Think Global, Act Local

Peggy Dulany, founder of The Synergos Institute and a former TPI board member, began to realize the importance of community empowerment as a teenager giving free clinic injections in Brazil, and it shaped her vision for eliminating poverty from the bottom up. “The kernel that has stuck with me and has kept me at this work through the years was that the people living in these settlements in absolutely minimal conditions have an intense desire to improve their lives and get out of poverty,” she explains, “and they understand better than anyone else what the solutions are.”  The first step, explains Dulany, is getting the community involved.  Synergos then works to provide missing links between grassroots leaders and political, business and philanthropic leaders in less developed countries.  Dulany recalls meeting with women living in Orissa, India, who overwhelmingly chose clean water, sanitation and access to health care as the most important issues to them.  Asking the local community to identify the most critical issues and empowering them to create change proved effective because the women were invested in the issues they chose, and most importantly, “it made the systems that were developed work.” (The World We Want, p. 62 - The Listening Post: Reflection and Radical Change)

Lucy Bernholz, President of Blueprint Research & Design, agrees that global change requires new channels for collaboration and knowledge sharing on a local level. “Imagine,” says Lucy, “if philanthropy focused on helping communities cocreate solutions and work together.” Bernholz argues that most philanthropy today employs a “jigsaw puzzle” method, by which pieces are assembled with only one right outcome.  Instead, she advocates for Open Philanthropy, a “LEGO” model whereby funders provide interoperable building blocks that communities can use to share information and come up with solutions specific to their situation (The World We Want, p. 89 - Open Sesame: Networks and Open Source Solutions) .  One example is CompuMentor, a global nonprofit technology provider that relies on web users to create a catalog of tech support (The World We Want, p. 87 - Open Sesame).  Another is a group called Fundable, which uses online social networking tools to allow people to create groups for giving, buying, investing or supporting political campaigns (The World We Want, p. 92 - Open Sesame) . 

To Peter Karoff, this concept of bridging connections between the sectors resonates deeply and translates to engaged and involved citizens, active on all levels, whose voices are everywhere.

“The theme of openness is a drumbeat. Breaking down silos, crossing domains, blending seemingly contradictory values, standing up against dogma and rigidity, seeing around corners, telling the truth to ourselves and others and deep listening are examples of that beat. This represents a transition in the way we think and act in our relationship to the world. It emanates from our inner condition, the yearning, fears, and the hopes present within.” (The World We Want, p. 83 - Open Sesame)

Learn more about The World We Want by Peter Karoff.