In this episode, One World Together's co-founder Nicola Banks and Community Space Development Lead Asma Bham speak with one of their community partners: Lwanga Bwalya of Play it Forward Zambia.
Lwanga dives into the complexities of navigating projects within the current funding system, as well as his own experiences with community-led initiatives both as a young person and now as a leading member of Play it Forward.
Niki, Asma, and Lwanga then explore how we can rethink the system with new models, such as that of One World Together.
This episode is not to be missed!
You can find out more about Play it Forward Zambia here, and sign up as a global citizen with One World Together here.
Find out more about the Global Development Institute:
Intro music Anna Banana by Eaters
In this episode, One World Together's co-founder Nicola Banks and Community Space Development Lead Asma Bham speak with one of their community partners: Lwanga Bwalya of Play it Forward Zambia.
Lwanga dives into the complexities of navigating projects within the current funding system, as well as his own experiences with community-led initiatives both as a young person and now as a leading member of Play it Forward.
Niki, Asma, and Lwanga then explore how we can rethink the system with new models, such as that of One World Together.
This episode is not to be missed!
You can find out more about Play it Forward Zambia here, and sign up as a global citizen with One World Together here.
Find out more about the Global Development Institute:
Intro music Anna Banana by Eaters
Intro [00:00:02] Welcome to the Global Development Institute podcast. Based at the University of Manchester, we are Europe's largest research and teaching institutes addressing poverty and inequality. Each episode will bring you the latest thinking, insights and debates in development studies.
Asma Bham [00:00:25] Welcome, everyone. My name is Asma Bham and I'm a recent masters graduate from the University of Manchester. I've done my master's in International Development with a focus on poverty and inequality. I am now working with One World Together as the Community Space Development Lead, and I'm also part of their youth board. Today I am joined by One World Together School founder Niki Banks as we engage in a conversation with Lwanga Bwalya from Play it Forward. Play it Forward is one of the four amazing NGOs One World Together is supporting, and it's based in Zambia. In today's conversation, we will listen in about the incredible work that Play it Forward is doing. And I'm going to ask Lwanga about how he got started, what are some of the goals that he's had and how Play it Forward and One World Together come into all of this and support each other? So thank you so much for joining us. Lwanga and Nikki, if you can please briefly introduce yourselves and your organisation. Niki, let's start with you.
Nicola Banks [00:01:30] Thank you so much. It's great to be here with you both. I'm really excited for this conversation. So my name is Niki. I'm a senior lecturer here at the University of Manchester and also a co-founder and chief steward of One World Together alongside Chibwe Masabo Henry, who cannot be here today but is very much here in spirit.
Lwanga Bwalya [00:01:50] Thank you very much. So, I'm Lwanga Bwalya, the country director of Play it Forward. I've been with them for five years, so it's been an incredible journey. And what Play it Forward does is to support; as a development organisation we use football as a tool for education. We use it in various ways, either to teach or as well for young people to come to us or have embedded messaging in football drills. That allows young people to engage with educational materials much more easily, and we find that they memorise it more and they understand it better, because you can move as well as learn at the same time. So it is a really good learning tool that we find. Yeah. And it's been an incredible journey being with Play it Forward and being in a community that I grew up with.
Asma Bham [00:02:40] Amazing! I'm so curious. Like, I'm sure people who are listening in are wondering as well. Like why football? Can you tell us a bit more about the lives of the young people in Livingston, and why football is like a very good entry point into the kind of work that you're doing.
Lwanga Bwalya [00:02:56] Football is very ubiquitous in Zambia, like every place you go to, you find that it's got (inaudible) and it's very easy. You get two rocks and young people put plastic together and they begin kicking about. Right. You find, like young people in my community who were struggling at school could name every line up in the Premier League as well as the Spanish league. So this wasn't a capacity issue. It was like, right, it's an interest and passion. And so we've used and leveraged that passion and love for something more positive for education. And then that has worked really well for us because it's ubiquitous. And then with kids they can learn.
Asma Bham [00:03:41] You're in Manchester right now.
Lwanga Bwalya [00:03:43] Yeah.
Nicola Banks [00:03:44] (laughter)
Lwanga Bwalya [00:03:45] (laughter)
Asma Bham [00:03:48] You mentioned how you wanted to go and visit Old Trafford as well. So hopefully when you go back you can tell them all about it and garner more students coming in and asking you what was it like? Did you go up there?
