Reaching people

3 ways to help grassroots workers

/ Jared Waipouri

A while back I wrote that you should give grassroots impact your attention, and maybe cash.
Now if you’ re seriously considering it, here are three really practical ways you can encourage your favourite grassroots worker. Each way is an immense blessing and reminder that in the face of daily challenges they’re not alone. If you choose to act, you will set yourself in an exclusive group of givers who keep grassroots organisations alive long after grant funds run dry.
Now to be really exceptional within that group, there are some things that your grassroots friend may not tell you, but they almost certainly want you to know. If you stop reading at the drawbacks, you might feel as though there’s no hope, but that’s not the case at all. Read to the end for tips to make sure you achieve the best results from your kindness.

What are these three ways?

1- Cash. Cash is a powerful tool on the ground. It gives us the ability to get what we need today, and make immediate changes for the good of our beneficiaries. Whether we need to put fuel in the generator or car, replace a dying office computer (or chair), or pay the accountant, cash is king. Many grassroots organisations would multiply what they do quickly if their front-line workers had more free-flowing budgets.
On top of that, projects like a community water tank or a set of sports equipment which fall outside the usual work can be hard to justify in already over-stretched budgets. Gifts given to the specific project are often the only way that the project actually gets added.

So what do you need to know?
In a place like Vanuatu, just getting cash into our hands can be challenging. The nation features on a number of international banking naughty lists, and therefore doesn’t have access to handy tools like Stripe and PayPal the same as many developed economies. Not only that, receiving large gifts from overseas can create a headache for satisfying anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism funding regulations.
Although giving cash to specific purposes can often be the only way to assure that program is adopted, it can create difficulties if the day to day operation is not properly funded. What do I mean? Many grassroots organisations operate on budgets so tight they’d make your eyes water. It’s not unusual to need to decide to either put fuel in the truck, OR pay the internet bill. In a situation where general funds for operating are so tight, having project funds set aside in the bank account can be both tempting and frustrating. On the one hand, there’s a strong argument for “borrowing” those designated funds to keep the internet connection live, at least until the usual general donations come in to replace it (that’s a slippery slope to dance on). On the other hand, if your gift has only provided part of the entire cost of the program, your favourite grassroots worker is now under pressure to raise the rest of the money to get the program running. If all of the cash is there, perhaps they now need to recruit the volunteers they need to deliver the program. All of these project specific tasks need to happen while keeping the other things going and fixing the budget shortfall.

2-Volunteer. Bring your expertise and skills. By getting yourself on a plane and showing up in the field with your favourite worker, you get to experience all of the sights, sounds and smells which don’t show up in email and social media. You’ll have a much more personal view of the challenges of day to day work in grassroots ministry. By working shoulder-to-shoulder with your favourite worker, you’ll show them a level of encouragement that you cannot communicate from a distance. You’ll achieve tasks that they’ve had to put off because more urgent things kept on coming up. You’ll fix or resolve issues which may have been around long enough to begin truly demotivating people. An example:

During the 2 year border closures Vanuatu faced due to COVID, the small staff team at V2 Life poured our heart and souls into keeping our primary school open and thriving despite being unable to access the usual volunteer teams who would help keep things going. As a result, basic maintenance began to be left on the side for a day when motivation and time were more free flowing. During that time, cats discovered that if trying to escape the dog, mosquito screens make excellent ladders. Inevitably the plastic mesh soon gave way leaving large holes for both bugs and cats to get through the windows into the kitchen and bedrooms. Having cats getting into the kitchen rubbish while everyone slept got very, very tiresome. Right after the borders opened, a volunteer arrived though Mission Builders with a knee injury but a heart to serve. Being otherwise able bodied, we asked David to spend his days repairing mosquito screens on our kitchen and dormitory buildings. While this was a simple task, David’s help and willingness to volunteer was a boost to us all after years of being “alone”.

Very often, visiting volunteers can use their expertise and energy to get a great deal done and to a high standard. And when coming as part of a team, they can be a vital way for the organisation to deliver programs.

