“In order to work with people who have been left behind by life, you have to look like the solution, not the problem.” So says Bill Strickland, a remarkable social entrepreneur. As a high school kid in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, he lived in a tough neighbourhood where people had been given up for dead. He became interested in pottery and art, and managed to get a place in the University of Pittsburgh on probation; now he’s a trustee of the university.
Strickland is now running Manchester Bidwell, a vocational education institute, and his conversation is sprinkled with his passionate philosophy: “The only thing wrong with poor people is that they don’t have any money. That is a curable condition.” “It’s all the way you think about people that often determines their behaviour.” “If you give kids flowers and you give them sunlight and you give them enthusiasm, you can bring them right back to life.” “Children will become like the people who teach them.” “You must be prepared to act on your dreams just in case they do come true.”
Strickland was one of the speakers at TED conference in 2002. What motivates his to serve the poor? “I think that the world is a place worth living… I am tired of going into town after town with people standing round on corners with holes where their eyes used to be, their spirits damaged… We can turn this thing around.”