Nicola Banks [00:04:01] (Inaudible)
Lwanga Bwalya [00:04:03] I am doing it for the children, you know. (Laughter). Go see Old Trafford! But yeah, it'll be a really nice experience. Like, you know growing up seeing them play, I think it's one of the biggest brands with rich history. The young, you know, truly connect with it like every single week. That is all they're arguing about. And for me it's such a massive opportunity. A dream come true almost to be able to see Old Trafford and be in Manchester and like it is where football is, I can talk about football! This is where football lives!
Asma Bham [00:04:39] And you are doing amazing things. You are the country director of Play it Forward, like you said. And you're also from Livingston. Can you tell us how you grew up in that community, and how does growing up in the same community that you're working in right now, how does that ensure the work that you're doing, or has your experiences influenced what you're doing right now? And how do you go about that?
Lwanga Bwalya [00:05:03] I think there's an interesting question because like growing up in Livingston and growing up in this situation is that... Imagine you trying, standing in the front lines to actually work. You know, it's given me like, number one, lived experience, right? Like when we talk about poverty and as a concept that's different from I grew up in a household where there's families and this one room, the house is just for sleep. You have a mattress, father, mother, all the children and your teenagers have to sleep on the same bed. And the shame that actually comes with that. It's only from experience that you understand, oh, it cuts any pathways to self-worth, and you can do some (indaudible) which is really good way. But to be able to actually face the shame, face some of the challenges, some of the, you know. Those things are true. Do not have missing any basic needs. Going hungry without food for days on end, struggling to pay school fees and being removed from school. And what that does to a young person, what it tells you about yourself and the things you begin to believe. Having that and having worked through it and having really faced it, gives me sort of perspective in a way, it's more an understanding to really approach this from a way that can begin number one, like we provide nutrition, but we can talk about some of the deeper issues, right, some of the shame, and give young people a place where they can express themselves. They can find some little bit of joy, that they can find a place where they can begin to build their lives and work through some of the issues and know that they are not alone, that we are building a community around that. And for me, that is really important that to give some people, some of the opportunities that I did not have. But also it's an organisation like Play it Forward that really helped me up. So funny enough, it was a forum that supported women, and I was struggling to raise school fees. And one of the people that were leading this organisation made an exception for me to keep me in school, and that provided an opportunity for me to actually fully complete school, get a scholarship, and then I am in a position where I can do the same for young people, that I can make key decisions, and finding ways that we can build a pathway for them to a much better life, full of opportunity, and a place where they can fully express and come to terms with who they are. And I think I'm really fortunate in that regard. And it also does provide me like a deep sense of meaning, because then I can sort of have conversations with my community, real conversations about the challenges we face from a place of understanding. So I'm not coming as an outsider to talk to them about what they need to fix. It's like, no, we are together and this could be better. It is possible to have a much better pathway for young people and more opportunities in that community. So it's an interesting conversation and I'm really fortunate to be part of it.
Nicola Banks [00:08:26] So powerful. Hearing you talk about that, it also makes you realise that it's not necessarily the normal model of how development works, it just makes me realise how invisible some of the most important things are in development. So we think of development as project. And projects think of people as kind of just people, but they they don't see so many of these things. They don't see the personal, they don't see the collective experience. They don't see the psychological aspects of poverty that they want to remedy. So it just it's so powerful hearing you say that. And yeah, it makes you realise how upside down you have things.
Lwanga Bwalya [00:09:09] Because development is really at the heart of it. Right. And in a way, you have really hard core critics because you sort of, we come into the space like, all right, we are talking about gender equality. Men and women. We understand it. But what does it mean for boys and girls? And how much weighting are we going to give to the people in our community? Because it's very easy to just fall into an agenda, pick a side and begin fighting, like with all your might, but you find that then you just get on this pendulum where you swing one way, so in another way, and you can hold contradictions like, alright, maybe this is an overall system that's broken, right? That the boys that are in our community don't understand that. Alright, this power, that power dynamics at play and then to realise that alright, by getting embedded into the gender equality conversation, we keep telling women it's okay to redefine femininity. It's okay. Like you're right, you have opportunities. You do not have to stick to this. But are we having the same conversation with boys? It's like, or is masculinity predefined and fixed? Or do they also have an option that they can be able to define it for themselves? What should it mean for them to be masculine? And for a community that is deprived of education, for a community where boys are sort of grown up in abuse and then stuck to a certain narrative, that is just a breath of fresh air to have those opportunities.
