felt a stirring in her heart to make a
difference in the world for the poor and
the vulnerable she understood that she
lived her life with a full bucket but
there are many marginalized people
groups in the world that lived with
empty buckets she even knew that the
sacred texts of her faith said that if
he shared just a cup of cold water that
it would please her God so she decided
that she would take from her abundance
and travel to place this in her city
where there was emptiness and she would
pour from her full bucket into those
empty buckets so the vulnerable could
also have full buckets and she was so
blessed by this experience that she
continued to do it every week for years
eventually gathering around her some of
her friends who also lived their lives
with full buckets and she told them
about this amazing program got them
excited and together they formed the
cold water collective people who lived
with full buckets that would travel to
places of emptiness to share in their
own generosity to the least of these and
the cold water collective began with
just five neighborhoods expanded to ten
twenty fifteen a bur hoods every week
being blessed by their generosity and
the cold water collective was hailed as
a success that is until one day suzanne
a recipient of the cold water
collectives charity asked them this
question have you ever wondered why
after years of pouring from your buckets
into the mine your buckets remain full
and mine remain empty what this fable
illustrates to us is what a lot of
researchers and practitioners have been
saying to us more and more loudly over
the last few years and it’s the
traditional paradigms for charity or
humanitarian aid are simply not working
and to get as simple and as crass as
possible as did a way of defining how
that paradigm works it works like this
you don’t have stuff I have plenty of
stuff let me give you some of my stuff
roll credits problem solved and while
the credits are rolling here are a few
pictures of me doing this amazing work
solving this problem posted on Instagram
so no one else has ever done that before
we can just just checking and there’s a
lot that could be said about the cold
water collective type of model that it’s
paternalistic or it’s disempowering we
could probably spend a couple hours
deconstructing that narrative that only
took 90 seconds to tell but the one
thing I want you to remember about that
story is that ultimately at the end of
the day the buckets are still empty and
they still require filling and I think
what is at work in a lot of the charity
paradigms that are simply either
ineffective or causing harm is that we
fail to distinguish between what is
crisis poverty and what is chronic
poverty and therefore we fail to
implement the right kind of strategies
accordingly if in the cold water
collectives scenario a crisis had hit
that village maybe some nefarious King
had poisoned the wells that have been a
drought a famine earthquake something
had happened to take away access to
water that it would make perfect sense
for this one-way generous giving from an
outside resource into this community
let’s do that it would have saved lives
and preserve that community but once
that crisis had passed they wouldn’t
have needed to shift to a different
strategy otherwise it would become a
chronic sense of poverty because it is
chronic poverty then we have to shift to
a development based way of thinking how
do we disrupt the systems that are
causing and perpetuating the problems
that we are responding to in these
programs so when I ask you just a couple
of questions so usually as I bring up
this topic with different groups around
the country it’s pretty immediate that
people start filtering around like oh
man what mistakes have I made who have a
harmed what damage have a done guilt
starts to set in a little bit so I just
want to give you a
couple of questions to help you begin to
filter through how do I begin to
evaluate the good work that I’m trying
to do in my own community the first
question I will ask you to ask yourself
are you the hero and the charity work
that you’re doing because the right
understanding of poverty it is not
simply about a lack of financial of
material resources that if poverty is
about a sense of a lack of voice a lack
of power a lack of access when we show
up with those things to solve something
something for someone else we’re only
affirming that sense of a lack of power
and access so if we are setting
ourselves up as the rescuers or the
heroes in these exchanges we are
affirming the worst part of the
experience of material poverty and the
other question I would encourage you to
ask is at the end of the day it’s a
bucket still empty requiring you to
refill it and if that’s the case we’ve
got to ask are there other models is
there a better way to engage and it’s
usually about this point in the
conversation somebody will raise their
hand and say I think I know what you’re
saying it’s like that old proverb that
if you give a man a fish he eats for a
day but if you teach them to fish eats
for a lifetime so in case that’s where
you are let me stop you and say that’s
not what I’m saying because in my
experience some of the people who are
economically poor are the best fisherman
that I’ve ever met they don’t need me to
instruct them on fishing what they need
is to ask questions about access to the
pond
who’s polluted that pond what kind of
fees are being charged to be able to
fish in that pond what’s going on in the
market can you get a fair rate for the
fish that he has caught or in many
contexts as the charity model so flooded
his community with free fish that it
wouldn’t matter if he fished anyway so
what I am saying is that if we’re going
to undo the traditional models of
charity
that are either ineffective or harmful
we have to start thinking about systems
not just symptoms
now we’re compassionate people and
that’s good we want to affirm that
celebrate that lean into that and
continue to make that a part of who we
are in the world but sometimes our
compassion sees symptoms and they rush
to action without asking the right kinds
of questions and so we find ourselves
perpetually fighting against symptoms
while the systems that are creating and
perpetuating those challenges are never
disruptive and before long the charity
action itself becomes a part of the
system that perpetuates the symptom
we’re trying to respond to so I want to
offer just a couple of contrasts to ask
you to think about from this idea of
systems versus symptoms first of all I
would say we need models of engagement
that are more about sustainability than
just a good story in the developing
world hundreds of thousands of people
