisation it is today, with over 1,200 staff operating across 4 continents and reaching nearly 50,000 children in poor and marginalised communities. UWS builds and runs schools in remote areas of the Global South, providing primary education to children who otherwise would not have a school to go to.
With a Vision of a world where all children have the chance to go to school, the organisation aims to give every child access to free, quality and inclusive education, transforming life opportunities for children living in remote and marginalised parts of the world. UWS currently operates programmes in Cambodia, Madagascar, Myanmar and Nepal.
Tim shares key leadership lessons from the perspective of building an organisation from the ground up, as well as tips and best practices for charity leaders seeking to establish meaningful partnerships with local governments.
Tim also talks about how being bold, and having complete belief and faith in the Mission, has been key to the success of United World Schools over the past decade.
Recorded December 2021.
Guest Biography
Tim Howarth is the Founding Chief Executive of United World Schools (UWS). After ten years with the organisation, Tim recently transitioned the UWS CEO role to our podcast host herself, Dhivya O'Connor.
Under Tim's leadership, UWS reached almost 50,000 previously out-of-school children, establishing over 260 UWS Community Schools and learning sites in remote regions of South East Asia, and most recently in Madagascar. The organisation has been recognised with several awards and prizes: WISE Award in 2019, HundrED Prize for Educational Innovation in 2019 & 2020, and the UNESCO Prize for Ethnic Minority Literacy Programmes in 2020.
Tim is a trained teacher. Prior to his time at UWS, Tim worked in a number of leadership and consultancy roles, developing teaching and leadership capacity in UK and Australian schools. Tim is also an RSA Fellow and in 2019 was listed on the UK Social Entrepreneur Index.
Links https://www.unitedworldschools.org/
This episode is sponsored by EdenTree Investment Management
https://www.edentreeim.com/
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Transcript
The Mission of United World Schools
00:00:00
Speaker
It's believing in a cause or mission or ultimately a purpose. It's bringing the positive energy to that belief that when you connect with others helps build that momentum and one of the great privileges of the CEO role is you can really can.
00:00:18
Speaker
enable others to share that belief and come with you on a journey that is deeply embedded in a particular belief. The belief that I fundamentally had was that all children should be able to learn to read right and count.
00:00:40
Speaker
This is Season 3 of the Charity CEO Podcast, the podcast for charity leaders by charity leaders. I'm Divya O'Connor, and I never imagined that this show that I started as an experiment during the pandemic would turn into a number one ranked global podcast with thousands of listeners all across the world. It is truly humbling to know that the show's content is valued by so many.
00:01:03
Speaker
And, thanks to our Season 3 sponsor, Eden Tree, I will continue to bring you inspirational and engaging conversations with a host of leaders who are all truly driving change in the non-profit space.
Interview with Tim Haworth
00:01:15
Speaker
Eden Tree themselves are owned by a charity, and have led the way in responsible and sustainable investing for over three decades. Thank you to Eden Tree. Now, on with the show.
00:01:27
Speaker
Happy New Year, everyone, and welcome back to the Charity CEO podcast. Today is a very special episode of the podcast. Regular listeners will note that I recently took up the appointment as Chief Executive of United World Schools. I'm privileged to be here today talking to Tim Haworth, my predecessor and the founding CEO of United World Schools.
00:01:46
Speaker
Tim talks about the journey of taking UWS from his family's kitchen table to the global organisation that it is today, with 1,200 staff operating across four continents and reaching 45,000 children in poor and marginalised communities.
00:02:02
Speaker
UWS builds and runs schools in remote areas of the global south, providing primary education to children who otherwise would not have a school to go to. With a vision of a world where all children have the chance to go to school, United World Schools is an incredibly special organisation and I feel hugely privileged and excited to be taking the organisation forward on its next phase of growth. I hope you enjoyed the conversation.
00:02:29
Speaker
Hi, Tim. Welcome to the show. I'm so excited to do this with you today. Thank you very much for being here. Congratulations on the podcast series three. I've been listening in, really enjoying it. Oh, fantastic. Well, you should know then, Tim, that we always start with an ice break around. So if you're ready for the five questions, let's kick off. Let's do it. Let's go for it. Looking forward to this. So question one, tell us about a book or a person that has had a profound impact on you.
Tim Haworth's Professional Insights
00:02:56
Speaker
So I think a book that I really have enjoyed reading actually to my children, I've enjoyed reading it as a child was Over the Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss, which I think is a fantastic creative way of storytelling and bringing all sorts of characters to life and actually the morals within that.