Asma Bham [00:10:44] You've spoken a bit about how you are also tackling gender inequality. Can I please know how football comes into all of this? And I know that we've spoken before about how you have a lot of girls that come in to play football as well, and how do you teach these girls that are coming in, and combine it with football? And did you have any challenges initially? What was the response like?
Lwanga Bwalya [00:11:08] So when we actually started out we were just giving to school programmes of football for boys, like it was an opportunity for boys to stop engaging in classes. But what would happen is girls would come out and watch this and say, but we want to play football as well. And that was an interesting thing, because the boys themselves did not believe girls should be playing football or that they could do it properly. But what we did is like, alright, if you want to, you guys are going to have to find a team. We'll provide you footballs, we'll provide you boots. And the girls quickly did it, like it took two weeks for girls to sort of show up and ready. And that was all. What has happened with the girls is like, it's in your face. Like for not believing in us. Because what happened is within three years the girls went from playing league in Livingston district to we are now playing in the National League, competing for places, like giving them the opportunity and creating that platform quickly turned into something that we did not predict, that we would not have dreamt of, or even what is happening. And that is an amazing story, right? All young people sometimes just need is an opportunity and a platform, and they can take that in very interesting ways if you ask me, like where do you see this going out of probably? So yeah, it's like even with us we made mistakes because these are lot. Girls have gone to me like, okay, now I have like 70 boys and 20 girls. I'm calling my program, you know, gender equal, right? I can slap that brand and go to organisation and say, no, we have very big gender equality. But like, what does it really mean? Like under ten boys are receiving educational support. I did not have an under ten girls team at the time. They were receiving homework support. They were getting school fees paid for. They were getting a meal. This was not happening for the girls. So we only had like 17 year olds and all that needed to be a conversation which you mentioned was like very direct, like, are you genuinely going to call this gender equal? But it's like, all right, amending our mistakes and allowing, right, if we approach a community, we are going to ensure that whatever opportunities we have are given both to boys and girls in as much equality that we can sum. And that means like if ten year old girls come to us, they can play football with a ten year old boy.
Asma Bham [00:14:07] It's such an amazing story of growth as well. And I'm sure that these trends that you've mentioned are also because of the deep roots that you have. And so what I'm curious about is, as a Zambian organisation, you often draw from global funding systems as well. Can you tell us a bit on how you are currently using that to capitalise on that and how you use the global funding system, to allow you to tap into those resources?
Lwanga Bwalya [00:14:39] You know, for most of the global landscape it's like you have international donors, right? Like the grant makers. And they all have like programmatic areas or we find that are sort of working towards the same strategic priorities they we have up for proposal. And we structure so we answer these calls. So we're like alright, we have a project that is in line with this call to proposals and they all define all these things for you. They want it maybe to be a program around goals. And we specifically tailor like you mentioned. So you can build a project around that call to answer it. This ties in with an experience or expertise, but not to be able to bring resources and channel it to the work that we're doing. And yeah, it's it's a wonderful opportunity, and I'm glad that we are in a place where we can do this. We have enough accountability around us with two boards in Zambia and in the UK. And we can look at what the global landscape is for funding and fundraising and apply. And it has its challenges, obviously, and limitations as well. But that is sort of - I'm glad we have an opportunity because you cannot sometimes. Like it's the game that is played and you have to follow the rules of that play.
Asma Bham [00:16:00] Oh, so you're saying so you said that you have to follow the rules of the game, and sometimes those rules can be quite challenging and tedious. Do you feel that there is or do you look forward to a better funding system when it comes to like investigating in a genuinely community led approach, something that allows you to do what you are doing?
