Unlocking Opportunities to Articulate the Greatness Within Us All

 
Emanuel “Boo Milton” is the creator of Spark Box and a member of Cities United Advisory Board. He is an active community organizer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 

In this time of many uncertainties, one thing that is certain is the need for continual growth and development of our society. The two key factors of that continual development are our youth and their education. When the pandemic first hit home here in the United States, and schools were closing, it really shifted how children received education. As the new virtual and distant learning continued, I observed many challenges within this new way of educating our youth. 

Moving into the summer, when schools close and summer camps usually embrace the opportunity to engage with kids, many camps closed last year or only provided limited services. This really touched me personally because I enjoy volunteering at camps and helping children navigate through leadership roles and social-emotional learning. With this in mind, I created a solution to make sure kids receive continual development throughout the summer, called Spark Box. 

Spark Box is an activity kit that focuses on social awareness, self-awareness, and critical thinking through social-emotional learning and creativity. These kits were designed and created with the idea that all children, no matter their economic background, are able to participate and thrive. With this in mind, all activity boxes are packed with everything a child needs, without having to rely on their own resources or purchasing new supplies such as crayons, a pencil, and other basic items to complete provided activities. So, even children who do not have access to the internet can engage and enjoy. Our activity boxes not only provide fun educational activities but also ask children to complete a “daily check-in” to express how they feel every day.


Parents/adults are given the opportunity to assess mental and emotional wellness and provide intervention, if necessary, to address possible issues. We also do not assume that all parents are equipped to address trauma, stress, and mental wellness concerns with children, so we equip each box with a parent’s guide to help their child navigate through their thoughts and emotions. This guide also includes contact information for professional services that may be able to assist.


We launched our Spark Box Summer Initiative last year providing Spark Box activity kits to families in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at absolutely no cost to parents. Support from the Mayor’s Office for the City of Baton Rouge and local businesses helped to make it happen, with currently over 2,000 kits distributed to children since June 2020. This initiative quickly caught the attention of eyes across the country through the amazing feedback from kids and parents.


I was honoured to have the opportunity to share Spark Box on an international stage at Theirworld / Global Business Coalition for Education’s ``Unlock Big Change” event for UNGA 2020. As a panellist for their conversation on “Education in Emergencies”, I was asked to explain why education is important and how education unlocks opportunity. My response was, “I believe education unlocks the opportunity to better articulate the greatness within us. We all have a light of greatness and revolutionary ideas within us. When this energy is matched with the knowledge of how to better express ourselves and challenge our current ways of thinking, it introduces new growth and opportunity to be a greater asset to ourselves and the world we are a part of.”


BY BOO MILTON • April 30, 2021

In Harmony With Peace Concert

By Ann Beatty • June 1, 2026
On Friday evening ( 29 May, 7.00 pm The Actors Church Covent Garden) we had the pleasure of listening to this very special concert, bringing together the Choir of King's College London and the Princeton High School Orchestra in a celebration of international friendship, collaboration, and shared values. This project reflects a commitment to peace, sustainability, equality, and cultural exchange, uniting young musicians from the United Kingdom and the United States through the universal language of music.

36 Bicycles. Countless Futures in The Gambia.

By Ann Beatty • May 20, 2026
How a simple act of practical solidarity is transforming the journey to school in The Gambia’s Central River Region North Policies have been written. Schools have been built. Yet for many children in The Gambia’s Central River Region North, access to education is still measured in kilometres, not opportunity. 

Education for Hope in Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous Times

By Laura Griffin • May 13, 2026
‘In a single hour vast tracts of shaded woodland became a jumble of torn trees and upturned soil, exposed to the glare of the summer sun. Such land-clearing events are rare, but forests exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of disaster. I’m told that the Chinese character for ‘catastrophe’ is the same as that which represents the word ‘opportunity’. And, the blowdown, while catastrophic, presented opportunities for many species.’ (Wall Kimmerer, 2003: 89). In the context of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (Stein, 2021) what kinds of education for hope might support children’s and young people’s critical engagement in local and global issues? In the spirit of exploring the possibilities of hope further, this short article focuses on the area of global citizenship and sustainabilityrelated education. It will briefly open by sharing commonalities across pedagogical approaches that take up the concept and act of hope more critically, and close by offering reflective questions for educators, with suggestions for further reading. Perhaps it is a kind of hope that is grounded in the present, in future reimagining(s), in ethical solidarity, and an acknowledgement of our deep entanglement with the living metabolism of planet earth 1 our singular home (UNESCO, 2021); a hope that engages with complex root causes and lived realities of multiple overlapping crises in critically reflexive and contextually relevant ways. As McCloskey notes, ‘Hope can fire our collective imagination and critical consciousness as a mainspring to activism and intervention in the world.’ (2025: 3). Commonalities across critical pedagogical approaches to hope include: Acknowledging the context of a ‘seamless single story of progress, development and human evolution’ (Andreotti, V.D.O., 2021b Relating to social and ecological justice and the wellbeing of people and planet Using participatory, action-orientated and inquiry-based learning processes Exploring diverse worldviews and perspectives Practising grounding in the present with opening up possibilities for change (relational, embodied, response-able 2 ) Experiencing ‘struggle’ in different forms (dialogical, selfreflexive, open-ended) Engaging individual and collective agency, action and activism Looking for lifelong and life-wide learning and unlearning. 1 See ‘Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness’, in Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. 2021a 2 See ‘Crossing Borders’ in 2 Depth Education “Depth Education and the Possibility of GCE Otherwise, 2021b. Source: Andreotti, V. 2021a & 2021b., Atif, A. (2025)., Bourn, D. 2021., Bryan. A. and Mochizuki,Y., 2024., Giroux, H.A. 2025., Meade, E. 2025. Whilst engaging in the concept and act of hope more critically reflect upon: What kinds of education for hope might you explore further and why? How might you provide generative spaces for engaging in diverse worldviews and perspectives? In what ways can you facilitate individual and collective agency? How might you support learners’ practice grounding in the present in order to relate differently? In what ways can you support learners in navigating complex root causes and lived realities of local and global issues? As Chief Ninawa Hini Kui affirms, ‘The future depends much less on the images we project ahead than on our capacity to repair relations and build relationships differently in the present.’ (Andreotti et al, 2023: 73. An invitation for further reading: Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future . d’Abreu, C., Belgeonne, C., Bourn, D. and Hatley, J. (2025) ‘Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future’. DERC Research Paper 24. London: UCL Institute of Education. Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, V. (2021a) ‘Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism’ , London: Penguin Random House. Development Education and Hope . McCloskey, S. (2025). (ed) ‘Development Education and Hope’. ‘Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review’ , Vol. 41, Autumn. Centre for Global Education, Belfast. Link to and download the full reference list here