00:03:16
Speaker
which are done in a very graceful, clever manner. But I think the life lessons coming through on that Over the Places You'll Go book is absolutely brilliant. And I enjoy reading it to my son and my daughter as much as they enjoy having read to them. And there's definitely something in there for people of just about every age. So big fan of Dr. Seuss. And that brings us nicely to my second question for you. As a child, what did you dream of being when you grew up? And I wonder if Dr. Seuss had some influence here.
00:03:45
Speaker
Well absolutely. So I probably wanted to be an international sports person although I wanted to try and play every sport. Cricket in the summer and football in the winter and tennis and swimming and all sorts. I managed to achieve none of that but thoroughly enjoyed playing sport as a child. What I was exposed to as a child actually was education. My mum was a teacher, my dad's a teacher, my sister and I became teachers so education actually was
00:04:10
Speaker
something that we as a family sort of became deeply involved in. I suppose that also helped us craft our careers as well. Well we are of course going to come on to talk much more about education and so moving on to question three. What would you say is your professional superpower? So try to summarise this in one word and that one word is, it's a very simple word, it's the word believe.
00:04:35
Speaker
And if I try and unpack that word, it's believing in a cause or mission or ultimately a purpose. It's bringing the positive energy to that belief that when you connect with others, helps build that momentum.
00:04:51
Speaker
And also it keeps a certain professional and personal resilience within that. So that when you are in a privileged position of leading other people, actually that shared belief and that resilience around that particular belief is something that enables you to achieve an awful lot. And I think as I reflect on the last 10 years or so within our two old schools, certainly I think we've managed to achieve an awful lot, but I also think we've
00:05:16
Speaker
We've believed and one of the great privileges of the CEO role is you can really can enable others to share that belief and come with you on a journey that is deeply embedded in a particular belief and the belief that I fundamentally had was that all children should be able to learn to read right and count.
00:05:34
Speaker
I love the nuance and the different dimensions you've brought to that. If you believed in magic, so question four, if you had a magic wand that you could wave and change one thing in the world right now, what would that be? Well, look, having just been reading recently about all of the outcomes of COP26 and let's hope that they very quickly become part of policy and social change happens as a result. I think something that could, in a positive way, capture the carbon in the atmosphere
00:06:04
Speaker
and maybe it could become a way of catalyzing all sorts of good stuff and the way that it's done. I suppose ultimately what trees do over hundreds of years, which is to capture the carbon out of the atmosphere, but to be able to do that quickly and to be able to find a solution to this climate crisis and the last 200 years of carbon-centric economies. Fantastic. And our final icebreaker question, if you had the opportunity to interview anyone in the world, dead or alive, who would it be and what one question would you like to ask them?
00:06:34
Speaker
That is a great question. I've been thinking about people that I would very much like to have interviewed possibly in preparation for this one. But, controversially, I would very much like to go back in time and sit down with Pol Pot, as many of you will know, is an extremely controversial dictator leader of Cambodia for many years, part of which was my lifetime.
00:06:58
Speaker
And I think the legacy that he's left in Cambodia is hugely negative. But on the other hand, he was a highly educated man. He went to some of the best schools in Cambodia. He had the chance to experience an increasingly global world. He chose to then, with an awful lot of incredible leadership skill, to lead a country on an agrarian socialist journey and evolve into sort of a communist society. Now, I would very much like to just understand
00:07:26
Speaker
why having had the opportunity he had through education, why he would then choose ultimately to sort of take a country back 250 plus years and to understand deeply, you know, why would he want a nation to go on that journey? And of course, you know, now being part of the legacy of that in a positive way, we know how to world schools means that, you know, you understand on a fairly deep level some of the challenges faced in Cambodia, but I'd love to go back to 1979 and then TV Pol Pot.
Origin and Evolution of United World Schools
00:07:56
Speaker
Yes, I think that would be fascinating and moving seamlessly from Paul Pott to talking about United World Schools, which is an organization that is clearly close to both of our hearts. And I know the charity started in Cambodia. And Tim, I've heard you say many times that you are part of the founding family of the charity. It is an organization that your father started and then you took it on as the founding CEO. But tell us more about how it all started. What's the origin story of United World Schools?