Lwanga Bwalya [00:16:25] So. Yes. So what does that mean? So we are answering the call, right? And the thing with the call is they all have specific markers around even what success looks like. And you want to sort of in a way - whilst it is an opportunity, it's also in a way some form of bondage. Because number one, you are building a project in a way that's set. You're building a project that, you know, you can almost guarantee success of that project because failure does not look good for a defender or donor. You want to show that, right, this is the impact the project has. So even when you write the code, when you write your project proposal, you are ensuring that whatever outcomes you are promising, you can measure and track. And anytime you do that, there is no innovation. you are working within a predetermined something that will yield the outcome, the desired outcome. So models that change this is how can we have a conversation around what the community actually means and can leverage the time for us, number one, to properly find out, to properly engage in a meaningful way with the community and our young people, and then begin driving the change in a way that is a proper conversation. Donor community, the (inaudible) organisation. Because without this, I'll give you a very good example, is we do a lot of work, wonderful work around sexual productive health, right. So what we do is like we use football to teach young people how to make safe choices around their sexual reproductive health. So it's good work because now girls can access family planning, they can access contraceptives, they can, use condoms and be free to talk about that. But what we have done is kept to a conversation about sex because it will be funded, and it's sort of part of the global narrative that neglected to talk about it in a much deeper issue, which is about relationships, male female relationships in a community like ours. What does that look like? But because nobody will fund that, right? It is not a conversation we are properly ready to have. And it's not. This conversation isn't just like in our community, it is almost global. In like almost every school we have comprehensive sexual education, but it's relationships - we don't deal with that. Where are some of the sexual problems are coming from? Like do young people fully understand what they want in relationships? Do they understand the responsibility of it? And what does that conversation even look like? And creating a space to be able to do that I think is really important. So new funding models allow for a bit more risk in an approach to work, and in an approach to communities.
Nicola Banks [00:19:33] Yeah. It's it it's so hard in the sense that you see the positives and everything that these large volumes of funds are able to do in terms of projects, but then it just shouts from the rooftops at the same time when you hear the experiences of running an organisation based on projects. In a situation in which you have deep experience and knowledge of the much bigger problems that young people are facing in and outside of these projects, that are always going to kind of interplay with them and that you need to respond to, but cannot because your project is so strict and tied to our null and logical framework. It's yeah, it feels frustrating from the outside and it must feel like deeply frustrating on the inside.
Lwanga Bwalya [00:20:24] It is very frustrating and so, look at it this way. Right. You go see like, all right, this addiction that is happening in a community. So young people are now abusing alcohol, drugs and hard drugs like new things have come into the community. But if the World Bank has not done a study, if the UN has not done a study, thenI have no data to leverage. Like, alright, this is it. I can't just say me and the community are seeing this as a problem - that doesn't get funded on a massive scale, because there is no study that has happened yet. Unless there is now, all right, this study comes, the World Bank produces a report, and then I can say, alright, the World Bank, they say there is a 98% percentage of prevalence. Then we can be taken seriously. But then it does mean that we are neglecting what the community is perceiving as the actual need at that exact time.
Nicola Banks [00:21:25] And that, of course, I would imagine influences how the community see the program. Like oh, we're not going to deeply invest in it either, because they're not deeply invested in that.
Lwanga Bwalya [00:21:36] Asma has something to ask.
Asma Bham [00:21:40] Well, I think this is one of the issues that stems around restricted funding. And I'm going to now come to you, Nikki, as, co-founder and stewardess of, One World Together. Can you please talk a bit more about One World Together for our listeners who might be tuning in and don't know much about it. Give a brief overview of what it is and the conversation that we've had up to now.
