Team One World Together felt most humbled and privileged yesterday to co-host the wonderful Anshu Gupta from Goonj for a brilliant event at the University of Manchester.
Humbled, because for the past 25 years Goonj has been designing, refining, building and consolidating something magnificent. An alternative and dignified approach to community development across rural India that puts people and communities first. That recognises the huge assets and abilities that communities have and can exchange for other assets from the city. They have created a new economy in which communities carry out incredible projects that benefit them, in exchange for discarded clothing and other materials from the city.
“Without dignity, we can’t talk about development”, Anshu said passionately. “You cannot give anyone dignity, it is part of our soul. Society can choose to value or undermine dignity. We choose to value it.”
Through the beautiful conversation that was weaved between Anshu and two University of Manchester students Ife and Bo we learned through newly opened eyes that everything we know about charity is wrong. We don’t need charity. Charity can and does harm. Charity stops the minute you give away your clothes or make a donation.
Instead we need two things:
1) We need to recognise and respect the autonomy and power of communities, to work with them, to support them, to stand in solidarity with them. We must not just provide services TO communities, but to work with them to recognise their strengths and assets, builds their pride and confidence, and puts them in a position of recognising they hold the power to solve the problems. That lasts a lifetime. And as Goonjillustrates, this means starting again, reframing our language and lenses and redesigning approaches, systems and relationships. These are the foundations that are rarely talked about or invested in, but that are critical to building long-term, dignified and transformative development processes.
2) We all need to do better as Global Citizens. Each and every one of us. Half of the world’s problems – the ones that hit the poorest communities hardest – wouldn’t exist if we had more responsible citizens and businesses in the first place. How can you pay back? We can’t live our lives or our business operations being driven only by our own interests or solely for profit. Those local and global issues that keep you awake at night – how can you lean into them? How can you come together with others to lean into them? How can you stand with people that are taking the initiative?
These are all questions that can weigh heavily on us. They do weigh heavily on us with the world as it is right now. But Anshu gave us this wisdom in a way that was inspiring, not heavy. That inspiration came from him and his journey – but also in his recognition of all of us having the power to change things.
For those of you that support us or have been following us for a while, you’ll see our soul reflected in both of these actions that Anshu called for. One World Together sees communities. We recognise that communities are on the frontline of poverty and injustice in the world and that they must be in the driving seat of solutions to these. Our Solidarity Fund – the need to get more and better finance directly to communities around the world to help them do their brilliant work – is why we started this journey.
And for One World Together it’s never been just about that money. It’s about you – our Global Citizens – and our drive to bring us together to stand in solidarity with incredible communities around the world. About building a movement and a space where we can come together to learn and celebrate the power of community, where we can open our eyes to dysfunctions in the global funding system and build our pride together around how we are building a new funding system that works for communities. One Global Citizen and £1 to our Solidarity Fund at a time.
Please do join our wave of change today!
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