more than just colleagues: Love-led Impact
As an organisation dedicated to backing local leaders to create meaningful change in impoverished communities around the world, we understand that true impact requires more than just financial support - it needs love.
The moment Bushra and Mushfiqur told us they were engaged.
We recently had a call with the gorgeous people at Move92 (a funding organisation) to introduce their team to our community of leaders and the life-changing work they do. One of the Move92 team asked the group how working with Just Peoples is different from other donors - and the answers really moved us.
One by one the leaders described the ways we support them beyond project financing. Basic things we didn’t even consider to be ‘support’ came up, such as trusting that they know what’s best for their own communities or checking in on them when they’ve been sick. Or the time Mushfiqur and Bushra told us they were engaged to be married and we cried tears of joy (and Jo nearly fell off her bike). Beth mentioned that we helped relieve some of the anxiety she felt about becoming a mother as we shared our own maternal experiences with her while she was pregnant.
And The love goes both ways.
When I had a stiff neck, Liz, a physiotherapist, gave me an online consultation during a project update call and fixed me! Sharmin encouraged Jo and I to be proud of our bodies and remove the shame we felt about our periods. And when I was sick with Covid in 2020, Lucy arranged for a whole school of Tanzanian students to wish me a quick recovery. I was so touched by that 20 second video, I think it actually sped up my recovery!
“Get well soon, Christey!”
We’ve been working with some of these changemakers since we launched in 2016. During this time we’ve weathered a lot of storms together and formed genuine friendships. But over the years we’ve come to realise that these actual heroes who are saving their communities from poverty against the odds, are complex, normal human beings like us. They’re incredible, but not invincible.
Discussing clean water filters and the anxieties of motherhood with Beth.
At the peak of the pandemic we held a call with leaders from Uganda, Vietnam and Bangladesh to discuss the Covid situation in their communities. But the conversation quickly got personal. Each person talked about the immense strain they were under as they’d seen loved ones die without access to medical support, and of the burden they felt by having their entire communities look to them for leadership and help when there was almost no way to fully support them at that time.
The leaders shared from their hearts, and we all cried. In the end they said the discussion had been therapeutic. Sharing their hardships with people who, despite working in entirely different cultural contexts, knew exactly how they felt, made them feel less alone and able to continue working hard for their communities who were suffering. Before then, we’d never spoken to the group about the personal toll that leading people out of poverty can take.
How could we have assumed they were invincible?
As founders of Just Peoples, Jo and I have had the privilege of receiving a wide range of professional coaching, leadership training and mental and emotional health support that has enabled us to grow the organisation and avoid burning out. If we can risk burnout working from our safe homes with access to all the comforts of modern living, how must it be for people working on the frontlines?
Sharmin taught us to be proud of our powerful bodies.
With this in mind, we aim to nourish the leaders we support in more ways than simply passing money from hand to hand. We believe the way to make their work sustainable so their peoples can become truly free from the shackles of poverty, is to ensure each leader has the personal and professional help they need to take care of themselves first, so they have plenty left in the tank for their communities.
So the heartwarming answers that came from Move92’s question about how we’re different to work with, showed us that we’re on the right track. And through the beautiful discussions we’ve had with the leaders following that call,
we’ve realised that the love and friendship we feel for these wonderful people, appears to be reciprocated.
Roading tripping with Eve to a refugee camp. We bonded over love, life and our shared passion for humanity.
Preparing greens for lunch with Charlot’s mother in law.
Sophorn’s heart is the biggest we’ve ever met.