00:08:26
Speaker
Sure, it started as a small family project and around sort of
00:08:32
Speaker
2006-07 when my father was volunteering in Cambodia working with the Ministry of Education to advise on ethnic minority education how it can be improved. And at the end of his two years with BSO, great organization, I remember he sat down and we were talking literally over a beer and he said, look, I just don't feel after two years
00:08:56
Speaker
had anything like the impact that one hopes one will make as a volunteer, having made an enormous commitment. And the conversation then progressed and said, well, actually, there is this community that we've got to know who don't have a school. So what about developing a school in this community? And we could use a little bit of family inheritance money that we just literally from a distant relative
00:09:19
Speaker
inherited to get going with that first school. Of course, you say, well, it's an absolute perfect, brilliant, no brain of an idea. So we started on that first school. So dad was very much pioneering this first school. We had my sister and I behind him.
00:09:34
Speaker
And very much organically, we developed what turned out to be a pretty robust business model, but it wasn't as though we had a perfect plan laid out from outset. It really was a make it up as you go along effort. So the core elements of the model, working with a community to develop a school, working with the government to support that school, again, all building blocks of the business model.
00:09:56
Speaker
And then my sister actually was the person who catalyzed the partner school model because she said, well, I work in a relatively affluent school in the UK. Now, those students would gain a huge amount from learning about that community in Cambodia. And maybe they could raise a little bit of money and that money will fund the school in Cambodia for the long term. And that felt like we had a community-anchored, appropriate, sustainable project.
00:10:20
Speaker
So we got going, and it turned out to be an absolutely brilliant experience for everybody involved. The danger of doing that, of course, is the community down the road says, well, this looks like a really interesting project. Could we do something similar? So OK, well, let's scrape together some funds. And it really was a sort of family kitchen table effort for the first few years. We were lucky enough to secure some funds from people who were family friends, et cetera.
00:10:48
Speaker
But then we got serious about it as the organisation professionalised. And that was my professional journey, then took the organisation on from a volunteer organisation for the first few years to a professionalised organisation. And we really started to scale up from about 2015 as a result.
00:11:07
Speaker
So talking there about the business model and how you really develop that model from essentially your family's kitchen table into something that is much more sustainable today, tell us a little bit more about the theory of change and how that has been built with sustainability really at its heart.
00:11:25
Speaker
And also children at its heart and children's learning journey as well. So a sustainable journey because we know that education is a long game. We know that educational impact is something that takes many years really to come through. So therefore it had to be sustainable. It needed to be child-centric. The theory of change that has been developed and iteratively developed over the years
00:11:47
Speaker
is one that is very much child-centric. So if we put ourselves in the shoes of, let's say, the eight-year-old girl who comes from a community who doesn't have access to any kind of education, you know, her life chances look pretty grim. And so our theory of change tries to say, well, how do we take that situation and move it to a much better vision, which is where the eight-year-old girl is included in a well-run safe school
00:12:14
Speaker
where she's learning how to read, write, count, use the national language in a school that will become part of the government system that's sensitive and appropriate to local cultures and local customs, but also is very much part of the government system, teaching the national curriculum, et cetera.
00:12:31
Speaker
And this became the building blocks of the theory of change, trying to work out how do we take out of school children in remote communities to a position where they're attending a sustainable, well-run, inclusive, safe school. And so the theory of change is pretty simple. It sounds what we actually do while we teach the unreached. So this is about providing education. We work with a local community to build the necessary infrastructure, typically a small school, three or four classrooms and a playground, et cetera, latrines.
00:13:00
Speaker
And then we work with community teachers to make sure that the language of instruction is the mother tongue of those children. So the eight year old girl can understand what's going on when she doesn't speak the national language, but also teach the government national curriculum at the same time. So that school becomes increasingly part of the government system. And that child is on a pathway of getting into government high school provision.
00:13:26
Speaker
And that means we're then working with communities, with government, on that sustainability model. So the school, when they run well, which many of our schools fortunately are, and the community are highly engaged, which they almost always are, those schools transition into the national system after sort of five to seven years.
Challenges and Partnerships in Education
00:13:46
Speaker
at which point you get both the primary impact, which of course is children attending school, learning the necessary literacy and numeracy skills, improve life pathways, but also you are transitioning that school into the national system, which means you can positively influence policy and practice and definitely training capacity, which means that you add all that up. You take that one eight-year-old girl and you scale the intervention by many, many, many more children
00:14:12
Speaker
in many more countries, well the long-term impact means that hundreds of thousands of children then have the chance to have a much better future and they are children who are from some of the poorest communities, some of the most marginalized communities in the world.
