Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Big Impact Astronomy where we explore stories of how the stars are changing lives and connecting communities around the world. From stargazing under war torn skies to bringing science education to isolated communities, we uncover the incredible impact of astronomy beyond the observatory.
This episode of Big Impact Astronomy is brought to you by Primalucha Labs. Prima Lucha Labs makes space exploration accessible for all and empowers communities worldwide through innovative educational astronomy solutions.
Welcome everyone. I'm Mike Simmons, the founder of Astronomy for Equity. And today on the podcast we have a longtime friend and colleague, Kevin Govender joining us from home in Cape Town, South Africa.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Kevin.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Kevin is the founding director of the Office of Astronomy for Development which is a partnership between the International Astronomical Union and the South African National Research Foundation. The OAD has created 11 different regional offices since it began, oh, let's see, 13 or 14 years ago. I'll get that right from Kevin. And language centers also around the world. And one of the big things is they have an annual call for proposals for small grants that have totaled over 1.4 million euros to date to support 236 projects targeting around 2 million people in 112 different countries around the world.
And it's fantastic work. And some of the other people who have gotten these grants are our guests on this program as well. Kevin's also a director of the African Astronomical Society and he has chaired the organizing committee recently of the triennial IAU General assembly that took place last August in Cape Town. The first time it was in Africa and the first time I ever didn't want it to end after two weeks in another another country. It was fabulous. He also serves in various roles including management team of the South African Astronomical Observatory, Governing Board of the International Training center in Astronomy under UNESCO, the Working Group on the South African national astro tourism strategy, etc. Etc. He has a lot of experience before this from many community development initiatives in post apartheid South Africa, which is a very interesting time as well. We may talk about. And he was one year named one of the Mail and Guardians top 200 young South Africans. He's received a number of awards. I don't think I'll go through them all here because it's too much. He's just a very cool guy, that's all. Welcome Kevin.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Thanks very much, Mike.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: It's always a pleasure to talk to you in. In last year in Cape Town we didn't get enough time to sit down and chat because of course you were running the biggest astronomy conference in the world.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: So yeah, I had one or two other Things keeping me occupied. But, yeah, I wish we had more time to sit down here.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Absolutely. And. And we built. We will. We're both busy guys. So I came to South Africa, to Cape Town at the beginning of the OAD's work, as for the stakeholders meeting.
And I had been doing international astronomy work and was running Astronomers Without Borders, which I had created at that time, and there were people from all around the world. And remind me, I'm guessing that was 2011. Do I have that right?
[00:03:57] Speaker B: Okay, yeah, that was in the end of 2011. Now, the office was established in March 2011, and we had our first stakeholders workshop in December 2011.
[00:04:09] Speaker A: And it took a while to get going, as it often would, and I think it takes a while to find the footing for every new effort. I'm wondering, you know, we came in and said, and I've been through this before, what, okay, here we are. Now what are we going to do? And you know, what the mission is, you know, the reason for existing, but you don't know quite how you're going to accomplish that yet. Is that right? What were the early years like? And. And how did you get started here? Tell us first what the mission of the OAD is and your thoughts on getting it going and finding your footing.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: When we started, I think we were really finding our way with this idea. It was initiated by George Miley.
The OAD was meant to champion the implementation of the IAU strategic plan. In 2009, you know, when we sat down with our first steering committee led by George Miley, and, you know, having already on the team, you know, Ian Corbett, Bob Williams, Patricia Whitelock, you know, really amazing set of people. And we're thinking, how do we capture what we want to do with this office? And it was then that it was Patricia Whitelock, actually, that in this meeting I remember, she just said, well, why don't we just say astronomy for a better world? And that's really sort of captured the spirit of it, is that, you know, we just want to make the world a better place, and we want to figure out how we can do it with. With the astronomy field. How all aspects of astronomy can be used in some way, whether it's the. The science, the technology, the inspirational power, the cultural influence. How we can use astronomy to make the world a better place and finding our way around it has been sort of rooted in the guiding principle of humility, in that, you know, we as the astronomy community don't necessarily know what development means or what community needs, and we need to speak to People outside of astronomy. We need to engage with people that might have nothing to do with astronomy, but who understand better than we do. You know, how to improve a community, a society. From that outset, we pushed the idea of engaging as many people as possible. So the first stakeholder workshop that you attended, Mike, was really meant to sort of throw it out there, try and get ideas from as many people as possible.
And the principle of an open call came out of that that we've been running since 2012. In 2012, the year after the Stakeholders Workshop, we launched the first of the annual call for proposals. And it was a principle that anyone, anywhere in the world could come up with ideas and apply for funding for some way of using astronomy to benefit dead communities. And that's been sort of one of the core pillars of the oad. And the numbers that you mentioned earlier, it's been consistent. We've kept the call going throughout every year, and it's been championed by Ram Venugopal. He's really been the driving force of the projects. And in the principle of humility and one office, not knowing what's best for every part of the world, was the establishment of the regional offices. And these 11 regional offices and language centers was really about getting sort of coordination points in different regions of the world who understand the regional context, the local environment, and the local needs, and so they could drive activities within that region. These two aspects, having an open call and having regions driving activities. For a long time, that was our main sort of implementation. And then from that emerged the flagship projects or special projects that as we saw good ideas coming out from different parts of the world, we focused on those to try and have bigger impact.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: Yeah, it's been quite a transformation. I've been able to see how things have changed. Some things I thought, yeah, I don't know about that worked out fantastic. And I'm sure there are things that I don't know about. It didn't work out quite so well too, because that's part of innovating. I mean, you guys.
