thank you the question can I help you is
a question that millions of people ask
millions of other people every single
day what does it actually mean to help
another human being or indeed to help an
entire community
I believe that helping is a powerful and
often beautiful human impulse but I also
believe that helping has a shadow side
that certain styles or forms of helping
are actually doing more harm than good
Rosabeth Moss Kanter the Harvard
academic puts beautifully when she says
that when we do change two people they
experience it as violence but when
people do change for themselves they
experience it as liberation today I want
to present a very simple idea and the
idea is this if we want to help people
in a way that does no harm to them and
their capacities and their communities
then the best place to start is with
what is strong within them and within
their communities and not with what's
wrong there is an abundance of evidence
that calls us to this way of helping
including the 75 year study on what
makes happiness possible the
longitudinal study from Harvard which
reminds us that it's best to lean into
our relationships and to create
community rather than lean into
ourselves and money and the work of the
Kettering foundation which study is what
happens when democracies work as they
should and indeed here in the UK the
work of the New Economics Foundation
which has helped us to see the five ways
to well-being still despite the fact
that thousands and thousands of pieces
of evidence call us to the idea that we
should start with the capacities and the
abilities in people and in communities
we see this great preponderance
in governmental and non-governmental
programs alike around the focus in the
obsession with the starting on what is
wrong what is broken
what is pathological within people sadly
that focus has caused huge harm to
millions of people around the world
especially poor people and especially
communities and it has created four
harms unintended as they may be in
particular the first of which is it
actually takes people who are trying to
help and it defines them not by their
gifts and their capacities and what they
can bring to the solution but by their
deficiencies and their problems the
second unintended consequence of this
top-down obsession with what's wrong is
that money which is intended to go to
those who need the help doesn't it
actually goes to those who are paid to
provide the services to those who need
help the third unintended consequence is
that active citizenship the power to
take action and to respond at the
grassroots level retreats in the face of
ever-increasing technocracy
professionalism and expertise and
finally entire neighborhoods entire
communities that have been defined as
deficient start to internalize that map
and believe that the only way that
anything is going to change for them is
when some outside expert with the right
program and the right money comes in to
rescue them
these are unintended harms no caring
professional wants these things to
happen but it's also clear that no
community needs these things to happen
fortunately there's another way of
thinking about helping we can begin to
actually reflect on a form of helping
which starts with a focus on what's
strong not what's wrong and literally
turns our traditional ideas of helping
inside out John McKnight and Jody
kretzmann two professors at Northwestern
University in the late 80s brought this
idea into sharp focus when they spent
over four years traveling almost
like an odyssey across 300 neighborhoods
in north america some 20 cities and as
they went into these neighborhoods which
were largely known by others as back
waters of Pathology known by the some of
their problems John and Jodi started at
different conversation they invited
people to tell them stories about how
change happens from their point of view
they invited people to share stories
about a time that they and their
neighbors came together to make things
better and the stories they shared some
3,000 stories and all across that four
years share well they brought a focus
they brought a way of seeing what
actually is used by citizens and by
people in neighborhoods to create change
they helped us to see the raw
ingredients that people use to make
change happen from inside out these are
the six building blocks that those
communities said are the building blocks
that make change happen when it's
sustainable and it's endurable and it
respects the assets that exist already
in communities over the last 30 years we
traveled across the world and from
communities in Tallahassee in the USA to
Torbay in the UK we have heard the exact
same report from the mouths of
indigenous communities people telling us
that these are the assets that must be
identified connected and mobilized if
we're going to see real change happen in
our world imagine what would happen if
our traditional ways of helping people
were flipped if instead of focusing on
what was wrong with individuals and
indeed with entire communities we
started with a focus on what's wrong and
then we figured out how to negotiate a
new relationship a more respectful
relationship I think what would happen
is that we would see transformation in a
way that we could never have imagined
fortunately it's already happening we're
doing some work and we've had the
privilege of coming alongside some
community builders in Leeds Leeds is a
city
as you know in the UK and over the years
we trained a number of community
builders to the City Council but also in
the neighborhood networks and leads one
of the things they care deeply about is
how older people can live well at the
age well close to home and also how they
can ensure that those that are aging do
not die with an experience of loneliness
and feelings of uselessness one of the
things that they've also come to
understand is that there is no program
and there is no service for loneliness
the only way that we can address
loneliness is by building community by
building deep relationships and so
traditional models which take older
people and put them together with other
older people in programs for older
people will not be sufficient to end
loneliness today in Leeds their focus is
not on building a bridge between older
vulnerable people and the center of
their services but on building a bridge
between older people and the center of
community life take Robin Robin was in
his mid-70s when he first came in
contact with a community builder that we
trained in Leeds he had just lost his
wife and he was experiencing all of the
challenges and the traumas that you
experience with bereavement but the
community builder that engaged with
Robin didn't just listen to those
emotions though she listened she also
asked Robin what his passions were what
he cared about enough to act upon what
made his eyes dance in his head and what
Robin said when she asked those
questions was he was passionate about
baking walking sticks that was his great
passion taking branches from fallen
trees and carving them into walking
sticks today Robin is a leader of a
group that he set up made up of all age
groups who are learning how to make
walking sticks and sharing those walking
sticks with people in the community the
significance of the story is this Robin
is not a client in a service Robin is a
citizen at the centre of his community
using his gifts along with the gifts of
his neighbors to make a better community
and a more inclusive community
often when we label people as vulnerable
or as deficient or as problematic what
we actually do is we define them out of
community and redefine them not as
friend and his neighbor but as client in
a service system and I think that when
we do that we take some of the soul away
from the person all in the name of
helping them sometimes we don't just do
