Learning from concrete wins or lost battles?
I’m grateful to Ginette for her opinions and super curious to see if she has experienced victories too in her work, even small ones. In a conversation I had the other day with a friend well versed in NGO work and having quit, she mentioned something suprising to me: that for her it is the proper third sector having a chance of changing things, not the bottom up grassroots. So you see, all sorts of distinctions are being made, but I recognize the bottom line - the need for structured processes, paths to access resources, influence etc.
My opinion is not worth much, in fact we can be right and agreeing and still not go anywhere :-| From the years I’ve been working in this field, what I’ve seen is doors opening and an ability from policy makers to listen. With unMonastery called in by a city, Futurespotters by UNDP, new doors opening thanks to them and other consultancy work, and so on. It feels to me hard to think about large scale change, but seeing a progression makes me more hopeful than at time zero, if that means much. If Edgeryders is anything of a counter culture movement, than it is also true that from the beginning the position was to open channels for collaboration between very diverse people. And guess what: over the years people in policy making have joined too, and were honest about their own limitations as institution representatives - for example, this is someone who at the time of engaging was in the Amsterdam City Council and here asking about basic income and how it would work.
So to me, if OpenCare with the workshops and future activities manages to open a real channel, that is already a win. Then to move forward, I can see the need for someone to pick their battles and perseverate in that… and who knows how long that takes.