You guys are doing things that nobody has ever done before. And that's just the nature of entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship. This podcast is meant for many things. One of them is to answer the question, why astronomy? Why are you looking up there when we have pro problems down here on the ground? And I realized that I know so many people around the world who are using astronomy to accomplish things down here on the ground. That basically the old adage, you give a man officially for a day, teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime. And, and I'd been questioned about why I'm working on sending telescopes to Tanzania when what they need more is food. And you and I know both know the, the. The answer to that because they need the educated people. They need to develop their infrastructure in many ways.
So now I've learned a lot of ways in which we can do this.
And my new initiative, Astronomy for Equity, sounds like it's doing the same thing you guys are doing. And I. I don't like to do things other people are doing, but in fact, they're very complementary because your grants, I think they have a limit of €10,000, something like that.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: There's no hard limit, but, yeah, like, on average, it's around 10,000. I think the most we've granted is about 15,000.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: Yeah. And the projects are helping individual projects in different places where the people there have what they need. They just need a little boost to get things done. And that's exactly the same with what I'm doing, too. Difference is, I like to do things a single program at scale that helps all those people. So we, we know a lot of the same people. We run in the same circles. And the whole idea is to support the people who are out there doing it.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: The reality is that when one tries to sort of make a big impact in the world, it's about sort of trying to collaborate with as many efforts as possible. And I think what's being done with Astronomy for Equity and with the oed, and now we have the oao, which is the Office for Astronomy Outreach in Japan. We have the Office of Astronomy for Education in Germany. It's all about, like, trying to sort of synchronize, you know, and work together to make sure that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. So, yeah, we also of the opinion, I mean, you know, as many people working together as possible.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: In fact, you mentioned the other offices. One project that we're doing, I'm looking for funding now if there are any billionaires out there who want. It's not going to take a billion dollars, but, you know, it's fundraising. After the eclipse last year, I've gathered up the eclipse in the United States, gathered up over a million solar eclipse glasses that were left over. And I can get more because I know the manufacturers and the retailers and so on, and we started shipping some of them. But the idea is to have one big global program where instead of support shipping to each one, each one of many places, we'll have 50 organizations in 50 different countries. That are already working with people on the ground there. And so that's something that we can only do really, at scale like this, produce the central resources to empower a specific group of people, not in a particular location, but who are all doing the same thing. I'm working with the OAO on that. The OAE helped us to is a partner and shipped out for education, shipped out the first batch of glass, 130,000 to 12 different countries to many of the people that you know and I know around the world as well, and who are guests on this podcast.
So we each have our part, the things that we can do, the things that we focus on, but together we can accomplish a lot, a lot more.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: Things have evolved in the OAD over the years, and now you have flagships that you're focusing kind of the same way that my 50 years of doing outreach, I'm focused focusing now on particular things that we're doing in A for E. Tell us about this. Why?
In one sense, when you focus more, you're narrowing what you can do.
Doesn't sound good. On the other hand, by focusing what we're doing now, as opposed to the big broad view before we can do a better job on those things, tell me what the philosophy is behind that and how these are developed and tell us about those flagships.