So what do you need to know?
If the charity are profoundly short of manpower, they may not be able to supervise you, or even give you an extensive introduction to the location. You may be left to your own devices in a place which is unfamiliar, you may be in a position where you need to ask lots of “dumb” questions. This is particularly true for places where no volunteers have visited in a long time. The ability to simply do whatever needs doing without being “high maintenance” is a real blessing.
Even organisations which are well practised in hosting visitors may struggle to keep you busy: perhaps your skill set requires supplies, tools, or materials for which a budget does not exist (see the point about cash).
If you have particular ideas about how you are going to help, and those ideas are not likely to help your grassroots workers, one of two things could happen. In the best case scenario, you’re disappointed but adjust your expectations and move to what can be done. In the worst case scenario, for fear of offending or disappointing you, your hosts won’t know how to tell you “no”, and will spend your entire visit trying to make what you “want” happen, despite potential negative impacts to their ongoing ministry.
Assuming that you’re the best kind of volunteer and a blessing at every turn, in small grassroots teams it’s still very likely that your visit will have added extra pressure and obligation to the team. While they’ll be happy to have, there will likely be a sigh of relief when you’re gone, and they no longer need to worry about whether you have everything you need.

3- Gifts in kind. Often when generous businesses or individuals have items which could be useful, they can save a great deal of time and money for everyone by donating the item directly to their grassroots workers rather selling them and donating cash which then needs to be converted into the item locally. This is a great solution when the worker needs a specific tool which would be difficult or expensive to obtain brand-new. The local private ambulance service in Vanuatu benefitted from this when they received secondhand ambulances from Australia. Additionally, there can be benefits to both donor and recipient: while the donor might gain a tax benefit (in some places), tax and import regulations for the recipients can often be less of an ordeal for donated secondhand goods than new items. On top of that, the items may be of better quality than the budget might allow, and more specifically suited to the task in question.

So what do you need to know?
The big difficulty in receiving gifts in kind is timing. Many times a gift becomes available at a time mis-aligned with the need. Perhaps a school is replacing their old but still useful desks, but to make way for new ones, they need to move the old ones this week. On the recipient end, if the item arrives too early, the classrooms the new desks will furnish are not yet built. So these generous and valuable donations need to be stored somewhere, risking theft, damage or destruction before it is used.
The converse is also a challenge: perhaps the recipients need a replacement printer for the office, and a local business has one due for replacement in 6 months which will be hugely helpful. The recipients’ immediate need for a printer is still a problem, and one which could potentially cost a great deal in the intervening time.

So how can you be awesome in your giving?
In all cases, listen carefully: your grassroots worker wants your engagement. They know you want to be generous and helpful, but they’re also pretty nervous that if they tell you something too blunt, you’ll move on to other legitimate needs. Listen carefully to what your worker is actually saying. Listen for the pain points. Consider whether your project-specific gift might be a better blessing in the less glamorous general fund.
Consider whether your particular volunteer skills will be a blessing in this season. Ask whether your preference for hot (or cold) weather, or your crippling fear of worms, is going to cause you discomfort and make you unhelpful.
Consider whether you can raise extra cash to cover your own materials when you’re volunteering.
Consider whether you have the flexibility and relaxed nature necessary to deal with daily (or even hourly) changes to your volunteer role (if flight schedules change, you may have very little time to do what you hope to).
When you are discussing a gift in kind, listen carefully and understand whether your timing is right. Can you store the goods before shipping them to your workers, so that they can focus on the work and not on trying to store awesome things that they can’t use yet?
Consider whether there will be costs at the recipient end which they have not budgeted for. Can you help cover those as part of your gift?

In all of this, don’t stop engaging, giving, and going. Your impact is significant, and as you listen and watch your grassroots workers, that impact will get even better!

What have I missed? What other things do you think every giver should know?

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Why Grassroots impact should get your attention (and cash)

/ Jared Waipouri / 2 Comments

I’ve been in the faith-based humanitarian field for about 10 years. In that time, I’ve been involved in some really awesome things, and rubbed shoulders with incredibly generous, kind hearted people. Along the way, I’ve seen people give their property, blood, tears, and sweat for the people they’re serving. I’ve seen friends come to the point of failure and keep going, risking reputation, livelihood and security to care for the people they’re serving. These are grassroots workers: people who are right there with their beneficiaries in homes, workplaces, disasters, mess, and brokenness.

