To follow up his article, #BuildBackBetter, Barry Knight is researching practical ways to make this happen. In the first of a series of articles, he examines the role of the individual, and concludes that a necessary condition of rebuilding society is to face the ‘shadow’ we all have within ourselves. The air is thick with chickens…
Looking at the history of poverty, there appears to be one certainty: poverty has been a feature of every human society since time immemorial. As the Bible says: ‘The poor you will always have with you’ (Matthew 26:11). A breakthrough In the 19th century, philanthropy worked hard to overcome this, and by 1909 there was a…
Coronavirus has changed our world forever. Plans made a few weeks ago seem outdated at best or undoable at worst. The speed of this has been remarkable. In a recent article, former UK prime minister Gordon Brown quotes Lenin: ‘There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.’ Those of us…
In the 19th century, Victor LeGrand created an orderly, geometric railway system for France which was designed to bring about the full integration of the country. This was reckoned to be far superior to the Prussian rail system, which was a hodgepodge of lines run by 50 different companies. The French system, known as the…
New promise Thirty years ago, European philanthropy stood on the brink of new promise. The formation of the European Foundation Centre (EFC) on 9 November 1989 – the same day that the Berlin Wall fell – ushered in a new era for philanthropy as part of a vision for a new Europe. There was hope…
Candid (formerly the Foundation Center) and Centris (Rethinking Poverty) are conducting a study on the role of philanthropy in producing safe, healthy and just societies. At a time when many people are questioning the value of philanthropy, the study aims to clarify its role in creating peaceful and inclusive societies that provide access to justice for all…
By Barry Knight and Colin Greer I dream’d in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the Attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth; I dream’d that was the new City of Friends. Walt Whitman The unseen driver of our troubles causes no pain. But it is quietly destroying you…
We need to build the capacity of actors on the ground to deliver an empowering strategy for users and beneficiaries, while satisfying the needs of multiple stakeholders, so that we can deliver our sustainable goals in accord with our vision and mission to foster human dignity. I wrote the above sentence in a 20-second stream…
It is good to see that the Alliance Special Feature on ‘Philanthropy’s Developers’ pays homage to some of the pioneers of philanthropy infrastructure. To my mind, one of these – Barry Gaberman – merits special mention. When he was Senior Vice President at the Ford Foundation, he saw the importance of the unglamorous backroom role played by…
Recent books by Barry Knight and by Alan Marsh and colleagues have shown that efforts to end poverty in low-income neighbourhoods in the UK have failed to make much progress. Darren McGarvey, or Rapper Loki, in his book Poverty Safari criticises the well-meaning but fundamentally misguided behaviour of the poverty industry which behaves ‘much like an imperial power’ and is not tuned into what…