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…
Sex workers are a hypervisible population — in popular imagination, in media, in sketches of the ‘bad woman’, but strangely they are also completely invisible — in government policies, the healthcare sector, etc. This hypervisibility/invisibility means that sex workers are viewed through the lens of criminality, morality or victimhood while finding themselves on the periphery…
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…
The arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic and the associated lockdowns in the main cities of the country meant that millions of Brazilians had to quickly adapt to a new reality. Social isolation is the main tool for minimizing the effects of Covid-19 and reducing the spread of the virus. However, this isolation has enormous consequences:…
On 18 March, the Brazilian government mandated the closure of public schools, non-profit organizations and other public entities that provide essential services to the most vulnerable families in the region of Greater Florianópolis. Vulnerable children, in particular, relied on the food that was given to them at school, or by local non-profits. At the same…
Over the last few months, likely each and every one of us has felt pushed to the limits of our abilities to cope with the current global situation. Even for those of us for whom lockdown is no more than an inconvenience, this moment has undoubtedly led to more self-reflection, and an appreciation of the…
For the majority of the population, social rights are not gifts freely offered by those in positions of political power. Although most Brazilians can’t see this, all these rights were won by the mobilization of organized civil society. In recent weeks, Brazil has witnessed a clear example of how popular mobilization is the one authentic…
If you look at Tewa’s website, it will tell you that the word means support in Nepali. Applied to the organization, it’s both appropriate and understated. Tewa’s story has been ably told. This is not the place to retell it. Instead, I want to draw attention to a few key ideas which inform it and…
Just before Christmas last year I found myself with a very small and unsure group of ‘anti-CAA’ protestors outside a public park in Jaipur. We weren’t certain if we had the permission to gather and protest, who was really in charge or what we were going to do. Someone said we could gather but only…
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…