We Teach Children the Building Blocks to Succeed. How Are We Teaching Them What It Takes to Lead?

Much of how we show up and orient in the world as adults is rooted in the rules of engagement that we were taught as children.

While nature provides us with our baseline disposition, it is our experiences at home, in school, and through the extracurricular activities that make up our shared and individual experiences that shape our perception of our value in every room we enter.

If you take a moment to self-reflect, there are far more adults struggling with their sense of inherent value than those who do not. Which is why we feel it is so important that we do more than provide the foundations to succeed, that we invest our energy teaching children how to lead.

Social and Personal Confidence

• Avoidance: 35% of Canadians sometimes avoid meeting new people because they lack self-confidence.

  
  

• Skipping Plans: 26% admit to skipping plans with friends due to a lack of confidence.

  
  

• Generation Z: 55% of Canadians aged 18 to 24 report a lack of confidence in social situations, and 70% feel uncomfortable around crowds of strangers. (Ipsos, 2019)

Rather than teach children to perform confidence, we want to develop a deep-rooted sense of self in each child

While education ensures that we are able to position ourselves on a trajectory towards success, by any of its definitions, it's our perception of our value and our worth that serves as a greater barometer for what we accomplish and the type of impact we stand to achieve in this life.

More specifically, it shapes our sense of self-efficacy: how much we believe we can make the impact and change we desire to make a reality.

Rather than be rewarded for being outspoken, many of us endured reproach. Timidity and quietness was rewarded given that the last thing that an overwhelmed teacher needed was for a rambunctious child to rock the boat. We were not encouraged to find our voice, or to step into our evolving sense of identity. A shared experience that many of us carried in childhood was the implicit expectation that we were to be seen and not heard, to comply and not to counter.

The climate required to foster leadership qualities is specific.

We cannot expect adults to feel confident in using their voice when speaking up led to punishment and reprisal as a child.

We cannot expect adults to be comfortable dealing with the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity that the world represents, if we've sheltered them rather than prepared them to face those storms.

Thinking critically is a skill.

A skill that we have the opportunity to develop in children as young as 4, to enable them to cultivate the leadership lens that enables the intellectual curiosity, competence, and confidence to lead.

At Project Purpose, our aim is to provide the kind of climate that nurtures and incubates the kind of leadership that disrupts, innovates, and brings about the change that so much of the world is waiting for. Children who are encouraged to think critically, innovate, and express themselves without fear of shame become adults who are catalysts for change.

School systems do not have the resources or the bandwidth to teach far beyond the basic arithmetic, reading, and writing. Children are evaluated on their inherent leadership qualities before they have a chance to develop those competencies. While we recognize that the schooling system plays an essential role in the transfer of foundational academic knowledge, sending our children to school and assuming they will emerge equipped for excellence is a dangerous fallacy. Academic competence does not automatically translate into self-knowledge, autonomy, self-efficacy, critical thinking, or the capacity to lead.

Project Purpose extends learning beyond the classroom. We provide a fully digital experience designed to help children develop the self-knowledge, autonomy, self-efficacy, critical thinking, and compassion required to lead.

A fully digital experience designed to help children develop the self-knowledge, autonomy, self-efficacy, critical thinking, and compassion required to lead

Character is something that is developed through time, coaching, attention, and experience. Rather than leave it to chance, or hope for the best, we believe that it's an important education that extends beyond what the standard schooling model provides.

Our philosophy is simple.

Children who develop a strong sense of identity, autonomy, self-efficacy, and compassion are better equipped to understand who they are, what they value, and how they want to contribute.

When they understand how these competencies translate into action and align with their individual values and beliefs, they are better equipped not simply to participate in the future they will inherit, but to lead, innovate, disrupt, and bring about change.

Children can learn to perform exceptionally well within a system without ever being taught how to question it, navigate ambiguity, trust their judgment, or determine what kind of life they want to build.

That is the gap we believe exists between education and preparation for life.

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