The Power of Altering Perceptions

Last night I attended a reception for Equal Access, a non-profit organization. Equal Access provides information and education about healthcare and social issues through radio in developing countries. The organization is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Kathmandu, Nepal; Kabul, Afghanistan; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; and New Delhi, India. It was founded in the belief that people everywhere are entitled to Equal Access to information and education and should have the opportunity to join the dialogue as both recipients and contributors of that information. The organization's radio programming focuses on healthcare issues like HIV awareness, women's rights, youth issues, teacher training and migration.

I have done some advising for Equal Access, and you can learn more about the organization by reading my Wikipedia article on Equal Access.

The reception was particularly noteworthy because it featured a reading by the Pulitzer-prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri. I was struck by the fact that Equal Access is all about providing people in rural areas with information that will help them change their perceptions of themselves, while, the characters in Ms. Lahiri's book of short stories, The Interpreter of Maladies, are changed by the discordant knowledge of how they see themselves and how others perceive them.

This is the truest impact of insight. Whether it is about how you think about brands, evaluate your health or perceive your status in society. Good communications possess the power to alter perceptions and drive growth.