Nicola Banks [00:22:09] Of course. Thank you. So I think we are researching the challenges that development NGOs face in really, I guess, living up to their socially transformative potential. So moving beyond just the outcomes and indicators of development projects to actually leading to more deep rooted transformational impact on the ground. So, yeah, long term empowerment of communities and kind of substantially different social and economic futures for all kind of things. So I've been researching that in various different ways over the past decade. And then as time has gone on, I've got more involved from the kind of practice side and conversations around this exact thing, around shifting power away from the global north and away from the global North's particular priorities, which are rooted in their funding, their powered funding and trying to get some of that decision making power and more of those resources on better terms to the communities and the organisations like Play It Forward that are doing incredible things. It baffles me that the minute you hear Lwanga speak, it is so clear why a community centred approach is needed and nobody would dispute that. But the system we have doesn't even let us see it. The system we have upholds this northern driven approach to development, and that's not right. NGOs here in, in the UK and in the global north know that there's a problem. And there are now huge discussions around locally led development, localisation, trying to do better. But that's also really hard because their hands are tied by the bigger system. The donors cannot operate in ways that respect community led development. They have to prove outcomes to taxpayers. They have to get rid of big quantities of money, rather than give lots of small quantities of money to smaller organisations. So I found myself in a situation where I just thought, there's no way that this system can change things. So what would it take? And then when I came together with my co-founder, Chibwe, as part of this kind of social lab discussing the issues, we thought we'd start from a different vantage point, which was, okay, so if the question is how do we get more money on better terms to local and community based organisations like Play It Forward, what would we have? What would that model look like? How could we do it? That has to be taken out of the kind of the big volumes of donor funds. So it would have to be starting from scratch to build a new kind of pool of funds rooted in different values of trust and solidarity, rather than risk and value for money. And how how would we build that? So we we came up with one well together, which was to design a, very affordable and radically transparent alternative for supporters of global development to come and join. It's a model that we have built to be financially sustainable in ourselves as we get big enough, asking committed supporters who we call our global citizens to join us for a small annual membership fee that covers our costs, and then to also subscribe to a very affordable monthly donation to our Solidarity Fund, which becomes this collective pool of funds that we can just give on a completely unrestricted basis to our partners so they can use that money, however best suits their need, whether it's to respond to crises, whether it's to invest in staff, whether it's to kind of invest in new program areas or to just have dialogues with the communities. But to do all of the things that the anchor has been saying is often left out of traditional approaches. So we really, with One World Together, just believe that we can do things differently. That it takes all of us to come together to do things differently, but it doesn't have... So we can change the world without asking the world. So we ask supporters to give as little as £1.25 a month, recognising that it's in our scale, that that can become really powerful, that we can take on a system that is rooted in power, privilege and hierarchy and build something that is rooted in solidarity and just gets money to great organisations. So the most simple thing in the world, but so radically different to what is out there already.
Asma Bham [00:26:47] Thank you Niki. Just hearing you speak right now, it made me wonder. We have Lwanga with us. You are one of our four amazing partners. When you first heard of One World Together and the change that we're trying to bring about, what was the first order? What was like - what is this? What came to your mind? I think I'd be pretty curious to know.
Lwanga Bwalya [00:27:08] To be honest, it felt like the first thought was that this might be too good to be true. Somebody who was like, going to listen and say, right here is money. Do what you really think is the best for your community. That seemed too good to be true, but it is really amazing engaging with them because, so we've gotten two payments so far, so we did a team building activity just to get the team together, like corporate sort of budgets for this, and immediately also like with the second grant, we have committed to paying our coaches a little bit more because you see what happens with organisations like ours, right, is that, there's a lot of investments in training your staff. But what that is is that you cannot afford to not have trained staff. So you pool resources, you train your coaches, but it also puts you in a place where you're vulnerable because there is a bigger team who will be like what? Now that you are licensed coaches or training, can we now have them? And can just take them off your hands. So whilst you can have committed people, they still want to be valued and feel like they're valued because they still have families, they still have things to do. So we have committed to that and it's because of One World Together, and I am grateful for that, because it does mean that we keep having the conversation, we keep having the dialogue and the funding structure, the funding model itself, because we're doing it like building community, right. It opens up to the number of voices you can engage meaningfully. It opens up to, alright, what would you like this conversation to be? And that is like more useful even because remember I was talking about lived experience, but it also means that I'm emotionally invested in the community and having people with vantage points outside, we can have dialogue around what development could mean and real conversations and alternative voices to have, and that is useful and important.
Nicola Banks [00:29:21] Absolutely. I mean, that's just coming to the idea of community and sharing experiences, isn't it.
Asma Bham [00:29:26] Such a wonderful way that you've you've ended it because now I'm just going to go into, you know, community space. And we've heard the term community and we've said the word community and the importance of community and the importance of dialogue, which brings us to One World Together's community space. So in this part of the conversation, I'm hoping to now talk a bit more about an online community space that One World Together launched earlier this year. So in January of this year, One World Together and all of its partners, we went to Kenya. And in Nairobi we had a wonderful community summit where all of our partners and our wonderful One World Together team came together to discuss how we can further communication and how we can engage in knowledge exchange, not only between partners, but also our global citizens and our partners and our wonderful One World Together team. How we can have a space for us to engage in dialogue and knowledge sharing. And the idea of this community space came about. And when we were in the initial stages of One World Together and of what we wanted to be, I think we had some things that were really important to us. And one of that was we wanted to shift away, like you said, from the traditional practices that are in development. And this included obviously giving unrestricted funding, which is so important, like, you know, Lwanga has mentioned, and we wanted to provide unrestricted funding, but then not burden with a lot of reporting, which you said can be a lot of, take up a lot of resources, be really time consuming, which for an organisation which has limited resources, you would want to then channel that resources into a lot more important things that you would want to do. So we want our partners to have a lot more flexibility on how they can report to us. And we want to have a relationship that's based on trust. Maybe Lwanga because you spoke a lot about, restricted funding, can you explain to us the importance of having unrestricted funding and also having a model of reporting that's not as constrictive, that doesn't involve you writing numerous words and numbers and things that maybe a normal person that just wants to know what Play it Forward is doing. We don't want to know all the numbers, like...
