Shell and I turning 40

Today I realized that Shell was 'born' in the same year as I was, today 40 years ago. My mum delivered, right after a November storm demolished my dad's new greenhouse. Luckily some humanitarian aid was around in the presence of some soldiers helping out picking all the pieces of glass from between the lettuce new crop. It must have triggered my attention to crises and appreciation of capacities dealing with it.

Forty, a critical age, but one to celebrate nevertheless. The same Shell must have thought while preparing for their workshop about scenario planning at the 13th National Sustainability Congress in the Netherlands last month. They offered the audience the possibility to provide a headline for Shell's eightieth anniversary forty years from now. With the above headline I gave them a bit of a challenge, basically recommending Shell to reconsider its business model. I hope to witness their transition from an oil producing multinational to an renewable energy giant during my lifetime. As I like to be involved I took a first step and accepted a lunch invitation of a lead energy advisor working with Shell in the scenario planning team. An exciting opportunity.

Another exciting opportunity is that yesterday Van Hall Larenstein offered me a part-time job as Lecturer Capacity Development. Thank you Grace, Mary, Murtiti, Muditha, Walid, Tegegn and Tesfaye for accommodating me in the lecture on CSR yesterday. Hence, God willing, a substantial part of my time will be dedicated to high-quality practice oriented academic performance of both Dutch graduates as well as mid-career staff from public and private sectors in the Netherlands and abroad from January onwards.

I trust my social entrepreneurship in the context of URAIDE will serve well to broker functional relations between the academic world and relevant organizations and industries. It is a privilege to be allowed to help build individual capacities, build my own capacity in the process and together contribute to strong societies world-wide. It will help me to create a bit of countervailing power to the doom-and-gloom scenario's that unfold at present through focusing on individual talents and opportunities as signs of hope.  Together all these capacities may facilitate the turning point at individual and collective level in order to take better care of this beautiful planet, enjoying life in abundance.

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