As a global community, we all want to end poverty. Mia Birdsong suggests a great place to start: Let's honor the skills, drive and initiative that poor people bring to the struggle every day. She asks us to look again at people in poverty: They may be broke - but they're not broken.
Here are some excerpts:
"What if we recognized that what's working is the people and what's broken is our approach? What if we realized that the experts we are looking for, the experts we need to follow, are poor people themselves? What if, instead of imposing solutions, we just added fire to the already - burning flame that they have? Not directing - not even empowering - but just fueling their initiative...
So, consider this an invitation to rethink a flawed strategy. Let's grasp this opportunity to let go of a tired, faulty narrative and listen and look for true stories, more beautifully complex stories, about who marginalized people and families and communities are."
"I'm going to take a minute to speak to my people...
We are magic. Individually, we don't have a lot of wealth and power, but collectively, we are unstoppable. And we spend a lot of our time and energy organizing our power to demand change from systems that were not made for us.
Instead of trying to alter the fabric of existing ways, let's weave and cut some fierce new cloth. Let's use some of our substantial collective power toward inventing and bringing to life new ways of being that work for us."
Here are some excerpts:
"What if we recognized that what's working is the people and what's broken is our approach? What if we realized that the experts we are looking for, the experts we need to follow, are poor people themselves? What if, instead of imposing solutions, we just added fire to the already - burning flame that they have? Not directing - not even empowering - but just fueling their initiative...
So, consider this an invitation to rethink a flawed strategy. Let's grasp this opportunity to let go of a tired, faulty narrative and listen and look for true stories, more beautifully complex stories, about who marginalized people and families and communities are."
"I'm going to take a minute to speak to my people...
We are magic. Individually, we don't have a lot of wealth and power, but collectively, we are unstoppable. And we spend a lot of our time and energy organizing our power to demand change from systems that were not made for us.
Instead of trying to alter the fabric of existing ways, let's weave and cut some fierce new cloth. Let's use some of our substantial collective power toward inventing and bringing to life new ways of being that work for us."