[00:13:42] Speaker B: So the principle of the flagships was really about sort of the next level. You know, it's a. It's a level up from our projects, because with our projects we get a broad spectrum of projects addressing, you know, all sorts of different challenges. What we decided is that if we continued on the same path, then we will have lots of projects over the years, but not necessarily a global coordinated impact. You know, lots of little communities will be. Will be affected, there'll be impact on a local scale. But how do we now scale that up? And you know, the term that was used by the steering committee at the time, in fact, it was Khoto Mukele that was chairing, and he said, what are your blockbuster projects? You know, what are the projects that has emerged from all these ideas from around the world that we want to take and implement everywhere? That was the philosophy, is that, you know, we're getting all these different ideas and really, really great ideas, and which of those ideas can have the legs to basically be rolled out globally? And from those projects, from sort of looking at international development trends, from looking at having engagements with our regional offices, with our partners, we came up with these sort of flagship themes. And currently there's Three of these flagships that we're focusing on. The first one is looking at economic development in rural areas, and that's mainly in the form of astronomy tourism, but it's basically trying to stimulate economic development. It's also looking at things at, like, you know, how do you create businesses within, you know, using some aspect of astronomy. For example, at the IU General assembly last year, we brought in small businesses into the conference itself. So is there a way that astronomy can stimulate economic development? The second flagship is on using the inspirational aspects of astronomy. So we know that astronomy is a very inspiring science. We've seen firsthand how it moves people and we've tied this to one of the biggest challenges in the world at the moment, which is mental health. Several people have referred to mental health as a hidden pandemic globally. So we've teamed up with psychologists, with a social worker. The lead in, in the OED at the moment is Dominic Virtue. He's a social worker by training. And we looked at how you can take this inspirational power of astronomy and use it to have a positive impact on mental health. And so this is everything from getting out into a dark sky, you know, being sort of out in nature, to sort of the sense of all that comes from understanding what, you know, our place in the universe is, and, and so on. And then the third flagship is on the skills and infrastructure from astronomy, so especially data skills. So when we analyze astronomical data, you know, we push the limits of our technology, we push, you know, data skills. And so how do we apply that? Firstly, to use our data skills to analyze data outside of astronomy, data that deals with development, with agriculture, with climate and so on. But also, how can we spread these skills so that people who have nothing to do with astronomy can actually have these skills and apply these skills themselves to other areas of science, of society. So these are the three flagships. And the idea is that, you know, these flagships can be sort of packaged, can be rolled out by the regional offices that we can have focused fundraising drives for these projects. So, for example, if we get a funder that is very interested in mental health, then could they fund a rollout of these projects to the different regions and so on? So it's really about trying to find what works from all the many projects we funded around the world and, and then try to develop them and roll them out.
[00:18:13] Speaker A: That's very similar process that I went through myself and doing the same thing. What are the things that are really looking at, what's the common thread across the things we're doing. And it took me quite a while before I came up with what the things are in astronomy for equity that really mattered. And there's a certain part of all the projects that have some of that in their mental health is an important part of many things. And, you know, I sent telescopes to astronomy students in Ukraine and then went to Ukraine last year to meet them and hand out some more. And that's an important aspect of it when it's something that they have an opportunity to do. They did put it more practically pragmatically when they contacted us and said, well, our power goes out and we get dark skies, so we need telescopes. But, you know, that's not all there is to it, because you go outside of the city if you want to, for the dark skies, the rural areas, especially the data aspect. I do do things like that occasionally too. And that's my background is in data analysis in another field. But they're very similar. And I think, you know, that I've stopped talking about underserved communities because everybody I know is helping underserved communities, and nobody is helping most of the rest of the world. So I call them unserved. They don't have that makes the point. And people are willing, but they just don't have the reach. So the rural areas and they have in common being marginalized, perhaps as girls in some countries, or being blind, you have projects for all these things too. Blind people who don't get a chance to learn about astronomy and all of these different things. So can you give an example? I mean, these are aspects of all these little projects you do. Are you going about this with the flagships now in terms of creating larger programs that roll out everywhere in the way that we're doing? Or is it a different aspect, just really the focus and encouraging the regional centers or the applicants for project? How are these implemented?
[00:20:36] Speaker B: I think every project we find our way, you know, and we're always looking for better ways of doing things for different partners. So to give you an example with the when we're talking about rural economic development and astronomy tourism, we contributed to the South African astro tourism strategy. And this strategy, it's driven by the Department of Science Technology Innovation and the Department of Tourism together and is an example for the rest of the world. So that's something that, you know, has evolved, but it's something that we've been close enough that we can learn from it and we can take the lessons from this and spread it to other parts of the world. And that's policy change, which if we implement this in other countries of the world, it would have a very high level impact because, you know, once a policy is implemented, then it comes with funding with sort of a drive from the governments.
With the Mental Health Project, for example, we've been engaging with psychologists, with psychology researchers and also with mental health practitioners. And so as that one's evolved, it's been, you know, we've sort of found a place where we don't want to sort of pretend to be therapists, you know, astronomers and, you know, outreach, professional science communicators. We're not trained to give therapy or counseling and so we positioned it as something where we provide support or we provide context. So for example, an implementation of the mental health program would be where you have a trained psychologist or therapist in the presence of an astronomer. The astronomer can talk about the things that they know about while the psychologist leads any sort of, you know, support or therapy, you know, within that context, what is relevant to that. So that as a rollout now, you know, we're looking at, in parallel doing sort of training for science communicators to encourage them to partner with psychologists to develop guidelines so that science communicators around the world can just take these freely available guidelines and build it into their activities. But in parallel to that, we want to also get the published research in partnership with psychologists to demonstrate that astronomy is a good tool for mental health. These are different approaches. And then I'll just mention quickly, on the data skills side, this has emerged into a partnership with various other institutions, including the Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy with the data program developed in Africa, through radio astronomy, with the African Astronomical Society, with the BRICS Astronomy Group. And this has evolved into a series of hackathons, so short, intense workshops where people use the infrastructure in astronomy. So we use the Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy. They have cloud computing infrastructure and we use their infrastructure to analyze data. And that data need not be from the astronomy field, it can be from, from any field. And we bring people together for these intensive workshops. And so at the moment it's being led by Islam Hussain, who's, who's based now at Leeds university in the UK. And you know, he's been coordinating 13 regional hackathons where, you know, he started off training leads, hackathon leads, and then they go out and run regional hackathons. So each project sort of, you know, evolves on its own and we, we sort of try to adapt as we, you know, find our way to see what's the best impact in that particular context.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: We Both know plenty of People with PhDs in astronomy Astronomy who end up going into, for example, financial services because they have the data skills and there aren't enough jobs in astronomy, so they're doing postdocs everywhere. One thing that strikes me there is in astronomy. I studied astronomy in college and went into a different field professionally. But my world has been the outreach astronomers around the world. And those are mainly the ones that I deal with and support through the work they do because there are so many thousands of them everywhere. And it seems to me the training. I do have a project I've been discussing with someone else about training amateur astronomers and doing outreach because they don't come. They come into it with a love of astronomy. They don't come into it with speaking skills, necessarily, or teaching skills. And they're all very different. And the mental health aspect of it, looking at how inspiring astronomy is, which, you know, if you stand at a telescope for years and years and years like I've done, you see what impacted it has changes the people.
