“Be clear on your goal. And no matter what comes, keep moving forward.”
A Minute of Inspiration | Be like a river
Planting Seeds or Stones?
Lately I have found inspiration in the writings of the Polish-born American Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Heschel’s own life was a testament to the power of the human spirit. His father died when he was just a child, and many more of his family members were murdered in the Holocaust. He escaped to New York in 1940, where he continued his lifelong exploration of Jewish mysticism.
What I love about Heschel is that although he was a prolific author, scholar, and professor, he was not an armchair philosopher. His faith deeply informed his thoughts on social responsibility. Heschel was a passionate activist for civil rights, joining his friend Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis in the Selma to Montgomery march for equality. Of that experience he said “I felt my legs were praying,” and called on other religious leaders to show “spiritual audacity” in the face of oppression.
Heschel was a man who thought deeply about the relative value of questions versus answers.
His work has particular resonance at this moment in history because, in my humble opinion, we seem to have far more answers than we do questions. Even in our most prescient social challenges – things like racial equity, climate change, animal rights, and more – we see that individuals tend to attach themselves to answers, catchy slogans, and foregone conclusions. The overarching values system has overpromoted the defense of answers far more than it has the passionate inquiry that should lead to them.
This imbalance might be why we struggle to move forward meaningfully on even those issues that dominate public discourse. According to Heschel, adopting answers without questioning can never lead to meaningful forward motion. He once wrote:
“There are dead thoughts and there are living thoughts. A dead thought has been compared to a stone which one may plant in the soil. Nothing will come out. A living thought is like a seed. In the process of thinking, an answer without a question is devoid of life. It may enter the mind; it will not penetrate the soul. It may become a part of one’s knowledge; it will not come forth as a creative force.”
Heschel, like our community of changemakers at The Pollination Project, was a doer. He was a thinker who manifested action through a process of deep inquiry, just like those our community uplifts each day. I daresay he was a heartivist.
No stones have been planted in our global garden; only living thoughts that grow and blossom into a kinder, more compassionate world. Thank you to each of our changemakers who make up this vibrant ecosystem of kindness, whose prayers are extended hands to their communities. I am eternally inspired by you.
What Philanthropy Can Learn From Afghanistan
Recently, I read the report of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction titled “What We Need to learn: Lessons from 20 Years of Afghanistan Reconstruction.”
I wanted to understand how the investment of two decades and $145 billion in reconstruction dollars could be so decisively and spectacularly undone in a mere ten days.
The report is damning. The section that stood out the most for me was titled “The US Government did not understand the Afghan context and therefore failed to tailor its efforts accordingly.”
The report found that the Americans “clumsily forced Western technocratic models onto Afghan economic institutions; trained security forces in advanced weapon systems they could not understand, much less maintain; imposed formal rule of law on a country that addressed 80 to 90 percent of its disputes through informal means; and often struggled to understand or mitigate the cultural and social barriers to supporting women and girls. Without this background knowledge, U.S. officials often empowered power brokers who preyed on the population or diverted U.S. assistance away from its intended recipients to enrich and empower themselves and their allies. Lack of knowledge at the local level meant projects intended to mitigate conflict often exacerbated it, and even inadvertently funded insurgents.”
This lack of cultural context extended to all they did. For example, the new schools being constructed were designed to American standards, with a heavy roof that required a crane to install, yet cranes could not be used in the mountainous terrain that characterizes much of the country. The schools also required entrance ramps and extra-wide doors to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, even though in many cases the rugged terrain itself was totally inaccessible to wheelchairs.
Reflecting on these tragic lessons in hubris, money, and power, I see so many important lessons for our own work.
In truth, philanthropy can be just as imperialistic as governments. How often do we assume that because we hold resources, we also hold solutions? Do top-down attempts at movement-building make any more sense than attempts at nation-building? How do we shift our ways of thinking and doing to move from saving those in need to a focus on serving them? As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Lasting change is not a top-down equation; no amount of money or might can supplant the long-term importance of thinking from the bottom-up. Even if it is well-intentioned and well-funded, any social change work that is an imposition rather than an invitation is predestined to fail. Any attempt at change – political, social, or otherwise – must begin with humility, inclusivity, and the solutionary voices of those who are most impacted. This is true on all scales; from a seed grant of $1,000, to a nation-building project of billions.
This is why you will always find me at the bottom, as close to the grassroots as possible, repeating one simple mantra we have heard from our community time and time again:
Nothing for me without me.
A Minute of Inspiration | The Power of One Person
“Each and every one of us has the power to make a change. A positive change, not just for ourselves, but for everyone we come in contact with.”
AJ Dahiya of The Pollination Project: “Compassion has many different faces”
by Ben Ari
Compassion has many different faces: Through our focus on individuals working at grassroots levels, we gain the chance to uplift the voices of diverse and marginalized leaders whose work is often overlooked by larger institutional funders. When you make the opportunity to serve accessibly, you get so much more diversity; not only racial or socioeconomic diversity of the players, but also a diversity of ideas and solutions.
As part of my series about “individuals and organizations making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing AJ Dahiya.