00:14:24
Speaker
One of the aspects that I really love about the UWS model is this multiplier effect that you just talked about there, which is really inherent in the model and particularly the schools becoming part of the government system. But I do know that delivering this transition element of the model has perhaps been a little trickier than was first anticipated and that the first few UWS schools to successfully transition into government ownership were handed over to local authorities in Cambodia only earlier this year.
00:14:54
Speaker
So from your experience, Tim, what learnings can you share with other charity leaders with respect to establishing successful partnerships with local governments, particularly in the INGO context? And possibly one of the things that we've had in our minds as we've matured as an organisation is that sustainable exit plan, which is all about how the schools transition into the government system. It's almost like you can picture the
00:15:24
Speaker
the little green light above the door in the office, which is the exit light, and you sort of follow that person, keep that in your mind as you plan your programs. For what that meant for the United World Schools was, look, we needed to have really good relationships at a local and national level, particularly with the Ministry of Education, but also with the Ministry of Finance and work with those groups from outset in order to deliver the projects and be resilient and sticky
00:15:53
Speaker
within those systems that were largely semi-functional. And I mean that with deep respect, semi-functional because there are many, many out of school children. So there's a degree of dysfunction that exists and you accept that. But what you don't compromise is the long-term relationship building with government.
00:16:12
Speaker
in order to ultimately deliver the school into that government system after say seven years and to have certain agreed criteria from outset which will ensure that our school as it transitions is going to land softly into that system and be sustained for many more years to come.
00:16:30
Speaker
For example, is there a rock-solid way of ensuring that the finances from a Ministry of Finance will get to that school in year 8, in year 9, in year 10, in year 15? So that's making sure that those schools effectively are written into future budgets at a government level.
00:16:47
Speaker
It's about making sure that the community are sufficiently upskilled in order to govern that school and advocate for that school at a local level, with the Ministry of Education at a provincial level, in order to make sure that those mechanisms, that accountability to government
00:17:07
Speaker
is delivered for the long term. You've got the human capability, you've got the finance, you've got the social and political capital which you share between the various stakeholders and it all is bound by one clear unifying purpose
00:17:27
Speaker
which everybody has, if you like, a very good reason to deliver, which is we all want to see children effectively learning in school. Governments want a literate and numerate population. They want to support their people on their journey, and they will get ultimately voted back into power by doing so. As educationalists, we want to see children on a much better life pathway, so we make sure that we set the schools up, but also we're acknowledging our position, which is not to be there for the long term.
00:17:55
Speaker
the local community are a fundamental partner as part of that process and we used to use the term empower and I no longer think that's quite the right word here in terms of local communities because and at Crikey the last 18 months have shown us this it's not necessarily about empowerment it's about partnership deep partnership and so again the lesson learned is the partnership on offer with community leaders
00:18:24
Speaker
Mums and dads equally can be incredibly powerful when you're all united around that same purpose. So I suppose to summarize, look, we needed a clear agreed plan for each school bound by an MOU that the different stakeholders had all signed up to from outset, wraparound finances, wraparound human capability, and sufficient social and political capital to see that journey through. And then the final piece,
00:18:52
Speaker
is the one that sort of ensures you've still got a little bit of leverage. So as an organization, as an NGO, we can set things up. And of course, these schools are now government schools after seven years once they're in the system. We're not responsible for them. However, what levers do we have to pull? Well, by being a successful NGO that's good at fundraising and can continue to grow and develop, well, actually, we can go back to those same governments. So let's do another 200 schools with you.
00:19:19
Speaker
But you must keep supporting the first 100 schools that we did.
Adapting to COVID-19 Challenges
00:19:24
Speaker
And that's quite a useful lever to have. You can influence government by bringing in millions of dollars of philanthropic resource, as long as you set it up in a way that ensures that it's respectful of local and national policy and process.
00:19:39
Speaker
And talking now a little bit more about the past 18 months and the whole COVID pandemic and the point that you made that I think is really interesting in terms of accountability to the ultimate stakeholder, which is really the child. I'm very conscious that we are recording this podcast in the run up to Christmas in 2021 and that here in the UK, we are facing the potential
00:20:04
Speaker
of further lockdowns and more school closures in the new year in order to combat the spread of the new Omicron variant. And you will have heard that the UN estimated that during the pandemic last year nearly 500 million children globally did not have access to remote learning.