So it seems like something where you might. I don't even know. I just. I think of things and I can't stop suggesting, hey, what about this? But part of it would could be training for amateur astronomers around the world in terms of understanding the inspiration. Yeah, it brings because they feel. They feel it, but they don't know how to translate it to other people necessarily.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: That's a key part of the project.
It's running trainings. So we've had a workshop at the CAP conference, the Communicating Astronomy public conference.
We're developing more tools, and we want to empower amateur astronomers, you know, science communication outreach professionals. It's like this thing, you know, to give you a quick example, you know, if you say to someone that, you know, if you talk about our place in the universe and you say to someone, look, we're this tiny planet, you know, a little speck in this grand universe. It can really trigger someone who suffers from depression, anxiety, or, you know, things like that. And so the language that you use has to be sensitive to what challenges someone. Someone might have. But you take the same concept and you say, you know, well, we might be just a speck, but this is the only speck in this massive universe that we know of, has life. And so it's a very, very, very special spec, you know, and so the language one uses and the way one conveys these things, you know, with the help of our psychology colleagues, we can figure out the right messaging so that we can equip amateur amateur astronomers Outreach professionals to have that sort of, you know, sensitivity in the back of their minds and also the potential sort of positive aspects of, you know, just as the sun sets every day, so will. You know, that consistency is that no matter how overwhelming your problems seem, the sun will rise tomorrow. And, you know, that sort of messaging that we can get in there. And yeah, we need the help of the psychology professionals to get that messaging right.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: Looking at the sky and understanding the universe can make you feel very, very small. But it also shows you that you're a part of something very much bigger. Very much.
And that connection is really important. And, you know, in the past, I've used it originally in connecting people around the world through astronomy, which nobody else was doing at the time.
[00:28:30] Speaker B: Time.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: It's being done a lot now. And that really helped with the places that I went to be connected to others in countries that. That maybe there were more advantages, more assets, wealthier countries, I guess I have to say.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: Absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, with. With all the places that you've been to, Mike, I think you've had that firsthand experience of how powerful the sky is to. To unite people and to. And to inspire people. I think this is, you know, like, how do we sort of capture that and spread it? You know, how do we make like a hundred mics, you know, a thousand mics to travel the world and reach places that we haven't reached yet?
[00:29:17] Speaker A: You know, you know, I go to these places first and foremost because I love it, but mainly because I can make a difference there. Same reason we're all doing this. We're not making the big bucks doing this kind of work, you know, so it's not the reason. Ukraine, for example, I asked them several times, and the person I was talking to started an NGO for the students in Ukraine. She's a psychologist working with UNESCO. And is this a good thing for the students? Because if it's a good thing for the students, I'll do it. And of course, it was a wonderful trip, and I love meeting the students, but we're there to support the people there and encourage them in what they're doing.
You know, what. What more could you want out of life? I. For me, I don't know. That's the height of it. I'm there because I get invited.
Just like you're saying, you know, trust the people on the ground. If they say, yeah, it would be good to have you here, I'm there, you know, why not? But I. I do.
[00:30:16] Speaker B: We need to clone you, Mike.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: I think One is that we. I think that would be like matter and antimatter destroy the universe.
And, you know, I know lots of people have been to more places than I have. The thing is that I just pick places that happen to be war zones or other things like that. So Iraq a couple of times, Iran many times not that common for Americans. Ukraine, I'll pretty much go anywhere. But the need is greater in these places. Also in the rural areas. The work that you're doing, what is going to happen now that you have these flagships, you have these many, many projects that happen in the same places that I want to impact, but in a different way through a different kind of a program. And they're doing a lot of good locally, like you say, but a lot of localities. It's not just a local program, it's a worldwide program affecting things in specific locales. Are the grants, the grant programs remaining the same despite the fact that you have the flagships now, or are they?
[00:31:29] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. No. One of the most important things when moving to the flagship model, or not moving, but like building, bringing in the flagship model, was that we maintain always the component of an open call, because the thing is, we will always have new ideas and new projects because we always have new challenges, because the world is changing all the time and we have to adapt. And so we can't let go of the innovative space because we think that flow flagships would work now.
