Atlas Shrugged Grant Recipients 2008

One year after announcing the 4 recipients (selected from among 45 proposals) of the second year of the Atlas Shrugged grant program, the projects are completed. Here are the results:

F. A. Hayek Foundation (Slovakia)

The Hayek Foundation in Slovakia invested the grant in a high school project by creating a model lecture on the basic ideas of Atlas Shrugged, distributed it to 2.500 recipients and then taught some teachers in their annual summer camp.

Creating a Model Lecture
Miriama Svetkovska, a lecturer of the Hayek Foundation, created a special model lecture for high school social science/economics/ entrepreneurship courses, explaining the basic ideas of Atlas Shrugged in the same format other textbooks that were sent by the institute. The packages contain these three lectures:

Objectivism and Capitalism - What is Capitalism?

Students shall know that their knowledge and their ability to work on themselves is the key element to be successful through the quotations and citations from Atlas Shrugged
Students prepare a list of goals and how to achieve them
Students listen to the speeches of Hank Rearden and Francisco d’Aconia
Students hear about principles and characteristics of capitalism like private property, private entrepreneurship, self-interest and competition, system of the market and prices and limited power of government, and students play a business game and activity that gives students opportunities to model and establish the state, to elect the authorities and establish law, business and all sectors in basic principles of democracy and capitalism

Centrally Planned Economy? Why did Communism Collapse

The lecture contains speeches and measures accepted by the Authority of Economic planning and National resources lead by Wesley Mouch
Research among students to find out what they remember from communism
Basic principles and characteristics of planned economy such as public ownership, centralized decision making, economic planning and public allocation of the resources
Discussion with factors and reasons why this system in Soviet Union was not sustainable

System Comparison: Capitalism, Central Planned Economy or Mixed?

students speak about all three types of the economies and discuss the characteristics and principles on which these economies are based
students work with the surveys published by the IMF and World Bank. According to the surveys students understand the connection between economic freedom and wealth
students will finally receive information about John Galt, what he represents and why he is so important in this book
after accomplishing all three lectures students will have to prepare essays with their attitude to all three systems and choosing one they assume is the best for them

Distribution
The lecture will be distributed freely to over 2,500 recipients – schools and individual teachers – who are already used to work with the teaching manuals of the Hayek Foundation. By teaching, over few years, the ideas from the book will find their way to thousands of high school students – future leaders – in Slovakia.

Online Activities

The lectures were also published and made available for download by teachers at the website of the former Entrepreneurial Education program.
a special subpage of the project was also launched at the Hayek Foundation’s website.

Seminar for High School Teachers
30 high school teachers were trained to use the set of three lectures during the regular “Summer School of Economics” seminar. Additionally 30 high school students attended the summer school.

The lectures were given directly by Ms. Svetkovska, chief author of the lectures
According to evaluations, the teachers felt ready for teaching the philosophy of Ayn Rand

Fundacion Global (Argentina)

In the first decades of the 20th century, Argentina was one of the leading countries in the world. Thanks to the vision of Juan Bautista Alberdi the country welcomed millions of immigrants - in 1930, foreigners represented 30% of the population. The newcomers began to work and create wealth and opportunities in a country with low government intervention. Unfortunately, in the second half of the century, the country lost that brightness and began a period of decadence: civil society strength was undermined by interventionism, collectivism and populism.
Nevertheless, the “Immigrant Grandparent Example” is there to inspire young people, since almost every family in the country has an ancestor that was an entrepreneur. There is a need to show to Argentine youth that it is time to recover the spirit of those pioneers, who lived and acted as “real John Galts”, the hero of Ayn Rand´s Atlas Shrugged.