AJ Dahiya is a former monk who is now a writer, speaker, and Chief Vision Officer of The Pollination Project, a global community of 4,000+ grassroots volunteer leaders in over 125 countries. At The Pollination Project, AJ pioneers disruptive philanthropic approaches that serve as an antidote to apathy, funding individuals directly for social projects in their own communities. A leader of the #heartivist movement, AJ advocates for the amplifying effects of non-financial resources and self-reflective practices as foundational factors in building a kinder, more compassionate world.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I would say my path is untraditional, but my past connects to my present role through the principle of service. The role I’ve held for most of my life was that of a monk. At 18, I renounced all my worldly possessions and joined a monastery. I spent the better part of a decade traveling to monastic communities around the world, consulting with the leaders of those communities about how they could be more connected and compassionate. But at a certain point, I began to feel I had grown as much as I could in that life, and decided to stake out a new path. Still desiring to be in service, I was fortunate to lead several organizations before coming to The Pollination Project; notably The Bhakti Center in New York, and Hope Not Hate USA. I still feel, even today, that the center of my work is to be in deep service to others, although doing that through the lens of philanthropy looks very different than it did when I was a monk.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company or organization?
At The Pollination Project, our model is centered around funding individuals directly through seed grants, so that they are able to act on the inspiration to serve that they feel within their own communities. I always thought that this model could have real value in the case of natural disasters or other emergency relief, but that was truly put to the test during this last year. At the start of the pandemic, we mobilized our entire global community within two weeks to serve COVID-related needs like support of vulnerable communities, deploying supplies to hard-hit areas, and support for food insecure communities particularly in the global south. It was inspiring to see what could happen, and how quickly it could unfold, when you are mobilizing the capacity of people to act out of great love and concern for their friends and neighbors.
Read the full interview here
Becoming Justice
Over the last year, much of America and the world waited with heavy hearts for the outcome of the case against Derek Chauvin.
This wasn’t just a fight for George Floyd. This wasn’t just a fight against Derek Chauvin. This was a fight for the soul of a nation, a fight for humanity, and a fight for justice.
This week, the American legal system finally delivered accountability for this grievous murder. Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all counts. Yet, only a few hours after the Chauvin verdict another young Black person was shot dead by the police.
This is the problem with accountability: it is retrospective, not preventative, coming only after the loss of another precious, irreplaceable life. Perhaps even more importantly, accountability is not restorative. George Floyd’s young daughter will still live a life without her father, irrespective of what the jury decided, just as Ma’Khia Bryant’s mother will never again hold her child.
I’ve been thinking this week, like so many others, can we now move from accountability to true justice? Is our duty only to build and support the legal system and other institutions, making them more fair? Or is there a personal duty that each of us have to live the embodied virtue of justice in our everyday lives?
If I consider what is needed to prevent another murder such as George Floyd’s, I am not sure the problem is solely an institutional one. Part of it must be personal. What I see fundamentally missing in these violent and traumatic events is relationship, loving personal concern, and a lack of understanding of our interdependence.
Bureaucracies cannot love. They have no soul, heart, or conscience. Only individuals have those things. The “society” implied in “social” justice is made of a collective of individuals. The collective shapes the individual, but so too does the individual shape the collective. Perhaps the fight for justice is a fight with ourselves, one that starts within our own hearts; and “the work” to be done is the work of manifesting justice in our own thoughts, words and actions.
At The Pollination Project, here is what we will do: we will continue uplifting individual action, working with people within their own communities to understand where they see just solutions. We will continue to invest in their loving concern for their neighbors, knowing this builds the capacity for compassion that exists there. And as individuals, we will work to better understand ourselves, remembering Frankl’s idea that happiness cannot be pursued, but is something that ensues.
Perhaps justice is the same, and the answer is not to seek justice but to become justice.
The Entire Ocean in a Drop
The greatest untapped resource for social change is the potential for goodness within each human heart
Continue readingActivism Takes Both Hands
Growing up in a working class town to immigrant parents, I found myself in the same kinds of mischief common to young boys the world over. And like many children, I was adept at justifying my actions whenever I was caught. Particularly in cases where I felt I was the victim, I rivaled a defense attorney in my protestations of innocence.
No matter what the situation or circumstances, my mother would respond with a phrase that has been etched in my consciousness,
“It takes two hands to clap.”
It sounds much more poetic in her native language, but I think the English captures the sentiment (although I can clap with one hand…sorry Mum!).
This phrase was not heartless. It did not invalidate my experience or ignore my feelings. It pointed out that all of those things were but one hand. The other hand was mine — my reaction, my thought patterns and behaviours.
With this small sentence my mother taught me a valuable lesson. In every situation I am also a factor. What I didn’t know then is that my mother was a heartivist. In her own simple way she was illustrating that while pointing the finger out at the world and those within it, there was also a necessity in pointing inward.
There is no meaningful activism, no lasting social change that can be accomplished without self-reflection. So often, we harbor within ourselves the very things we dislike and want to change in others. To anyone who wants to improve the world, I say: start with yourself. It is only from this vantage point that you will be able to truly serve, and inspire others to do the same.
If ever more of us commit to self and collective evolution, perhaps one day soon the two hands will clap to applaud a world we are proud of.