You know, during COVID for example, no one saw it coming and, and. But we had to pivot during COVID and we made a special call for ways in which astronomy can help to deal with the effects of COVID And so we have to have that space for innovation all the time. So the flagships are ways in which we want to try and make, you know, a big impact in space specific areas. But there'll always be the open call for proposals as well.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I know that every year you are learning something from the people in the most isolated areas doing some work, who say, hey, here's what we're doing here and we want your support. And I'm sure you look at many of these and go, wow, that's different. You know, let's see if we can do something more with that, because absolutely, we're really here to support everybody else. You're like my long lost brother. You know, we think so much. I know we don't look like we come from the same family, but, you know, but the philosophy behind it is the same. And I think that you, you've probably Been to more countries than I have. And that experience is what really makes the difference. To see what's really, really going on someplace. Never what you expect, never. And I think that's, that's what's important.
I'm gonna ask you something I, I don't think I've ever known and have never asked. So I'm going to do it right here.
There's money that goes into all this. Who is paying these grants? You know, you have quite a few grants every year. Who's paying for all this?
[00:33:43] Speaker B: Yeah, the funding for the projects comes from the iau. So the, so the International Astronomical Union operates on its membership fees. And so all the grants that we pay out of that comes from the iu. And then we establish partnerships so that we can supplement that. And at the moment the IU hired a fundraiser so that we can form more partnerships to do get even more projects. Because at the end of the day, we have a working system of project proposals and review and things like that. And you know, whether you're spending a hundred thousand euro on the projects or a million euros on the projects, the process is still there. If we can get more funding into that pot, then we'll be able to fund either more projects or larger amounts per project. And so the IU fundraiser is now helping us to figure out ways in which we can supplement that funding. But yeah, all the project funding comes from the iu and then our operations funding comes jointly, some from the iu, but largely from the South African government.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: South Africa is one of the leaders in the world in astronomy, professional astronomy, research, astronomy, one of the biggest telescopes in the world. And it really stands out from the rest of Africa, especially sub Saharan Africa. It is a relatively well off country. And there the South African government, and maybe it's all through the nrf, is supporting a great deal of what you're doing and many other things, the African Astronomical Society office and many other things. So just tell us a little bit about that. Is this an internal thing to improve the situation in South Africa? Is South Africa doing a lot in order to support what's going on Africa wide? What's behind all.
[00:35:53] Speaker B: I think we are very lucky in South Africa in that the rationale behind supporting a subject like astronomy is a very visionary one. It was the country saying that we need to reach for the stars. It was an aspirational choice of investment. You know, a very famous white paper on science and technology that was released soon after the onset of democracy. Onset. I wonder if that's the right word. After we became a democracy in 1994. By 1996, this white paper on science and technology came out which famously spoke about, you know, looking beyond feeding and clothing ourselves and trying to invest in flagship sciences, sciences where we have geographic advantage or some other advantage and you know, being really good at it. And what that choice of investment has led to has been incredible because, you know, you have one of the hardest sciences in terms of just like, you know, how do you figure out, like, you know, what's going on just unreachable distances away at unimaginable scales at how do you work out the evolution of a galaxy when we only live for a fraction compared to the life of a galaxy? Like just the biggest and hardest problems we can imagine. And then here you have this little country that sort of makes its name globally in terms of the subject. And you know, what I think the South African government has achieved, has aimed to achieve and has achieved was to say to the world that look at what we are capable of. And they've done this not just with the country alone, but with the continent, by supporting astronomy across the continent. We are trying to change the narrative of Africa because it's a message that, you know, if we on the African continent can take one of the most challenging of human knowledge, you know, the biggest challenge that we can think of, the biggest problems we can think of, and we can do that, well, then imagine what else we can do. If we can be amongst the world leaders in a subject like astronomy, imagine what we can do for everything else, for economy, for trade and industry.
And that, that I think is a very significant strategic reason for investing in astronomy. And yeah, the astronomers benefit, but also, you know, we inspire a lot of people across the country, including, you know, young people, not just to get into science, science, that's one aspect of it, but it's also to, to believe in themselves and to, and to reach for goals that might seem unreachable.
[00:38:48] Speaker A: You know, it does bring up to me a subject of the wealth gap which is increasing here in my country, the wealthiest in the world, as it has in the past.
And it's pretty stark in Africa too, the differences between the countries.
And that tends to be self supporting. It tends to, to actually increase by the nature of it, the people who are ahead have the ability to get farther ahead and the people behind have gotten a way to catch up.
There is this gap in South Africa still that carries on from that. And it's, and I imagine astronomy is being used to try and help climate close the gap too. In terms of education and awareness and. But crossing those borders. I've done a lot of things to cross country borders, cultural borders. That seems pretty easy compared to the wealth borders like this is that.
And this, this is one I don't know an answer to. So I don't know if you have any thoughts about this, Kevin, because you've seen the evolution and been a part of it.