every year use around spring break in
the summer time travel to the developing
world and spend millions of dollars on
service trips painting school buildings
doing programs for children handing out
resources and goods to those who are in
need and they make for great stories
it’s a week-long experience or a weekend
experience maybe a whole month and it
would get really good pictures out of it
really great stories we get very
emotional because it disrupts our sense
of the world because we’ve seen things
we’ve never seen before and it makes for
good stories but it doesn’t make for
sustainable models I want you to see a
picture of some folks I’ve had the
privilege of getting to know over the
last year that are creating a different
kind of model in Nicaragua and that
beautiful plant you see their cup that
came up on the ground is yuca and some
thoughtful workers that were on the
ground in Nicaragua saw that this was
one of their greatest assets as a
country and they had plenty of farmers
that didn’t need to be like our parable
taught to fish they didn’t be taught to
farm they knew how to do it but there
was access to farming technologies that
it can could increase the yield of their
product
and their access to a supply chain to
get it to market and the right kind of
mechanisms to increase their yield and
so they gather together with the best
possible practices for business and
created a model that not only has
increased the income of those farmers by
30 percent but it’s having these effects
on road infrastructure because you’ve
got to get the products in and out and
get it to market because now there’s a
demand now there’s opportunity now
there’s access it’s changing their
relationship to water and clean water
supplies and they’re not waiting on a
wealthy American group to come in and
build a well for them they’re saying we
have to have this well and let’s create
it and let’s do it and let’s go sit in
the mayor’s office until he finally
fixes this road so we can get our trucks
in and out and beginning to create
schools that are entrepreneurial schools
to make sure the youth are prepared for
this kind of industry when they graduate
that’s a sustainable model now a yuca
plant may not be something I can yank
out a ground and take home from a
service trip as a souvenir but it
certainly makes for something
sustainable where the hero is the
community themselves their agency their
capacity their ability supported by
people who have the skills and expertise
to bring about good business thinking
well she leads to my second contrast as
it as important as volunteering might be
in certain situations if we are really
going to disrupt the chronic systems
that are affecting our communities we
are going to need more than just
generous volunteers we are going to need
skilled professionals we are going to
need the expertise of those who Monday
through Friday go out and make good
things happen in our world but we tend
however to communicate to people that
your job is simple your job it’s your
income it’s your livelihood but if you
want to do good in the world donate here
if you’re going to do good in the world
go and volunteer over here rather than
saying what is your training your
expertise your capacity your vocation
how can you leverage that in a different
way to create lasting impact in our
world the organization that I work for
focused community strategies we’re in a
neighborhood in South Atlanta that’s
been a food desert for many years a food
desert is simply a neighborhood
lacks affordable reasonable access to
healthy groceries which means in our
community basically it’s a three hour
round trip on public transportation to
get to a grocery store that has
affordable healthy options so our
neighbors said to us we’ve we’ve got to
have groceries in this community and we
have we could have a heart for that
plight all day long and the old paradigm
would tell us well if healthy food is
what’s missing then let’s go outside of
this neighborhood find people have an
abundance of food let’s collect that
food let’s bring it down let’s set up a
food pantry and let’s distribute that
food to those who need more of it but
again it sets up this supply chain of
one group is to have one groups to have
not ones the hero ones the receiver and
it’s a bucket that just stays empty
perpetually but we don’t know how to
start a grocery there’s a reason that
major grocery chains don’t open stores
in neighborhoods like South Atlanta so
we had to do more than just lean upon
our hearts to compassionately care for
those dealing with food and security we
had to bring together a team of people
who had the resources and the connection
and most importantly the vocational
expertise to deal with this chronic
challenge and in just a couple of months
we’ll be celebrating two years of being
open with the Carver neighborhood market
and the Carver Neighborhood Market is
turning a food desert into a food Oh a
system unday through Friday are
leveraging their vocation they’re not
doing it for their own professional
benefit they’re not doing it simply to
benefit those that the market tends to
always favor and benefit they’re doing
it for the people in our city they’ve
gotten left out of those conversations
and they’re doing in creative and
innovative ways so what all of this
about is not about farmers in Nicaragua
or grocery stores in South Atlanta what
this is about is you and your own
giftedness your own training your own
education in your own skills that if
you’re going to disrupt the chronic
situations that our communities are
facing it is through your your expertise
your day two days ago we have seen some
brilliant people up on stage today
talking about
microbots and I’m like I know he’s
dumbed it down twelve levels but I’m
still struck
it was so much smarter than I am right
but I’m like but that is where the world
is going to change when people leverage
their capacities their vocation and
their skill to disrupt these chronic
systems dr. King born in the city that I
have the honour to live within made this
statement we need to make a career of
humanity and I’d push into that to be
very literal make your career about
humanity find a way to leverage your
training your education your skill to
disrupt the systems that create chronic
poverty so what about the cold water
collective what if instead of trying to
solve a problem they didn’t understand
for people with whom they had no
relationship
they decided instead to create a more
inclusive collective for all of the
assets all of the voices all of the
ideas were shared they could form an
inclusive partnership to disrupt the
chronic challenges in their community
thank you for your time
[Applause] [Music]