For decades, billions of pounds have flowed through the global aid system in the hope of ending poverty.
And yet the communities closest to the challenges are still often the furthest from the power and resources meant to address them.
So what if the problem isn’t generosity — but the system we’ve built around it?
That question sat at the heart of a conversation I had last year on the It’s Not About Trees podcast on Do Radio, where I spoke about the story behind One World Together.
Looking back now, that conversation feels even more timely. Since then, the UK charity sector has seen further declines in both overall giving and the number of donors, while UK aid has fallen from the long-standing commitment of 0.7% of national income to 0.3%.
In other words, the storm clouds we discussed then have only grown darker.
But the conversation was never only about what’s going wrong. It was also about something more hopeful: the possibility that ordinary people, coming together, could help build something better.
The world doesn’t suffer from a lack of generosity. It suffers from systems that don’t allow that generosity to reach the people who need it most.
From researching the system to questioning it
For most of my career, I’ve been an academic researching poverty, livelihoods, and international aid.
My work has particularly focused on urban poverty and young people’s opportunities and on the role of the aid and charity sector in supporting development outcomes around the world. But alongside that research there has always been a difficult question:
Why does so much funding struggle to create the lasting change we all hope for?
Over the years I worked with organisations and communities across different parts of the world. Again and again, I saw the same tension.
We have a global system that channels enormous resources into tackling poverty. But the people who live closest to those challenges are often furthest from the power and decision-making that shapes how those resources are used.
Communities are frequently treated as beneficiaries of projects rather than as leaders of their own development.
At the same time, organisations rooted in those communities often receive only a tiny share of the funding meant to support their work.
Eventually, studying that system began to feel insufficient.
With my co-founder Chibwe, we started asking a different question:
What would it take to build something better?
What’s going wrong?
During the podcast conversation we explored some of the deeper challenges in the aid and charity system.
One of the biggest is that the sector has become highly professionalised and project-driven.
Projects can do important things, but poverty and inequality are not problems that can be solved through a series of short-term interventions designed far away from the communities where they happen.
Real change is social and political. It happens through relationships, trust, and people shaping their own futures.
Yet the system often pulls organisations in the opposite direction — towards donor reporting requirements, rigid project cycles, and externally defined measures of success.
Another challenge is the concentration of resources and power.
A relatively small number of large organisations now receive the majority of funding in the sector, while smaller community-based organisations — often those closest to the challenges — struggle to access the resources they need.
None of this is because people working in the sector don’t care. Many care deeply.
But the system itself has evolved in ways that make meaningful change incredibly difficult.
When the storm hits
Right now, those structural challenges are colliding with a much harsher funding environment.
UK aid cuts and reductions in global funding aren’t abstract policy decisions — they have real-world consequences.
They mean fewer health programmes, fewer opportunities to support livelihoods, fewer resources for education, and fewer humanitarian responses in communities already facing crises.
They mean organisations rooted in those communities losing funding that supports vaccination campaigns, maternal health programmes, climate resilience, and the everyday work that helps people build safer and more secure futures.
We will eventually measure the consequences in numbers. But behind those numbers are real lives and real communities.
And yet even in this moment, there are reasons to hope.
Imagining something different
The idea behind One World Together began with a simple act of imagination.
Before the pandemic, people in the UK were donating around £2 billion each year to global development charities.
Just imagine what might be possible if even a fraction of that generosity flowed directly to community organisations, on terms of trust rather than restriction.
Just imagine what could happen if giving was built not only on charity, but on solidarity.
And just imagine if thousands — or even millions — of people came together around that shared belief.
That question became the seed of One World Together.
A movement powered by people
At its heart, One World Together is trying to build a different kind of giving movement.
It rests on three simple ideas.
First, collective action: you don’t need to give the world to change the world. Small contributions from many people can become transformative when we come together. Members can join for as little as £1.25 a month, contributing to a shared solidarity fund.
Second, trust-based funding: rather than designing projects from afar, funds are shared directly with community partners, who decide how best to use those resources.
And third, relationships: we want people giving through One World Together to understand the communities they are supporting — to see the leadership, creativity, and strength that exist there.
Because development is not something done to people. It’s something built with them.
A conversation worth continuing
The podcast conversation also touched on youth leadership, generosity, and the deeper values that underpin and have shaped this work since we started.
One quote that captures that spirit comes from Margaret Mead:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
That belief sits at the heart of One World Together.
Because ultimately this is not just about changing how we give.
It’s about recognising the extraordinary power that ordinary people have when we come together.
🎧 If you’d like to hear the full conversation, you can listen to the podcast episode here: https://poddoradio.audiofeeds.co.uk/podcast/its-not-about-trees-episode-17-nicola-banks/
And if you’d like to learn more about One World Together, visit:oneworldtogether.org.uk
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