[00:40:00] Speaker B: No, absolutely. Look, I think inequality remains one of the biggest challenges globally. South Africa is almost a microcosm of what's happening globally. The benefit of being in South Africa and growing up in South Africa is that you learn to sort of understand inequality if you're open to it. I think not everyone is open to it, but if you look at it globally, this is, you know, how the wealthiest countries of the world and the poorest countries of the world interact. There's gaps in everything that we do. This thing I said about trying to change how the world sees Africa is because most of the world's poorest countries are on this continent. And how do you change people's biases against what they see as poor people in South Africa? It is a country with, you know, one of the largest inequality in the world in, in terms of the society and most unequal societies in the world. One of. I'm not sure if it's the top one at the moment, but in a country like this, where you have this unequal society, how is it that we could transition from apartheid into a democracy? How is it that we can still live side by side and sort of hold the country together? And I think there's a spirit in South Africa, a spirit of, of hope of humanity that would benefit the rest of the world. When South Africa took its stance in terms of the conflicts in the Middle east and other parts of the world, it was a principled stance. The country has managed to maintain, how can I say, its moral authority globally. And I think this is an important thing, is that we recognize openly how unequal our society is and we work consistently at trying to sort of bridge this inequality gap, whether it's through the provision of social grants, whether it's through, you know, investment in social housing in mixed developments where there's low cost housing mixed with more expensive housing. But on a day to day basis, there's a sense of let's help each other. So, you know, if there's a natural disaster, flooding or drought or something that South Africa and South Africans, everyone who can help, helps. And we don't see this globally. Globally, countries that had wealth chose to Help those that didn't, then I think, you know, we'd see much more progress in the world. But when things are driven by money, where, you know, there's really strange situations that you hear of, like, you know, countries in Africa being forced to buy chickens from the U.S. there's all these funny agreements that are based on money and wealth and not humanity. So there's really something that, you know, I wish the world to learn from South Africa. It's about treating each other as human beings, you know, having a sense of humor together, having a sense of pride together as, as a united sort of people and just helping each other, just having respect for each other and helping each other.
[00:43:38] Speaker A: I agree 100% with that. And really, as far as I'm concerned, the glasses program that I mentioned will probably reach 3 million kids, maybe more. And the cost that I figured out with the budget so far is $0.10 per student per year. It's simple, you know, we had a million, Maybe I'll get 2 million of the glasses donated. Volunteers are going to help put the lessons together. We're shipping, which costs money in the real world to organizations that are already doing the work. And they're primarily as, you know, volunteers working with no money whatsoever. So it doesn't cost anything to do it with just a little bit of management, so so on. So the problem is not a lack of resources, it's the distribution of the resource. The same thing with what we're doing with the blind and low vision people. There are tons of resources about teaching people and there's. There are experts, but the stuff just hasn't been distributed. And I know groups around the world that want to do this. So we're going to get them together and they'll learn it. And that doesn't cost anything.
So, yeah, it's a distribution problem, and I hate to say that it's an empathy problem because I find that people, for example, in this country are really very, very generous, despite what you may hear.
Maybe I'm just dealing with a subset of people. They're the ones who donate.
But I've talked to people who talk about, you know, opposite end of the spectrum. For me, we need to take care of ourselves and stop spending money on all these causes and this and that. And then I tell them what I do and they're, wow, that's great, thank you. This just doesn't compute. They really do care.
It's a mindset. So the important thing about astronomy, as you know as well as I do, is that it's the Same everywhere. Okay. When I go to South Africa, I can't recognize any of the constellations because it's in the south. But, you know, it's part of the same sky, and we share the same sky, even if we don't see the same thing. But when I go to Tehran, it's exactly the same as it is for me in Southern California. We all have culture and traditions and music and food and various things like that, but it's different. It's affected by culture. Astronomy is the same.
And so it's very, very powerful. Now, I'm pontificating here, you're the guest. But I agree so strongly with you that I just want to reinforce the idea that astronomy really is very important. And now let's get to this. So this is just a few examples of projects. This is one where I know this, the people. In fact, Olenka, we've recorded her episode as of today when we're recording yours, and we have not published it yet, but it will be very soon. These are children in a internally displaced people refugee camp in northern Nigeria. And I supported a lot of what Oleinka and the team has done, and this was supported by a grant from the OAD as well. And I think you've done many there. It's the other thing I found that's universal. The kids are the same everywhere. They're wearing different.
[00:47:08] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:47:09] Speaker A: You know, but the pictures I take of kids around the world, the faces are just the same. This is one. And I don't know the.
[00:47:17] Speaker B: Maybe I should. I should just say on the previous picture, I visited Oleinka once and we went to that camp. You know, what they've managed to do.
[00:47:26] Speaker A: It's.
[00:47:26] Speaker B: It really, like, when you hear about the experiences of the kids, it really, you know, it's something where you can see why you need to be sensitive to the local environment. Because they didn't just take astronomy out into the camp, they went with counselors as well. And so it was a partnership between the astronomers and the trauma counselors because, like some of the kids, the things they had witnessed and, you know, the experiences that they've had, we're not equipped as astronomers, you know, to actually address that. And so that partnership is important. And we encourage all our projects to have established those partnerships based on the needs of that particular target audience.