I’ve also seen huge quantities of cash poured into large multinationals who have beautifully moving advertising with big promises of fixing poverty, making a major difference in emergency relief, and grassroots impact. Those organisations mostly began as grassroots movements of people with a vision to bring life-giving change to those around them. But since that point, they have grown into massive machines which, while trying to effect grassroots change, put huge resources into writing opinions, lobbying politicians, and producing advertising copy on a wide range of issues. They have bureaucracies which include grassroots workers, office staff (abounding), and many layers of lower, middle, and senior management. Some (myself included) argue that their big management structures cause them to produce far less impact per donor dollar than they have potential to. Yet the converse argument (which I also make at times) that gigantic budgets allow them to achieve far more grassroots impact despite the actual spending only being a tiny portion of their total revenue also has merit.
These big organisations can boast that through broad management structures they employ many grassroots locals in salaried roles, injecting much needed income through vital jobs. This is something few grassroots organisations can claim, and most could never support with often meagre donor income.

So why would I think grassroots movements need your attention and cash? Why would I claim this when so few are in a position to be registered as charities? Why would you want to hand them your cash when even the registered ones often fail to report their results well, they miss deadlines for legal obligations, and are often “winging it” when larger groups have beautifully polished presentations and 10 year plans?

People. It is people.

What do I mean? Every grassroots organisation begins with one person whose heart to be a blessing finds an opportunity to connect directly with someone in need. For one, it might be giving a pair of sunglasses to someone with a pterygium, for another it might be teaching a young man to read diverting him from a life of crime, for yet another it might mean loading emergency and medical supplies onto an old boat to deliver to hurricane devastated communities.
Grassroots impact looks like individual people making direct, personal connections with people who need help and support. Grassroots impact is what it looks like to break inertia for struggling people. Big organisations and academics call them “beneficiaries” or maybe “clients.”
Those of us doing grassroots ministry call them friends, we call them by name and we feel their pain. We cry with them in their desperation and try our best to walk with them as they find pathways forward. The friends I watch making true grassroots impact will be up early in the morning, working like crazy all day, and often fall into bed mentally and physically exhausted. A lot of that time and energy is directly spent on their “people”: the ones they have committed to helping. Some days they succeed, celebrating wins small and big. Other days poor choices are made, funds dry up, or they hit regulatory road blocks. Those days are tough. While in the big organisation a worker might have a beautiful supportive set of colleagues to fall back on, in the small work, these are the days when the grassroots worker has to confront the reasons for what they do alone, deciding yet again that it is still worth the effort despite the pain.

“So what,” you say. “They’re cowboys, often refusing to work with others who might be able to support them. They refuse to play well when things get political, they don’t attend the (endless, interminable) collaboration and consultation meetings, and they’re hopeless at following rules and doing paperwork.”
In many cases you’re right.
In many cases those “weak points” exist for a reason. For all of the “support” a partner can offer, there are endless meetings, paperwork, new obligations, and extra expectations, all distractions from the people that we set out to serve. For the “being nice” when things get political, there is rarely benefit beyond perhaps the big guys taking stories and using them without crediting the original worker. For the hours and hours spent following the rules, we could have helped our person (or people) so much more, if we hadn’t been distracted by busy work. For all of the paperwork we don’t quite understand, there’s a hurting person we do understand.
So let us get on with it!

But those are excuses right?

Yes, they are. And YOU might have the answer without realising it. Why do I say that? A personal story:

My friend, lets call him Stew, had a heart to serve young men. So he started visiting the local prison to connect with people Jesus said we should visit. As he did, he became more moved for those who need help, both in prison, and out. The more he was around, the more he saw that boys (and young men) get into crime not for fun, but from hopelessness and desperation. He started getting together with them. They would drink tea, tell stories, read the bible, and talk about the realities of life. Stew didn’t have a budget. A few friends who heard his story gave him enough for cookies and tea. They could see that he was doing something for which he is uniquely skilled. There was no business case, no presentations, no 10 year vision, no legal framework. Just a man connecting with young guys and trying to help them find a better way forward in life. Stew is skilled in the people stuff, he’s not an administration guy. He’s not about to invent a 10 year plan. He’s not going to dream up a multi-layer bureaucracy, or establish a charity.
Stew will respond to what he sees his guys need, and what God highlights for him.
Stew will do what he needs to do this week to show his guys that there is hope.
Stew will avoid paperwork, because it sucks up energy which he needs for his guys.

I watched all of this beginning and I didn’t have cash to give Stew, but I realised that I can give something. I am good with administration and charity stuff, so maybe I can offer him support that way? Another of Stew’s friends is a website designer, so she offered to help setup a website. Another is a business advisor, and offered help to formalise a charity and a bank account.
Soon, a charity formed with a board, a constitution, and a system for Stew to receive donations. It all centres on one thing: Stew is good at ministering to young fellas, and we MUST empower that.