Film Project: “The Entrepreneurial Generation”
The core component of the project is an educative short.film on extraordinary life stories of immigrants, pioneers and entrepreneurs (the real “John Galts”) that shaped society and the economy in the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Main target: Students between 12 and 20 years , this includes two and a half million people in the Province of Buenos Aires
Selection of the entrepreneurs in the film:

ANTONIO TOLEDO: Founder of Supermercados Toledo, one of the leading supermarket branches

ALBERTO MATERIA: Founder of Materia Hnos., a leading oleochemical company in Latin America

ANTONIO SOLIMENO: Founder of Grupo Solimeno, one of the largest fishing companies of Argentina

ANTONIO CABRALES: President of Cabrales, an innovative coffee company widely admired throughout Argentina

The documentary was presented in 8 prestigious schools of the Province of Buenos Aires, encouraging classroom debates on Ayn Rand`s philosophy
Additional free copies will be delivered to educational institutions and libraries
Finally, the film was presented in the framework of the Mar del Plata Book Fair. Also in this event, the Foundation exhibited Ayn Rand´s bibliography

Documentary Film Structure:
1.    The film begins introducing Ayn Rand´s life and Atlas Shrugged’s main ideas
2.    A suggestion to imagine a society without businessmen and companies and all the benefits they provide
3.    Establishing a link between Argentina´s past prosperity, free-markets, immigration and entrepreneurship
4.    Immigrant entrepreneurs testimonials: experiences and values
5.    FINAL MESSAGE: Encouraging new generations to follow the entrepreneurial spirit of pioneers.

Liberty Institute (India)

New Media Activities

Creation of a special web initiative, Ayn Rand in India, at www.AynRand.in
Setting up a blog at http://aynrandindia.blogspot.com/
Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=69856518128&ref=ts

Events
Mmonthly Atlas Meet in Mumbai, Pune and Delhi

Lively discussions in two segments:
- “Savour and Study”: more substantive intellectual issues are discussed, and the relevance of these principles in today’s context explored
- “Spread and Sustain”: discuss various options to promote the ideas, and ways of reaching out to others who may share similar perspectives
Mostly professionals, 6-12 persons

Other Activities

Promoting of the Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest by printing and distributing a campaign poster to a few hundred scholars and granting additional prizes for the best India-based contributions
“Night of January 16th” is screened regularly throughout the country – initiators were contacted
Translation of “money speech” is in progress – will be published in English and Hindu

Malaysia Think Tank (UK/Malaysia)

Academic Symposium

The main goal of the symposium was the investigation of common grounds of ideas in Atlas Shrugged and Islam with 7 academics and officials from various institutions.

Results:

There is a hadith (saying of the Prophet Muhammad) which can be related to the strike in Atlas Shrugged. The hadith says that when the world is being ‘destroyed’ by political leaders, the best course of action is, and this is a quote of the last part of the hadith, to: “Distance yourself even if it means eating the bark of a tree until death overtakes you.”
Islam also supports rational thinking, despite attempts by some religious ‘scholars’ to make Muslims blindly follow what they say
Capitalism has too long been described as something ‘un-Islamic’ and it may be counterproductive at this stage to use the word ‘capitalism’ when engaging with Muslims. It would be better to use just ‘free market’

Freedom Academy

The weekend-conference took place with 33 participants on “The Virtues of Entrepreneurship and The Morality of Capitalism: Lessons from Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged in Penang, Malaysia. The main goal was to attract political officials from different parties to discuss the topic as well as get students and young professionals involved who might be future politicians.
With Malaysia, being a country that since independence in 1957 has almost always been under a big state, the concern was that if any political party would propagate a small state solution, they would not win votes. This is one area to work on in the future.

Atlas Shrugged Seminar in Singapore
The Seminar was held at theNational University of Singapore with 48 people, mainly academics and some students in an open dialogue discussion reviewing the book.

a debate (at times quite heated) soon ensued between those who agree and disagree with Ayn Rand - the discussion was free flowing and touched on many issues
The challenging thing about Singapore is the fact that it is an economically prosperous country despite political suppression. Many see the state as being very successful in creating a prosperous economy

General Outcomes

MTT was unsuccessful in attracting significant media interest. The newspaper editors we contacted were not convinced of the benefits of spreading Ayn Rand’s ideas
The Atlas Shrugged grant has been instrumental in enabling us to promote better understanding of entrepreneurship and free market ideas. Unlike a straightforward talk, having a book that the audience can discuss is a good guideline for the discussion.
The grant has allowed MTT to form a working relationship with the Ayn Rand Institute and there are plans for an “Ayn Rand Tour” in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia in 2010.

Each recipient institute received $10,000 to implement its proposal to teach the virtues of entrepreneurship, individual initiative, wealth generation, and prosperity by promoting Ayn Rand’s influential novel, Atlas Shrugged.

This grant program is made possible by the generous funding of BB&T.