Lwanga Bwalya [00:32:09] Yeah, you can imagine, like depending on what donors, some of like the reporting requirements would be that some of them you will have to even Google what some of the deals mean. You might need to hire a consultant just to put a full report together. Like some of it is like so strict and difficult. Each donor is complex in its own way, and One World Together's light touch approach is like so freeing for organisation leaders because sort of we can lean on our strengths in terms of, right, this is what we do best, and allow that to be how you report. It could be like, all right, let's do it as a news bulletin and, and read out in language that that makes it so engaging and useful because some of it could be difficult. So I. It's sort of I think the metaphor is like getting those chains off. It's heavy loads off and like, hey, please, let's get in on the conversation. And talking about a community space, I think I talked about this, but also the reporting style. Right. Is our own right. Here's what we did. We are amazing. And that is important. Like who doesn't like a good old fashioned well done. But community spaces allow for a more deeper conversation because we can come in and say, this is how we struggle. And I'll give you, like a very concrete example, because this is a safe space, like we work in, we safeguard and we teach young people how like anti-bullying. And we have conversations. And the codes they are coming from like in a long line of abuse and difficulties. This is not a problem we can root it out as a mother, even I would feel like I'm at my wit's end. Like, you know, you've trained people, you felt like you poured out and helped. And then, just like in January, a boy and a girl got in a fight. A girl was deeply cut, and you feel genuinely like you are failing. You've done all you could, right? But being in space where you could ask people who have been in theory, people who are psychologists, people who work at different experiences, other organisations that have worked with young people. Right. Here's the challenge - how have you dealt with it in the past? That is strength, that is what community is for, so sometimes when I'm sitting alone, I don't have to, because now I have a community I can reach out to with an actual challenge, with actual failures, and we can figure it out together. So that is like a massive upside for what the community does best.
Nicola Banks [00:34:59] I mean, it's a word that we can use so easily without realising how important it is. And I think that's largely because we've lost a lot of community in this modern world. But reflecting back on our meeting in Nairobi, I just can't help but smile. As in, we had the most joyful, nourishing two days of getting to know each other and immersing ourselves in our hopes and dreams. We have partners not just from Zambia, but also two in Kenya and one here in Manchester. And seeing the parallels, despite these different contexts, in terms of the issues that you're all facing and questions that you're all asking and how you can share across those was was astonishing. I remember one of our partners also had a very similar experience, and her eyes were open to the fact that there was someone like you helping young boys, like them, in the same way that she would hope, you know, like it was just such a powerful moment. And I think the community space is a space to share that beyond the community of our partners, but with our global citizens who until now get fed kind of very highly sanitised advertising campaigns as feedback or as this is how aid and development works that takes the community out. And I think it's not until we have a space like this that people understand why we need a different way of doing things, that they understand how important this new form of funding is that builds the solidarity that that we need to sustain a movement like One World Together and keep that unrestricted funding coming in. So it's a platform that opens eyes, opens hearts, and maintains a system that is more equitable, impactful community - centred... it just opens up a new world.
Lwanga Bwalya [00:36:53] And what I love about this, Nicky, is that, even if the reporting is going to, people are giving to these big organisations, we treat them like they're not capable of having a very complex conversation, which is essential for developmental action. It's like alright, I'll tell you, like, alright, I feed 23 kids. I will not tell you about the complexities of what is happening. And I feel like genuinely, if you are committing and engaging with development, you want to have that conversation. So being a part of this is like an important way to like, alright, let's come to the table and not get like, you know, branch off, but we get into the real conversation around what is happening in the world. It's a conversation around what compassion and empathy looks like in development. And you have to be part of the conversation to be able to do that.