that to individuals in many communities
around the world we've actually done it
to entire villages in some cases entire
continents we have to figure out a way
of lifting those labels which off skewer
the gifts of communities the resources
the capacities the untapped reservoir of
possibility and creativity and invention
that exists in every single community if
only we could focus on what was strong
within them so that they could use that
strength to address what's wrong well
one of the places where we're learning a
lot about how to make those invisible
resources more visible is in a place
called where'll another place in the UK
one of our community builders has been
working across the world to find the
hidden treasures that exist in that
community and one of the people that
we've discovered is Frank Frank is a
community artist who has such a driving
passion for changing his community and
for seeing the strength in every single
individual he believes that there is
nobody whose gifts are not needed to
create the kind of world that he
believes is possible if we include
everybody's gift Frank is an artist so
he sees things through the eyes of an
artist and one of his passions is making
sure that the environment looks as well
as it possibly can in the world for
those who live there and for those who
visit New Brighton Beach was one of his
recent projects and he was really
disturbed by the fact that there was so
much litter and debt rias on the beach
he decided he wanted to mobilize so he
got his community involved now most
people when they see litter what they do
is one of two things typically either
they organize a litter pick with
volunteers
or else they Lobby the council to try
and get them to do something about it
well Frank had a different idea Frank's
idea was to create a pirate ship this is
the black pearl the black pearl today
stands as one of the biggest tourist
attractions on the world but it's also a
beacon of civic engagement because Frank
didn't just build that boat or that ship
himself he invited people many people
who felt exactly like the driftwood that
was coming onto the shore forgotten and
cast aside he invited them to bring
their gifts to bring their gifts to
creating this icon of impossibility this
this tribute to the possibility that
comes when you invite people from the
grassroots to identify the solution in
their own words and to create the
solution with their own hands you know
everywhere I go I find that when people
create things themselves they they own
them in a way that you can never ever
own that which has been created for you
the pirate ship has really affected a
huge transformation in that community
needless to say New Brighton Beach is
cleaner than it's ever been but also
thousands of other below the radar
initiatives that we just don't see are
happening on the world because community
builders are taking care to identify
connect and mobilize the assets that
exist in every community I'm so
heartened to be able to report to you
that all over the world
this backyard revolution which is
shifting the focus from what's wrong
with our people and our communities to
what's strong within our communities and
how we can build that strength to create
a better tomorrow is happening
everywhere
we spent the last six years in the UK
really focusing in on how we could
create demonstration sites across the UK
places that were living evidence of what
happens when you take the theory and you
put it into practice I'm proud to say
that in May we're going to be working
with our partners the Bank of ideas to
do the
same thing across Australia and there
are many other countries where we're
seeing this backyard revolution come
into reality just a few weeks ago I was
very privileged to spend some time in
Rwanda I started my journey in Rwanda
three and a half years ago training
community builders in the gisado
district of Kigali which is the capital
of Rwanda and they have been working
over the last three and a half years
with 49 schools and 484 villages in
Kigali I'd love to share every single
one of the stories because each of them
touches a human emotion within us in a
very very special way but I don't have
time so let me just share one this is a
school where the community builder came
alongside parents people without any
credentials people who had huge
self-doubt in their power to change
anything but the community builder
invited them to identify what they cared
about enough to act upon and then
invited them to take action on those
issues and they identified two things
that they felt really needed to change
if their school and their village was to
realize its potential the two issues
that they took on the first was the fact
that there were street children each of
their villages that were not connected
to community not connected to family and
not connected to school they didn't gang
press these kids into school what they
did was they came alongside them and
they formed relationships with them and
they found out from them what it would
take for them to reconnect back into
community life and back into school and
the kids said very clearly we do not
want to go to school and learn books
school is boring hands up who thought
school was boring I certainly did they
did not want to go to school what they
wanted to learn was how they could
connect with people who were interesting
people who knew how to make tables
people who knew how to fix engines they
wanted to connect with people who didn't
have any formal teacher training but who
could teach them the skills that would
allow them have a life they wanted today
they're in school but it's not like any
school that most of us have gone to
they're in a school that looks as much
like an economic hub as a dosa school
it's a school that is focused not just
on educating people but all
to giving people the skills they need
for life the other challenge they had
was supporting teachers who lived on
meager salaries to be able to live with
dignity and pride and have a morale in
teaching their children what did they do
they source local produce and they
created a supermarket in the school so
the teachers can use their salary to buy
the food they need at reduced prices
these are ordinary people uncredentialed
people doing extraordinary things and we
see this every single day when we start
with a focus on what strong not what's
wrong imagine what the world would look
like if we were able to take those
stories and to proliferate them and to
look at the significance of the stories
and see that the two things that
mattered most was the grassroots action
of citizens but also the help of
community builders in each story there
was a community builder who was
supporting the village and the
individuals to identify what was strong
within them and figuring out how to use
what was strong to address what was
wrong and make what was strong even
stronger still imagine the world if
everybody who was defined as the problem
secured the power to redefine the
problem imagine how more inclusive a
more beautiful world we'd have a more
fruitful a world we'd have you know I
believe that the solution to the most
intractable problems that we face starts
from the grassroots from inside out and
it starts with a belief of the fact that
there is no two-tiered society where one
group of people with all the problems
are rescued by another group with all of
the solutions there is no they - there
is only us
Lilla watson the great Aboriginal elder
educator and activist once said if
you've come to help me you're wasting
your time but if you've come because
your liberation is bound up with mine
then let us work together so as we look
to a brighter tomorrow and as I conclude
let's recognize the fact that we are the
people we've been waiting for
we are sufficient on to the challenge
and we are becoming a change we seek
thank you
you