That’s just one story. I have other friends providing 3D printed limbs to amputees in the jungle from a sailing boat, others who take supplies to hurricane-devastated communities, and more whose vision is educating children without access to school. I have friends who work with surgery candidates who can’t get surgery in their home country and will die without it.

There is one common theme. They’re all busy doing the work, to fuss with the administration necessary to play by the rules of the “big guys” takes more time and mental energy than they should be asked to give.
So why should you give your attention and cash to the grassroots workers? Because your skills as a web developer, accountant, copy writer, mechanic, builder, painter, or medical professional can help them to stay effective and engaged in their field of impact.

You can help them to do what they’re called to, and make a difference in the life of the one person right in from of them.

But the caveat is this: grassroots workers won’t compromise their peoples’ needs for your preferences. If you’re going into the conversation with an agenda and expectations which don’t help them, expect to be told where to go. Quickly. The converse is true: come into the discussion fully supportive of what’s going on, and you will build long-term, life-giving relationships. That connection will mean that you can always trust that your energy and cash is being put to the best use it can be, because you know your grassroots worker is committed and trustworthy.

Grassroots impact is vital to millions of people in tough spots all around the world. There is someone you know who is doing something grassroots.

Find them.

Listen to them.

Once you’ve listened, support them.

You may only have a few dollars or a few hours to give each month. Give it. Don’t be embarrassed by the meagre contribution, most of us (because I count myself as doing grassroots impact at V2 Life) are deeply blessed when we know you’re thinking, praying and helping us.

What do you think? Have I missed part of the conversation? Have I been unfair to the big guys? Make your argument (with respect, please) in the comments.

Becoming a chicken farmer, and other unexpected developments

/ Jared Waipouri

This post was inspired by my answer to a bachelor’s party quiz: “if this season of your life had a title, what would it be?”
At the end of 2018 I arrived back in Vanuatu having declared that I would work on getting more boats reaching the remote island communities of Melanesia. As somewhere I’d facilitated boat outreach for a few years already, Vanuatu seemed like a great perfect starting point. I had no idea how the coming 2 years would expand my priorities. I was full of vision, passion, and a little caution as a result of the challenges I encountered in the Caribbean, but I was confident that my friends and mission colleagues would encourage me. I was more than a little surprised when just a few days after getting back my good friend Roger suggested that I bring my vision for boat outreach along and join his team at V2 Life. My surprise was was less in his support for my vision, but that he’d be willing to welcome all of the risk and liability of being associated so closely with a new effort, when his ministry was so comparatively established.

But he welcomed me, asking for help to grow what was, at the time a youth training ministry, into a fully-fledged primary school. At first, things were as I imagined: I spent a few days a week onsite working on whatever challenges I thought I could help with, and the rest of the time was dedicated to doing whatever I could to get boats of every kind recruited to carry help and hope to the remote parts of the country.

My problem is, whether I’ve been asked to or not, I almost always feel a need to fix problems when I see them, even if they’re just marginally within my realm of responsibility; I tend to naturally pick up on responsibility once I catch a vision. So as I worked on the myriad challenges facing V2 Life, I identified more and more with the underlying vision: to equip children and young adults with relevant skills they can use to transform their communities. With such a deep sense of responsibility, each new issue became a challenge to face head on. I worked on updating the website, I looked for fundraising opportunities, I created publicity documents, I coordinated volunteers building a new dormitory building.

Amid all of those important things were three really big events.