00:20:23
Speaker
And given that UWS operates in contexts where children are not likely to have access to the internet and digital learning, I'd like to understand a bit more about what UWS did during that time of school closures in the pandemic. How did you ensure that children in the UWS schools were able to still access education? And look, I'm going to start by acknowledging
00:20:47
Speaker
teachers and school leaders around the world for an incredibly difficult last 18 plus months. Absolutely. And as you say, I think we unfortunately are not out of this yet. This is far longer than probably any of us expected, but we are still dealing with it and deep respect to all teachers and school leaders. And our teachers and school leaders were no different. They were faced with an extraordinary situation and
00:21:11
Speaker
incredibly proud of how our teams, our teachers, our community leaders responded because we came together and we came up with a plan that we thought was simple, that was focused, that was deliverable, but also that would significantly improve the way the schools would be managing an incredibly difficult time. So the three areas that we focused on, one was to make sure that in each school we had a water supply that was
00:21:41
Speaker
upgraded that was safe and therefore children could be washing their hands regularly and opening up those for community use. The second thing we did was to run COVID-19 health and awareness campaigns in the communities both in terms of safe avoidance from the virus, just really accurate up-to-date information of what's happening and how to respond
00:22:02
Speaker
as invariably the waves of the pandemic go through. So we were very much a trusted partner of each community and delivered in the language of the community, which of course is not something that our communities we work with will necessarily be able to access. They don't always speak the national language. And the third thing we did was then to make sure that some kind of remote learning was provided in each community.
00:22:27
Speaker
That took various forms. It could be as simple as take-home project-based learning packs, which students would take home and bring back for assessment. It could also be radio lessons. We piloted radio lessons in Nepal. And these went incredibly well. They were done fairly quickly by our teams, for our communities, all very locally anchored.
00:22:51
Speaker
We also found it wasn't just our communities that were then tuning into these radio lessons. Actually, it was many more communities. So as a result, the organization kept children safe, kept children learning, kept children in the habit of school, but also managed to, in a positive example, managed actually to reach many more students than we anticipated. We kept it simple, we kept it appropriate, but we made sure that the quality of what we were providing was assured and effective.
Leadership and Vision for New CEOs
00:23:18
Speaker
and wherever possible was high quality primary education provision. Brilliant. I love the idea of the radio lessons. I think that's so innovative and pleased to hear that through those radio lessons, we were able to keep connected to the children and to communities and provide that access, which I think is so incredibly important.
00:23:38
Speaker
Tim, I'm always curious to ask my guests about their career journeys and what they have learned along the way. So I know you've obviously talked about United World Schools, but tell us a bit more about your background and what key leadership lessons that you have learned over the past decade.
00:23:53
Speaker
Honestly, it's been a phenomenal privilege and honor to be on the UWS journey and to have led the organization. It means a lot to hand over to you, actually. And so plenty, plenty of lessons. And I won't bore the listeners with all of them, but maybe just pick out two or three. We've touched on that sort of belief concept. If there's one
00:24:12
Speaker
overriding feature that's really driven that success in the last 10 years, it really is that complete and utter belief in the mission, you know, linking up with people who share that commitment to the power of education to transform lives. So that's sort of the first leadership, I suppose, lesson is that fundamental belief, which means you ultimately, I suppose you, you know who you are, and you know why you're here. And that made
00:24:34
Speaker
our proposition as a charity to philanthropists is very clear and we were very tangible and therefore we could be quite focused in terms of what we take to people.
00:24:44
Speaker
that there's that first kind of leadership lesson which is really fundamentally about belief and purpose. I suppose the second one, learn, is to have the confidence to make goals audacious, big and bold. So an example here would be we needed to professionalize the organization and we knew that required a decent amount of unrestricted funding that would go on the salaries of the initial founding team.
00:25:12
Speaker
would therefore deliver that sort of step change in terms of organizational capability. And we needed therefore to go out with a very clear proposition that was all about funding core costs. We all know in the charity sector is sometimes a very difficult thing to do. On the other hand, we took out a proposition that was audacious, it was big, it was bold, and it got people to sit up and go, okay, that's interesting. I would like to know more because you're either bonkers or you've got a great idea, and I want to know which one it is.
00:25:38
Speaker
And so we went out and said, look, we need a million pounds of unrestricted funding, placed over three years, and it will pay for the team. This is an investment in the team's core capability. But as a result of investing, we have a business plan that will enable us over the next five to 10 years to reach 50,000 out of school children across various countries. Now, that suddenly became quite a good investment in terms of sort of the legacy of a philanthropic gift over several years.
