Causing Good Trouble with Darren Walker

In September, Sheku Gassimu, OneVillage Partners’ Community Action Program Manager, sat down with Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation. They discussed everything from the colonial and often racist histories of both international development and philanthropy, the importance of centering communities and lived experience when addressing poverty reduction, and why we should never give up on causing good trouble. Below is the video and the full transcript.

Sheku: Thank you and the Ford Foundations’ support of OneVillage Partners and thank you for joining me today.

Darren: Well I’m honored to be here Sheku. The work of OneVillage Partners is critical. The organization is doing vitally significant work in Western Africa, and Sierra Leone in particular. This is a region that has had so many challenges and yet people like you, your fellow countrymen and women are committed to a better nation and a better region, and a better Africa. This inspires me and of course my friend Jeff Hall who this organization has meant so much to Jeff and his family, and that inspires me too. So I’m just grateful to be here and looking forward to our conversation.

Sheku: Thank you Darren. I’m going to start the conversation right away. As a leader of a social justice foundation, you have been at the forefront calling on philanthropy to play a bigger role in helping to address the challenges caused by the coronavirus pandemic and recognizing philanthropy’s role in the economic, racial and the social inequalities and injustices felt around the world. Thank you so much for pushing the industry to be better and do better.

Darren: Well I am very very grateful that so many philanthropists have stood up and have come forward. But my challenge to philanthropy is that we have to do more. That this moment in this post-COVID world requires us to go beyond our usual practices. This is a crisis of unprecedented consequences, and it comes at a time when global inequality, the reality of climate change, and here in the United States, the reckoning with our history of racism and its implications. All of this has converged, and it is really a moment when philanthropy and those of us who are privileged, whether we at the Ford Foundation or we as individuals who have done well, more is asked of us, and more will be demanded of us rightly because we have benefitted during these challenging times, and therefore we must do more. There is no question about that.

Sheku: As a leader, Darren you have proven to be an effective advocate for reducing poverty and injustice around the world. In a year of a global health crisis and a spotlight on systemic injustice, we have seen many organizations, families and individuals are turning inward. On the contrary, the Ford Foundation has taken out $1 billion in debt to support the important work of nonprofits through these challenging times. In such a heavy year Darren, what successes have we as a world achieved that keep you motivated to do this work?

Darren: Well first Sheku, I don’t think the Ford Foundation should be particularly commended. I think we did with issuing the social bond what we should be doing, and that is demanding of ourselves that we do more, that we innovate, that we evolve, and that we are porous enough to respond to the challenge of this moment. I am a believer in seeing reasons, reasons for hope. Organizations like OneVillage Partners give me reasons for hope because you see the resilience, the dedication, the determination of people like yourself to not give up, to not give in. In the United States, one of my heroes was a man called congressman John Lewis, and he always commended us to cause trouble, cause good trouble, and cause it as much and as often and as frequently as we can. And what he was saying during his lifetime is we are going to need trouble makers, trouble makers like you Sheku, organizations that cause trouble, good trouble like OneVillage Partners, who are not willing to take no for answer, not willing to accept the status quo. And I think around the world if we are to solve the challenge of poverty and inequality and injustice, we are going to have to have more good trouble makers because the world is a perilous place and we need organizations like OneVillage Partners to be the lighthouse in the harbor, giving light and energy to goodness and to positive messages and stories during a time of great darkness.

Sheku: What an incredible response. I think I like the response about OneVillage Partners being a trouble maker. That is incredible, kind of like not taking no for an answer but going deep, and I also like the humility Darren. The resilience to which we try to engage with our communities and making sure they feel more empowered in the process and not out of the process.

Darren, you may agree with me that philanthropy and international development have complicated pasts, both are rooted in racism, classism, and colonialism. OneVillage Partners’ model is a direct response to that, with the vision to shift power to communities so everyone has the ability to shape their own lives. Why do you think that community-led approaches like OneVillage Partners’ are important? How can organizations be more effective when they put communities first?

Darren: Well we know from the history of international development, that the old way of doing things, having elites, having Americans and Europeans plan from conference rooms in Washington and New York and Geneva strategize for poverty reduction in Africa - the roads and urban slums of Africa are filled with the carcasses, the equipment, the development projects that did not work, and they did not work because they did not put community at the center. They did not empower community residents. And we know now that when community residents have agency, autonomy, authority, projects will be sustained and will be more durable and resilient. And so part of the shift that we have made at the Ford Foundation, and I think we are seeing Sheku the very manifest in the idea of OneVillage Partners, is to not privilege the credentialed knowledge of “experts” from the World Bank or from some foundation, but to lift up and honor the wisdom and lived experience of people closest to the challenge and to give them the power to be able to, with of course the help of experts when needed, to design and implement and hopefully sustain their work. I believe this must be the way forward if we are truly to see the development landscape change and to the see this work ensure, we got to have community at the center.