The first big event was succeeding in organising volunteer yacht outreaches using S/Y Rendezvous and S/Y Hapai. It was immensely exciting for me to see our concept come together. We pulled together a small collection of normal people willing to jump on a boat with glasses, medical care, and bibles to the Island of Emae. Though simple, this outreach confirmed what I’d suspected: that it is not only possible to run outreach on sail vessels, but that for some island communities of Vanuatu they are far superior to large missionary boats. Why? Because with lower overheads and smaller teams, we could slow down, take time to meet each person, understand what’s happening and adjust to meet the needs we see, not just the ones we are expecting and planning for.
Don’t get me wrong, larger vessel, large team outreaches are amazing, and the ability to deliver care to hundreds of people a day far from any significant infrastructure is nothing short of a miracle. But quite often in the hubbub of trying to make sure everyone gets seen, it can be easy to miss a mother who is exhausted from trying to care for a disabled child without tools or support; or the elderly gentleman who despite his huge difficulty walking hangs back to let the younger patients get seen first.
When we’re on a small yacht outreach with just four or five people we can’t hope to see hundreds of people in a day, but we can search out the people hidden in their homes because of shame and disability. We can take the time to listen to the needs a little more, we can respond when we find something special, something which might otherwise be left undone.
This ability to respond was best seen when our team on S/Y Rendezvous discovered a little boy lying on his family’s concrete floor in a pool of his own waste. He needed a wheelchair, his mother needed encouragement, support and tools. There was nothing available on the island, and very few qualified to help in the nation. A few months later we’d pulled together the resources: a custom wheelchair, an occupational therapist, a doctor; loaded on S/Y Hapai we returned to help this family. We spent a week, custom fitted the wheelchair, gave mum and son hope. We discovered how the little boy’s condition was limiting his communication, and we helped his mum learn to care for him better. The day we left, there was hope. Hope for a dignified life, for community life. We’d taken a week for one boy and his Mum, and shown that they were loved and cared for by a God who is totally willing to send a bunch of strangers to give them what they needed, what could not be found on the island.

The second big event was less glamorous: with Roger and his family away, I was confronted by a big stack of eggs sitting in our kitchen: our ministry chickens were laying really well, but the eggs weren’t selling. Naturally I saw a need to sharpen how our farm was operating. This could improve overall sustainability, our ministry’s access to protein, and our training options. So in I jumped, selling all of the excess eggs and beginning to put the profits aside for feed, upgrading the cages, and new hens. A few months in with a serious chunk of change saved, we built additional hen houses and runs, giving us the ability to keep more hens, raise more chicks, and (in theory) start to put some profits into our now flourishing Primary School. We ordered more hens, and our egg farm was back to being a serious part of our ministry.

The third event was, by all accounts, the most transformative: I got together with Joyce. Now my wife, we started our relationship with lunch on a Sunday in October. The following day I got on S/Y Hapai for the outreach to Emae Island mentioned above. Every day was a full effort, with many things to keep my attention, but each evening messages were flying back and forth as Joyce and I learned how to communicate as a couple, as we allowed ourselves to start falling in love. Within months it was clear that we both had the same end goal in mind, to marry someone whose heart is for the Lord, for missions, and unafraid of travelling to the far-away places. Late in the year Joyce’s dad came to visit from the Solomons to check on this Kiwi fella who was showing so much interest in his daughter. He gave his fatherly blessing and by January we were engaged to marry.

None of us could have predicted what would happen next. With our newest hens growing toward laying eggs, and wedding preparations underway Joyce and I went off to New Zealand for a wedding and to meet and greet my family. During our visit we began to hear about some kind of virus in China. With my standard level of minimising, (the kind which gives someone the ability to sleep through a category 5 cyclone) I brushed off this “coronavirus” as a storm in a tea cup and returned to Vanuatu to start ordering more layer chicks which we would need in a few months. To my surprise, by the time they were supposed to arrive in March, I was being proven very, very wrong as borders closed and import of live animals was no longer possible.

In no time we’d been forced to postpone our yacht outreach plans for the year, as well as all of the other volunteer teams we were expecting to host. Facing closed borders Joyce and I postponed our wedding by a month in the hope that things might come right. My brother found himself stranded and lent a hand with completing the little container house I was building, but soon even the joy of having his company came to an end when he was evacuated to New Zealand on an airforce Hercules.

With borders closed, there would be no yacht outreach in the foreseeable future, Joyce and I were facing a wedding day without family present, and my chicken farming efforts were facing a pretty serious hurdle. I could do nothing about the borders and our family coming for the wedding…but I could do something about the chickens.
Without further ado, and with a borrowed rooster, we commenced a very experimental breeding program. Though we did get some imported chicks in early 2021, our hopes to raise our own layer hens came to fruition a couple of months later when our first batch of cross bred hens began laying regularly. Despite challenges with reliable incubation, we’ve started to consistently hatch chicks in the hope of one day being completely independent of imported layer chicks.

The season is exactly what I wrote in the answer to that question in my bachelor’s party quiz: “If this season of your life had a title, what would it be?”

Becoming a chicken farmer, and other unexpected developments

What would you call your current season of life?

Postscript: Joyce and I have now been married for a year, and our hope is to be able to visit our families as soon as we can when borders open. Yacht outreaches are still in limbo as we wait for the COVID restrictions to ease enough to allow visiting vessels to enter the nation more freely.