00:26:06
Speaker
to then say, well, I'm investing in a journey that ultimately will deliver 50,000 children on a much better life pathway. So by making those goals big and bold and audacious and ambitious, we, I think, attracted the attention of people that we wouldn't have had if we set a more timid, probably more achievable goal, but it was a fact that it was audacious that gave it that sort of gravitas.
00:26:29
Speaker
The third thing I suppose we've learned and certainly I've learned as a leader is the importance of connecting and investing in people. And I think at our best and as Chief Executive at my best, I think we've built really strong mutually beneficial trusted relationships, be it with funding partners, operational partners, and we've made it more than just sort of a great cause. We've invested in people, almost made it part of a family. Whereas as a Chief Executive, I stumbled
00:26:58
Speaker
often it's about failing to properly invest in the right people in the right way. That sort of leadership lesson is just being mindful of your privileged position as a chief exec and part of your role is to enable others to be the very best of themselves and that involves deeply investing in them as people and the result
00:27:18
Speaker
you can achieve great things, but if you fail to do that, that's where you can come unstuck. So there are many more, as you'd probably expect, but I'd say those three, which is all about that belief and purpose. Secondly, it's about making those goals audacious and big and bold. And thirdly, it's about investment in people.
00:27:35
Speaker
I love the idea of big, hairy, audacious goals, and I absolutely share with you the fundamental belief in the mission and having that clarity of vision and purpose is so key as a chief exec and as you are leading a team as well. And just to probe a little bit more there, Tim, looking back at your leadership journey, what advice would you give to yourself on day one of becoming a CEO? That's a terrific question.
00:27:59
Speaker
We do write ourselves, you know, first hundred day plans, last hundred day plans, et cetera. But we go out the door on day one of joining an organisation. Exactly. So, look, I suppose the only advice you can give yourself is not to be too harsh on yourself, but make sure that what you're doing stands up to your own professional integrity and professional standards. So I would certainly say the thing that we probably learnt en route, which I'd like to have been able to send back to myself, you know, as
00:28:28
Speaker
As we start to professionalize the organization, it's a simple one. It's to think like a system and act like an entrepreneur. So to be prepared to, as you problem solvers, you approach objectives and plans, et cetera, to really be prepared, okay, what do we need to do to operate as our best in terms of the system within which we're working?
00:28:51
Speaker
And then as you've got that sort of systematic piece agreed and set, you almost then change gear and then say, okay, now we need to act like an entrepreneur. We've agreed on systematic input. What does sort of...
00:29:06
Speaker
behaviors we want to see in order to bring that plan and that systematic piece to life. And that can be very different from being systematic. It can be actually finding the right, for example, a balance between country autonomy and global consistency. Very difficult to do, but entrepreneurial behaviors can find a way through. I was reading a piece recently described that as global behaviors, which is what social entrepreneurs
00:29:30
Speaker
in a need to do. Think globally but be prepared to support the right kind of local behaviours. I think glocal was the term that they were using. I like that. Think like a system and act like an entrepreneur and I think the culture piece is also really important here because as the leader you are essentially cultivating a culture that is going to bring out those behaviours that we want to see in order to bring those plans to life
00:29:56
Speaker
And I think actually to flip that glocal adage on its head, I think there's also a need to really think locally and then bring that up into a more global scope. And I think that is something that UWS does really well because all of our programs and the entities in countries are essentially set up independently and there is decentralization of the programs and engagement with the communities really at the grassroots.
00:30:24
Speaker
and then bringing it up to look at, okay, globally, how are we bringing all of that together and tying those threads together in order to have a bigger impact? Completely agree, and that, I think, has been how we've managed the last 18 plus months with some real success.
00:30:40
Speaker
which is all about that local partnership and local leadership, which has had to come to the absolute forefront of everyone's thinking. What we've managed to achieve with some fantastic local social entrepreneurs leading every step is significant.
00:30:58
Speaker
And there's no way that anybody sat in London or any other city around the world whilst the global pandemic is going on. There's no way that their direct action is going to make a blind bit of difference, but facilitating, supporting, enabling, encouraging others to act locally in the right way for their community is something we can do. And I think we've done that with a lot of success and we should be massively proud of our teams for doing so.