Sheku: We got to have communities at the center. I think this is learning for everyone across the world and really something that pushes communities more into the role that they make decisions over their own lives. That is incredible Darren. That is something we are going to continue to reflect on and continue to push forward and make sure that communities are actually the masters of their own destiny and how they want to see change in their own environment.

Thank you Darren. I am going to move the conversation to your book. In your book you write, “Charity might be writing a check for a cause you believe in, or finding ways to help individuals who have been affected by the scourge of inequality. But justice goes beyond individuals – it’s investing your money, time, resources, knowledge and networks to change the root causes that create the need for charity in the first place.” Darren, can you tell us more about this and how getting to the source of systemic injustice and racism applies in a global context?

Darren: Well I think when I reflect on philanthropy as we practice it in the United States of course the name Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller are seminal. Andrew Carnegie wrote a critical, very significant essay in 1889 entitled ‘the gospel of wealth”, and in this gospel he laid out the precepts of giving that have been followed by captains of industry, billionaires, all the way today to Bill Gates and others. In his original essay, he talked about inequality and injustice as being simply a fact and gave little attention to that. His issue was what could men like him and Rockefeller and Morgan and Ford do to give back as he described it, charity to be generous. And I think that was a great document and really did pave the way. But Martin Luther King in 1968 also wrote about philanthropy and this is what he said: “Philanthropy is commendable but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.” And what Dr. King was saying was something different. He talked not about charity and generosity, he talked about dignity and justice and that the work of philanthropy must support, advance the dignity of those underprivileged and disadvantaged people and justice for them. It is a different idea of philanthropy. It requires an excavation of the deep underlying causes of injustice which globally is a reality, a historic reality of colonialism, of racism, and of white supremacy. These are very difficult things to talk but indeed these are our histories. And if you know anything about Africa or Latin America, and of course the United States, we know that that this racism, that this legacy of colonialism is still with us. In order to find the kind of justice, to address poverty at its root, we have to address these historic structures and systems and cultural practices that have advantages some and disadvantaged others.

Sheku: That is incredible Darren. In order for us to solve the issues of the world, we have get deeper into the root causes that underlie some of those systemic structures that advantage people and disadvantage others. Darren I am going to move on with the conversation to something that is a bit personal and that I would really love to learn more from your experience. I was raised up by a single parent here in Sierra Leone, one of the poorest countries in Africa where a few wealthy people control the political decision and economic power. Even though our circumstances and life experiences might be totally different, I am very interested in your journey from being a child of a single mother in Texas at the bottom 1% to the success you have in America today. What wisdom or support do can you share with those not in this space that are aspiring to improve their own lives? What has been your biggest lesson along your journey?

Darren: Well I think the biggest lesson for me has been to have an internal desire and unwillingness to accept that I couldn’t do something, to find myself in so many circumstances where I experienced racism, homophobia. And yet for me it was about persistence. It was about an unrelenting internal ambition, aspiration, grit, to not give up or to not give, or to know there are going to be many many obstacles and barriers in your way. The second lesson I would say is it is important to cultivate champions and people who will support your journey, will support you on your journey, will mentor, will help, share wisdom and give you insights that come from people who often have experienced similar hardship and too have succeeded, these are just two lessons I have learned on my journey. Every day, I live with gratitude. I live with gratitude for the life I have, with humility that I didn’t do it by myself, that there are literally hundreds of people and institutions and governments and who have invested in my success and believed in me.

Sheku: Thank you, awesome Darren! I think one of the key things that I take from our conversation is the belief that you don’t give, and you also cultivate the champions, people who believe in you, who also share in your story, and I’m really impressed. I think this I going to be a lesson that I’m going to take home, and this is also going to be a lesson for the organization that we don’t give up, we continue to cultivate champions along the way. Thank you very much Darren, thank you for taking the time to share your wisdom and experience with us today. You’ve inspired us and you give us hope. You not only have made a success on your own, but you continue to advocate for the most vulnerable people as you and the Ford Foundation show the way for a more just future for everyone. Thank you very much Darren.

Darren: Thank you Sheku, this has been a great honor and privilege for me. Congratulations to you and everyone at OneVillage Partners.