[00:48:13] Speaker A: Well, I've always done things locally with people who are there and do my best to take any cues from them, but this is. And the same is true in Ukraine. For the most part, I'm not in a Place. Place like that. I didn't know about the consulars here. It makes perfect sense. This one.
I know others in Pakistan, but this is.
Let me see, what is this one? It's a group called Empowerment of Disadvantaged Rural Girl Children as Social Change Agents. This is a fabulous one.
And this is really important because.
And Olenka does the same thing in Nigeria. These are societies where the women, the girls are not brought up to be independent and do whatever they want. That's discouraged. And to provide this.
These opportunities to let them see what they can do and inspire them and give them hope is very important. And they. The part of it that's really important, I think, is as social change agents, they're empowering the women to be able to make a difference to their society in the future.
[00:49:27] Speaker B: For projects like these around the world, it's not just the target audience as well. I think something to bear in mind is that the people that lead the projects, the organizers, it's an important thing to have that connection with the iu, with the. The international astronomy community, because those team leaders, they are really the champions who will continue the work. And so we want to keep supporting the project even beyond the actual period of the grant funding. If there's ways in which we can use the sort of IU name, for example, to help raise funds and leverage funds, then we want to do that with each of the projects.
[00:50:08] Speaker A: And as much as these team leaders are inspiring the next generation of women leaders in their country, your support for them, whether it's big or small, is inspiring them, and that's really crucial. A little different than I've seen, this is value reorientation among inmates through astronomy also in Nigeria. And I've heard. Heard of people doing astronomy outreach in prisons and hospitals and various things like this, but this is a program, and the description of it gives it away as being something more than just doing outreach. Value reorientation among inmates through astronomy. So this is something I hadn't seen before. And this is. I've been doing this for 50 years, and this here's a new one to me, and I'm gonna have to read more about what they're doing here and how they're doing it with Astronomy. Maybe have them on the podcast.
[00:51:06] Speaker B: They're closely related to our West African regional office. And, you know, it's a spirit of how does one reintegrate into society after being in prison? You know, and. And they as well, have partnered with different groups and, you know, skill sets so that, you know, astronomy is supporting that reintegration Process. But you know, not saying that astronomy is going to be the silver bullet or something like that, but just part of the mix and they've managed to bring people together around this.
[00:51:39] Speaker A: Also it indicates down in the lower right hand corner, Carmelite prisoners interest organization. This is a church led perhaps project.
[00:51:50] Speaker B: And yeah, I don't, I don't know the details of the project, but they do have several partners from the local community.
[00:51:58] Speaker A: Yeah, very important. Well, there's one more thing that I want to bring up and that is the International Astronomical Union. IAU in its bit more than 100 years now had never had its general assembly which is held once every three years years in Africa. Until last year you chaired the organizing committee for that, for which I have great sympathy because I never met anyone who chaired the organizing committee for a GA that didn't say I had no idea. So.
And I think I mentioned this earlier that, that this was, it was so fabulous. I, I didn't. And I really enjoyed being back.
[00:52:45] Speaker B: That's a great compliment.
[00:52:48] Speaker A: But this, I'm going to show a few pictures from the meeting. Don't, don't go away audience. Because it's a professional scientific meeting and that's a real yawner even for those of us in the field. But I want to show you this one.
So this is not what I usually see at a science conference conference, but this one had a very big dose of Africana. And between that the African Astronomical Society meeting earlier in the year in Morocco, I was meeting people from all over the continent. The great thing about having in Africa is that if it's in Australia, you know, people in Uganda aren't going to be able to go, but people from the local area. And when I say local, I mean, you know, the whole continent of Africa are much more liable to make it. And this was a very African meeting and I just loved it. And you brought in the cultural aspects as well. And I don't remember which day this was, but I attended all the cultural things that were after the meetings. I don't remember anything about this other than these guys were great. And honestly I didn't care if they were great or not. I think there were some that were high school groups that had traveled there from Johannesburg or something like that. I don't care if they're terrible. It's fantastic. So from my, my stand, it's not about us. You know, we didn't pay t for tickets for this. It's about.
[00:54:23] Speaker B: Yeah, no, look, it was really an incredible, incredible event and, and I have no Regrets for being involved in this.
You know, we had some huge challenges to deal with. And, you know, not just like financial challenges and visa challenges and grants, but like, we also had challenges of perception, challenges of like, you know, is this going to be a good science meeting? And. And, you know, what we've managed to pull off is that it was an excellent science meeting.