00:31:19
Speaker
Absolutely. So Tim, this feels like a good point in the conversation to ask you. What are you most proud to have accomplished at United World Schools? That's a very common question and the first thing I think I'm most proud of is the collective
00:31:37
Speaker
impact that a big group of people have made and I'll be forever indebted to countless people who have supported the last 10 years and I think every single person you all know who you are should be very very proud actually of what has been collectively achieved because you know it is so true that that concept of being greater than the sum of your parts we've brought together
00:32:03
Speaker
business people, we've brought together Indigenous minority communities, we've brought together corporates, we've brought together schools, and we've brought people together which have achieved, actually, I think, something which is very special. We're now approaching 50,000 enrolments in around 270 schools over the last 10 or so years.
00:32:21
Speaker
is impressive numbers and so I think the team should be massively proud and everyone involved should be massively proud. At a very geeky level, now this is going to sound really quite sad, one of the things I'm most proud of about the organisation is we've maintained the focus on the child in school throughout and that has been the driver of the mission.
00:32:44
Speaker
So, you know, like anyone who's run an organization, it's not all plain sailing. There are plenty of row bumps on route and we should all expect that. But to a person, we've all been passionate about that eight-year-old Indigenous minority girl whose mum and dad are illiterate and whose only life pathway as an illiterate eight-year-old is to become a farmer or a mum.
The Name and Vision of United World Schools
00:33:06
Speaker
Well, actually, we're changing that. I think we could be incredibly proud of being able to transform lives through education and make sure that eight-year-old girl and hundreds and thousands of others have got a much different life pathway. So deeply proud of the collective impact. And in a funny way, Divya, look, it means a lot to be transitioning the CEO role to you. And, you know, we recruited a fabulous CEO and I'm delighted to be taking it forward.
00:33:31
Speaker
Well, thank you, Tim. Thank you so much. This has been such an enjoyable and really inspirational discussion. And actually, one other question that I did have for you, which I've been curious about for a little while, is where does the name United World Schools come from? Who came up with that name and why was it chosen?
00:33:49
Speaker
It's a reference to some of the founding trustees who were alumni of United World Colleges, which is a fabulous organization. There's some brilliant work more at the sort of secondary and years 12 and 13, grade 13 level. But they do some fabulous work and very much globally minded in their approach, but it was alumni of that system who were many of the founding trustees.
00:34:16
Speaker
the partner school element of what we do, you know, twinning more affluent schools with community schools around the world, makes them united, recognising world, our global community, but uniting world schools. It's come together and although it's a very grand title, you know, sometimes I think one needs to talk it up and sometimes by talking it up you can become much bigger than what you initially were, which is part of the fun.
00:34:39
Speaker
Absolutely. Well, I'm glad I asked you that question because now I know. May I sort of turn the table slightly? I know you're the expert interviewer here, but if I could just do a little bit of poor man's impersonation. Go for it. It'd be great just to hear a little bit from you because I've heard you ask this question to many, many people over the last three series. So I'm very glad to be able to ask this now of Divya O'Connor. Divya O'Connor, as an experienced charity CEO, what's your superpower?
00:35:10
Speaker
Well, I believe that I have many superpowers, but I think the one that is most current and most relevant to my professional life is that I translate ideas into action. Brilliant. So that's my answer, Tim. Give me one little example. Put a tiny bit of colour on that. Reflect on that superpower in action at some point recently.
00:35:34
Speaker
Well, just as an example off the top of my head is this podcast. It was something that as an idea and a concept that I started in lockdown last year whilst I was on maternity break. And at the time I knew absolutely nothing about podcasting. In fact, I didn't even listen to podcasts that much.
00:35:50
Speaker
But I had this idea for the charity CEO podcast and I thought it was a good idea. And I believe that it's my ability to take an idea and then to really think about the best way to bring that idea to life. For example, in terms of research or resources or engaging the best technical skills and expertise that has really been critical in my ability to not just launch the podcast, but also ensure it's ongoing success because here we are in season three.
00:36:20
Speaker
And I've actually been absolutely blown away by how much of a following it has gained and how much value it has created within the wider sector. And I'm really pleased to be helping disseminate some of these great ideas and the conversations that I'm having with many leaders across the sector across a much wider group of listeners and
Scaling Impact through Collaboration
00:36:42
Speaker
audience. So that's one example sort of on both personal and professional level in terms of translating ideas into action.
00:36:49
Speaker
Absolutely. Let's play that forward. I'm sure all of your listeners are also really, really interested to hear about your CEO journey and your plans for United World Schools moving forward. It'd be great to hear just a little bit more about your vision for the future for UWS, building on what we've achieved to date.