Asma Bham [00:37:54] Which is again why it's so important when we were initially discussing One World Together's mission, we want our global citizens to be as involved, we want them to see the work that you are doing and the challenges that you're facing. We want them to see all of that. We want them to see the background. We want them to be actively involved. And when someone donates, we don't want them to just donate and forget about it. We wanted them to consciously donate, be present, and want to actively look after and see what are some of the successes that have come from that. And one of the ways the community space is so amazing is you get to be a part of that. We get to see the raw behind the scenes. We get to see what are some of the challenges that you're facing and how you're overcoming that. And as a community, as a global citizen, I would feel very privileged to have insight into all of that. And I just think it's an amazing platform for learning and for knowledge exchange. And if I just go back to Nairobi, one of the things I remember is how even across our partners, there's so much great collaboration and learning. So the two partners that we have in in Kenya, when in Nairobi we were sitting together and discussing oh this is our mission, this is what we do, what our partners are doing, the both of them found a common ground and they're like, oh yeah, you have a school for young kids. We have a community of young kids we want to support. Maybe we can collaborate and and we can have this great, like knowledge exchange and crossover of resources, which is so amazing to see. And if we can see that in two days, I know what can accomplish when we have this online community space running and have people from all across the world joining us. Which is I think it's really exciting, to just think about even.
Lwanga Bwalya [00:40:01] Really it is. It is.
Asma Bham [00:40:03] Just to give a bit more, insight into what the community space is going to look like for some people who are listening in. Because Lwanga, Niki, and myself, we've already spoken and been on the community space for so long. So we're hoping that the community space is not just a place for our partners, but also our co-founders are going to be there. Our One Word Together team is going to be there. So our youth board members will be there. The student union that's based in Manchester is also going to be on the community platform, and they're going to keep us updated about all the things that they're doing. We can engage in conversation with them. So if I was a global citizen and I was interested in what Play it Forward is doing, I can write to you and ask you about a specific project that you have. And if I'm curious, or if I'm another organisation who would like to carry on something similar in my country or in my community, I can look up to you and ask you about suggestions and ask you about some of the challenges and how you overcame them. So this is just, going to be a great space for learning and an honest exchange.
Nicola Banks [00:41:20] Yeah. I mean, it's just an exciting opportunity that can develop in so many ways. And from One World Together's perspective, it's also the space in which we can bring our global citizens into decision making. Because we are a new, dynamic organisation. We strongly believe in being a learning organisation. That changes as we need to change depending on how our partners experience things and on how our global citizens think we're doing when it comes to hopefully as we get bigger, bringing on new partners, involving our global citizens with that. So it's a space that everyone has a role in and everyone can lead something and everyone can feel more connected.
Asma Bham [00:42:04] And just for those who are interested in the development sector, they can be actively participating and know that what they're doing is having an actual impact. It is amazing. Now we have you here, this is a great opportunity for us to ask you about how you plan on using the community space. What are some of the goals that you may have?
Lwanga Bwalya [00:42:32] So I think, two things I'm grateful to have the community space for, because what it provides is a platform to have engagement. Right? And for us, we've committed to doing like meaningful community engagement, meaningful youth engagement. But this would be a way to do meaningful donor engagement. And so because sort of it does mean that it's a proper conversation on all three fronts that people giving to our work, the community we're serving, and the young people within our work, that in terms of shifting the power that is proper because it's sort of King Arthur's Round Table, where you have everybody participating around the table and engaging as equals rather than the 'right we're giving down'. So we've been, you know, we have power. And that is an important conversation because it opens up to like, right. There's, a conversation around: this is what the community wants. This is what our community, youth feel is important. And our donors, this is how they're engaging and that want to see reports and and involvement and that is important. But I also like to say people are engaged, fully engaged in development. It's then by having that conversation, it also brings clarity to how you want to participate, because you see the world is always going to have problems and the challenge is always that sometimes they feel so systemic that we do not know even where to start. But if you can leverage that inspiration like, oh, a football game can actually bring the community together, can we replicate this somewhere else? Oh, how are you using curriculums? How are they built and how do they work? This is sort of in terms of literacy. This is what is working now, and it's making it easier for young people to learn. How do you translate this to... you talk to like the the partners involved, having that conversation. Oh, this is what you Raising Futures Kenya is doing well that we can learn from. And here is what Play it Forward is doing well that we can leverage and be transferable, because the human condition is sort of everywhere, and we can figure it out together to sort of have a much better path to the future. And it's by all of us being on the table. And for us it's very important as Play it Forward that it's more dialogue than just a blast of of things to like - Alright guys, here is what we're doing. Sort of the outcomes we are trying to sort of build. How do we meaningfully engage our community? Here is what we do is a parents forum, but we have been looking for ways to open up this conversation so that parents can sort of open up, because even even in our work, right, there's the power dynamics are there. The community feels like, oh, Play it Forward has resources. They are helping our children. So when we go to a meeting, all we have to do is just tell them how we are so grateful for the work that they're doing in the community. But I want to like know the things that they have reservations about. So how do we ensure that they have an open platform and they trust that they can actually open up to those things properly? And then probably an academic will have a much better view around that question than I would have, on the trust and such.
