Education is the key to success, or so the maxim goes. Business groups are pondering the state of the educational system. Companies are wondering where their next cadre of competent workers is coming from. Everyone wants to know: how do we fix this problem? How do we engage youth and encourage education?
There is, of course, no one answer. But maybe it’s a problem that can be attacked one small issue at a time, one small effort, one company, one man.
That’s, at least, what James Irwin is doing.
Irwin is the president of Litchfield-based Impac, an international productivity and management consulting company with thousands of employees across the globe. His company counts many of the world’s largest corporations among its clients. Understandably, Irwin has a need to hire lots of smart employees.
A decade ago, Impac surveyed its team members about their likes, dislikes, hobbies and more. Universally, Impac’s workers shared a love of reading. Irwin himself tells the tale of growing up with two parents who were avid readers, and who passed on that love of literature. On a trip to Dublin, Irwin had a chance to talk to the city’s Lord High Mayor, who also loved reading. That’s when Impac decided to create the International Impac Dublin Literary Award – the highest cash prize for literary achievement in the world. This year, authors such as Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes and Cormac McCarthy are all contenders for the prize.
But Irwin decided to try an experiment a little closer to home. He also founded the Impac Young Writers award, to promote and reward literary aspirations in high school students. The program here has since been adopted by the Connecticut State University System. On June 1, it made its latest choices of achievement in prose and poetry, sending two Connecticut high school students on an all-expense paid weeklong trip to Ireland to be part of the Dublin Award presentation. Earlier it presented checks for $1,000 to both prose and poetry high school authors in each of Connecticut’s eight counties.
In its decade-long history in Connecticut, the program has prompted more than 4,000 students across the state to push their literary limits. And it’s shown them that with effort comes reward. Over 10 years, the Impac Young Writers program has disbursed more than $150,000.
There is nothing more fundamental to education than the ability to read with understanding, to write with clarity of purpose and passion. In promoting literature, Impac isn’t just giving a boost to education, but to critical thought, to creativity and to freedom.
Clearly, Impac sees an impact from its efforts. Since it reached out to Connecticut youth in the mid-1990s, it has taken its young writer initiative across the world. The company now hosts similar competitions in Finland, Malaysia, Thailand and the Czech Republic.
Irwin’s work hasn’t solved the education problems we face. But we can all learn from him and his company, that even the smallest push can have ripples across the world.