00:37:07
Speaker
Well, I think the future is really exciting. There are so many possibilities and opportunities to create change. And when I think about the future in the United World Schools context, one number that keeps coming up that we haven't really touched upon so far is 258 million.
00:37:27
Speaker
258 million children who are currently out of school across the world, and that is a big number. It's a scary number and one could look at it and think, oh my gosh, how do we make a dent in that? And so when I look to the future of UWS, I think about it in terms of what is our secret source?
00:37:48
Speaker
What is it that UWS does really well and that we do so well that it is difficult for others to replicate? Or in business terms, what is our competitive advantage? And Tim, you've alluded to this in some of what you've talked about already. But to take that metaphor further, if we are able to clearly identify all of the ingredients of our secret sauce and almost patent it and bottle it in order to then mass produce it,
00:38:15
Speaker
I believe that will give UWS the ability to really deliver impact at scale. And so that is my vision for the future of UWS. And as we are starting to develop our strategy and our business plan for the next few years, I would really like to keep the idea of leveraging our secret source, as I call it, at the heart of our thinking. And I think it's really important to have that clarity of vision and purpose.
00:38:38
Speaker
Because that enables us also to make key strategic decisions, for example, when we are considering delivery mechanisms or expansion, as we are looking to scale and really move the organisation into its next stage of development and growth, where do we focus our finite resources is going to be an important question.
00:39:00
Speaker
If listeners want to hear more about models that support delivering impact and scale, I would really encourage you to listen to episode 26, which is my conversation with Alistair Harris, Executive Director of Blue Ventures, because we do explore this concept in a lot more detail. Tim, to come back to you now and in closing, do you have any final thoughts or reflections that you would like to share? What is one thing that you would like listeners to take away from this conversation?
00:39:30
Speaker
think just listening to you there Divya was absolutely inspiring and we've got a very scary big number out there which is 250 plus million out of school children of different ages around the world and that is exactly as you say it's a big and scary number on the other hand we know that by moving to action and it takes courage takes confidence to move to action but actually you can achieve an awful lot and it's amazing what a what a group of absolutely committed people can do if they
00:39:58
Speaker
if they get out there and get busy and start to tackle this. And if United World Schools can bottle some of what we've learned over the last 10 years and really leverage it, that's an incredibly exciting proposition. Hopefully that means we're doing what the best organizations should be doing, which is with each appointment of a senior leader, you build the talent and capability and you compliment each other as you move forward. And so it's incredibly exciting to hear that's part of the plan. And I can't wait to be cheering on from the sidelines.
00:40:26
Speaker
Absolutely. Thank you. And actually, if I could just add to that, I think particularly in the post COVID context, a collaborative approach to solving some of the big world problems is really, really important. And I know, Tim, that this is something that you actually started at UWS in terms of a partnership approach.
00:40:44
Speaker
And so going into Madagascar recently in terms of the pilot was very much done in partnership with Blue Ventures who are already established in that jurisdiction as a partner on the ground. And I think that sort of partnership model is going to be really, really valuable as we are looking to scale. So how do you bring together different organizations who can each deliver a specific part of the value chain in order to provide holistic support to a community that you're looking to serve?
00:41:12
Speaker
And I think there's something really key in how we look to leverage that as well. Super exciting. Absolutely brilliant. Thank you very much, Tim. That was so much fun. Thank you for being a guest on the show. My pleasure and can't wait to listen to future episodes as well. Really, really enjoying them.
00:41:31
Speaker
What a great conversation with Tim Howess, the founding CEO and my predecessor at United World Schools. This idea of an organization's unique secret source is one that I genuinely believe should be brought to the foreground when developing organizational strategy and growth plans. And I'm particularly interested in how different charities can combine their individual secret sources to provide a wholesome, nutritious and complete meal for the beneficiaries and communities that together we serve.
Closing Remarks
00:42:01
Speaker
I believe that the path to scale and delivering impact at scale lies in working together and leveraging the power of collaboration and partnership. And so with respect to the future of United World Schools, watch this space.
00:42:16
Speaker
I hope you enjoyed this latest episode of the Charity CEO podcast. A show that, thanks to you, our listeners, has repeatedly reached the number one spot in Apple's non-profit podcast category. If you found this conversation valuable, please help spread the word. Share or tag us on Twitter or LinkedIn or Instagram, and make sure you subscribe to the show by clicking the subscribe button on your podcast app.
00:42:38
Speaker
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