Asma Bham [00:46:14] Niki, I have a question for you. What do you feel the community space can do in terms of garnering supporters for the long run? So instead of, I know we had a conversation on how we want to limit one time donations and want a sustainable model of of income. What are some of the ways that the community space can help foster this?
Nicola Banks [00:46:40] I mean, that's a really good question. And I would say the community space is really the centre of the solidarity building that we think is what it will take to really give the best forms of support to organisations like Play It Forward. A one off donation here and there, no matter how big, is not helpful because it doesn't allow you to keep paying your staff on a regular basis. It doesn't allow you to invest in new programs over the long term that are sustainable and deliver sustainable benefits to the communities. It just helps you to firefight or to kind of fill gaps. So for us, we believe that it's better to keep small and regular and hence, our £1.25 a month model that anyone could come into without huge amounts of reservation. And then coming on to the community space and seeing the power that that one part has, because there are many people keeping it scale. That is when solidarity happens. That's when it becomes more than just about a pound, that's when it becomes about the partners. That's when it becomes real, when it becomes eye opening to see such transformation a possibility through such an affordable mechanism. It's when you see also, I mean, we like to be about the positives at One World Together and about the community building and about what we're doing to kind of really have good impact. But it's also where we see how bad the alternative system is. The old system, how how far away from this community centred approach we have at the moment. All of the options available to us do not let us get our funds to organisations like Play It Forward. So it's yeah, hopefully the kind of heart of what we're doing that will build the solidarity that make our global citizens proud of supporting the movement that we're all creating together, that see that they are a part of that and feel that they are a part of that. Because none of this can be achieved without our global citizens. We are nothing but a dream without them.
Asma Bham [00:48:48] So, we're ending on how we've mentioned we really need our global citizens for us as One World Together, to thrive in our mission. I would just invite both of you to say a few words for our global citizens. Who might have new global citizens joining us soon. After this podcast.
Lwanga Bwalya [00:49:13] So anyway, I think. To global citizens, for me personally, this is meaningful. Like, it's really open time for community, and it gives us an opportunity to really tackle some of the more deeper rooted, deep seated issues that nobody would look at, and the opportunity to be able to engage with global citizens in opportunity to receive funding using this type of model gives us such a lifeline, like something truly new and powerful for organisations like ours and for communities like ours, to begin looking at some of the challenges that are really deep seated and we can begin to actually face them with more, you know, breadth and courage, because now we are sort of not fully just limited to all right, this is what will impress our funders.
Nicola Banks [00:50:17] And, for me, I'm deeply grateful to have you here and to listen to such an open conversation and experience about what it's like and what it's been like for you working within the broader development system. It doesn't take long when we hear your experiences to realise how important a community centred approach is, and from that it becomes baffling that we have had decades of this idea sold to us that we can do development by projects. That just can never reach the kind of depth and kind of direction that you can as a community rooted organisation. So it just it's such a... It's what brings one world together to life. It's a demonstration of why it's so important to do things in this direction and why it has taken, not kind of trying to change the system, but trying to build an entirely new system that is functional in the direction of organisations like yours. I mean, it's exactly why we do what what we're doing and why we're so proud to be working with Play it Forward. And, I think a really good exampleto listeners to show what we're all about and hopefully bring you into our community.
Lwanga Bwalya [00:51:35] Yeah. And so that really exciting.
Asma Bham [00:51:39] Thank you so much, Niki. Thank you so much Lwanga. And thank you for everyone who's listening to us.
Nicola Banks [00:51:44] Thank you.