It was a conference where you could walk into any room and find some of the best scientists in the world talking to a full room. But it was also a meeting that recognized the humanity of scientists. And I think that's what we were trying. And scenes like this with people sharing the culture. And it was not just African culture. We had a whole evening where anyone anywhere in the world could come and share their own cultures, their connections to astronomy and so on. You know, what we wanted to do with this was to push the limits of, you know, what we're used to in a conference and to show that, you know, when we do things in Africa, it's wood spirit. You know, it's with a. With a sense of humanity, it's with a sense of community. And that's what conferences should be. You know, conferences are about people getting together. People are going to come together to a place. We need to share our cultures and we need to see each other as human beings. And I think we managed to achieve that, but also what we managed to achieve with this is to also innovate, because the African continent is full. Full of innovators. You know, people may not realize how innovative you have to be to survive, because when you are. When you are spoiled for having water in your taps all the time and having electricity all the time, you don't actually build resilience. And the African continent is resilient. And as the world changes, this continent is. Which is the youngest continent in terms of just the population is going to have a significant role to play globally. And we wanted to showcase the innovative spirit of the continent. You know, most of our organizing committee, you know, came from poor backgrounds and the dances that you saw and other sort of groups and stuff where. Because, you know, we didn't go for, like, some big fancy company to, you know, bring in the entertainment. We went humbly, we went to people who we had contacts with where we. We found groups that had the heart, you know, and in the end of the day, it was something where innovation was built into every aspect. When we committed to principles, we committed to principles of accessibility, of impact, like societal impact and sustainability. And on accessibility, we made sure that the entire conference was Open access. It was the first time any IU conference was open access. And it paid off. We had over 14,000 views on YouTube for a conference with two and a half thousand people. We had a fully hybrid poster session, which is the first time I've ever seen one. But, you know, we built that poster session of 100 screens, 100 webcams. So we basically had 100 zoom rooms so that a poster presenter could be virtual or in person and the audience could be virtual or in person. And these sort of innovations, it was done in a way that, you know, for example, we, we didn't rent the screens and webcams, we bought them so that after the event they've been allocated to schools around the country. So the impact will go on in the venue itself. We had small businesses coming in and having an African craft market within the actual conference venue, involving local businesses, getting an NGO to make the conference bags using the mums of HIV positive kids. Every aspect of it, we thought about it and we, we not only pushed the innovation, but we also pushed the, the spirit and the humanity of things. And I think, to be honest, Mike, we've been getting so much good feedback. Yeah, it's. It's really been a really successful event. We even managed to balance the budget in the end, thanks to our participants, thanks to generous funding. And in the end, we had over 500 Africans together at Astronomy conference. So. So it was the biggest collection of African astronomers, students and astronomy community that ever was. So it was a huge benefit having it on the African continent.
[00:59:35] Speaker A: It was fantastic. And I actually went to the marketplace and I ended up buying something because I'm still buying things for the kids and the family. The younger generation is going, going back three generations from that NGO that you just mentioned because.
[00:59:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:59:49] Speaker A: It's more meaningful to me. And because the dollar is so strong, I couldn't pay them what they asked for. I had to give them double just to make it because they do such good. Well, it was nothing, seriously.
It was shockingly big difference between them. So, you know, you really did bring the, the academic conference down from the ivory tower in this one. I think, and I agree it is all about the people. That's what I go to conferences for.
[01:00:24] Speaker B: And I think this is the thing, you know, when you say bringing the ivory tower down. Like we did a simple thing like asked the participants, would you be willing to visit a school? And we had over 600 people, you know, putting their hands up. And so our team, you know, the outreach team, arranged all these logistics to get people out to the schools and we had more willing volunteers than just capacity to get them out to school. But through all the outreach efforts associated with the conference, we reached over 28,000 people. And you know, it was really a case of like, let's think about how to maximize the sort of societal impact of a big meeting like this.
[01:01:15] Speaker A: Well, I've seen things that were local before where they make an effort to benefit the local community and so on. And that's great.
This benefited a lot more and importantly, most importantly the continent. But it also benefited a lot of people who came to it that were exposed to some other things too. So it was terrific. And so Kevin, we didn't get a chance to catch up at the, at the ga and I will not be attending, I don't think the next African Astronomical Society meeting which will be in South Africa, but later this month. But we got got to catch up again sometime. But it's terrific talking to you.
I feel like either one of us could give a talk for the other few details added in because you know, we really are doing the same thing, feeling the same about how we use astronomy and the importance of astronomy and the reason it is unique amongst the science is really something and important culturally and heritage wise as well as scientifically. That's the scientific part is for a small segment, but astronomy is for everyone.
[01:02:31] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[01:02:32] Speaker A: So thank you very much for joining us. Kevin, I know it's getting late there in Cape Town. I appreciate your time, but it's been terrific talking to you.
This has been another episode of Big Impact Astronomy. I'm your host Mike Simmons. Jacob Sager is our technical producer. Our audio engineer is Ali Pelfrey. Big Impact Astronomy is produced by Astronomy for Equity, bringing astronomy to unserved communities worldwide. This episode of Big Impact Astronomy was brought to you by Primalucha Labs. Prima Lucha Labs make space exploration accessible for all and empowers communities worldwide through innovative educational astronomy solutions. Learn more about Astronomy for Equity, including how you can Support us at astro. The number4equity.org.
