Un/Making CSC
Resourcefulness

Resourcefulness

In line with a politics of resourcefulness1 practices of identifying the tools available for the struggle for social change while simultaneously recognising the structural inequality of the distribution of resources.

A digital photograph of a beaded necklace. A Imetaphor that represents the idea that my body is like our organisation, and I am wearing this necklace which has beads that represent the challenges of the youth, women and children in Malawi, the burdens. Our organisation has taken all the burdens on the necklace: this includes young girls who are being defiled, women who are being abused by their husbands, employees who are facing sexual violence. These problems are so heavy, weighing down the body, because our organisation doesn’t have enough resources to take care of all of it, sometimes we get negative publicity; but still our organisation fights on, and finds a way to carry it. Our organisation needs to become stronger to be able to carry it. When we realized that the amount of funding that we have is not enough to deal with all the issues that, that’s when we started looking at social enterprise and marketing some of the services that we have. So that whatever we have from those ventures can be used to support those things. Because over the years we’ve been adding things to our agenda, for example recently I’ve heard about climate change and mental health, and so we take it on.
In this metaphor, my body is like our organisation, and I am wearing this necklace, which has beads that represent the challenges of the youth, women and children in Malawi; the burdens.
This is an unfinished, imperfect structure made of mixed materials. And on top is a nest, and inside the nest are some small things that may grow. We are always working with structures that are not always fully formed, in a state of unfinishedness, a state of becoming, in terms of, for example, public sector, democratic values etc. These are working structures, they are not really robust. The construction is not just a spatial arrangement, it is slow and needs time. The construction using different materials is not always fully connected as it is being built. But we work with what we have. The nest on top is a delicate, a life giving space; a space that nurtures things that are small and that will become bigger. So we try various things (the objects in the nest), they are far from perfect, they are small changes, and they are not always very clearly connected, but maybe they may grow.
This is an unfinished, imperfect structure made of mixed materials.
Digital photograph of sharpies and two pegs; a material metaphor to represent the idea that donors are like bridges.
Donors are like bridges. They are some kind of structures who can fill the gap.
A digital photograph of a piece of paper with a fluffy ball, two colour swatches and a peg that represent a road. This material metaphor represents the idea that YONECO is the yellow fluffy ball, and the goal is the pole with the shiny material, the goal we want to reach symbolizing the ideal society, where all the rights and everything we fight for are accomplished. On the road to our goal we have these gaps that are here, caused by the donor landscape. The landscape is uncertain. And these gaps make us fall down every time we try to move forward. So what we are trying to do with the social enterprise is we are trying to fill in these gaps so we can reach the community. The fillers have different colours, like the yellow one could be the radio, the pink one the car hire. So we’re trying to find these solutions so we can make the journey easier to accomplish our goals.
This is like a road, and YONECO is the yellow fluffy ball, and the goal is the pole with the shiny material, the goal we want to reach symbolizing the ideal society, where all the rights and everything we fight for are accomplished.
  1. MacKinnon, D. & Derickson, K. D. From resilience to resourcefulness: A critique of resilience policy and activism. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 37, 253–270 (2013). ↩︎