Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell

Shifting the Power to the People You Exist For with Vic Hancock Fell

February 15, 2023 Julia Campbell Episode 75
Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell
Shifting the Power to the People You Exist For with Vic Hancock Fell
Show Notes Transcript

Support for this show is brought to you by our friends at Bloomerang. Bloomerang offers donor management and online fundraising software that helps small to medium nonprofits, like First Tee of Greater Akron, a nonprofit that empowers kids and teens through the game of golf. After just one year with Bloomerang they doubled their unique donors, improved donor stewardship, and raised more funds. To listen to the full interview with First Tee of Greater Akron visit bloomerang.com/nonprofit-nation .

We have a responsibility to ensure that we recognize and respect the power of the people we exist for.

Vic Hancock Fell co-founded a small international development charity when she was fresh out of university, age 21. She didn't feel it or know it at the time, but looking back 14 years later, she describes this as what she calls “peak White Saviour.”

Most recently, through the context of her work at UK based Raising Futures Kenya, as a White/Western led INGO, she has been more active in advocating for responsibility to acknowledge and minimize White power in this space both as individuals and as organizations.

In this episode, we take a look at the concept of "shift the power" and why it is so important for us as socially purposed organizations, especially those working in global solidarity.

Connect with Vic:

About Julia Campbell, the host of the Nonprofit Nation podcast:

Named as a top thought leader by Forbes and BizTech Magazine, Julia Campbell (she/hers) is an author, coach, and speaker on a mission to make the digital world a better place.

She wrote her book, Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Guide for Nonprofits, as a roadmap for social change agents who want to build movements using engaging digital storytelling techniques. Her second book, How to Build and Mobilize a Social Media Community for Your Nonprofit, was published in 2020 as a call-to-arms for mission-driven organizations to use the power of social media to build movements.

Julia’s online courses, webinars, and keynote talks have helped hundreds of nonprofits make the shift to digital thinking and how to do effective marketing in the digital age.

Take Julia’s free nonprofit masterclass,  3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media That Converts

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Julia Campbell  0:00   

Hi everyone. Support for this show is brought to you by our friends at Bloomerang. Bloomerang offers donor management and online fundraising software that helps small to medium nonprofits. Like First Tee of Greater Akron, a nonprofit that empowers kids and teens through the game of golf. And after just one year with Bloomerang, they doubled their unique donors, improved donor stewardship and raised more funds. Now to listen to the full interview with First Tee of Greater Akron, visit bloomerang.com/nonprofit-nation. bloomerang.com/nonprofit-nation. Or click the link in the show notes. Thanks. And let's get to the show. Hello, and welcome to nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell. And I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers, and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the nonprofit nation podcast to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently Find Your Voice. Definitively grow your audience and effectively build your movement. If you're a nonprofit newbie, or an experienced professional, who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people and create even more impact, then you're in the right place. Let's get started. 

  

Hi, everyone, welcome to nonprofit Nation. I'm very excited to be here with you today. As you may know, I am your host, Julia Campbell. And today we're talking about the concept of shifting the power shifting the power to the people that you exist for and why this is so important for us as socially purpose organizations, especially those working in global solidarity. So my guest today is Vic Hancock Fell. And she's the founder and director of fair development, a social enterprise founded in 2016. And she'll tell you her story, but when she was working in house as a small charity leader, she was also doing her master's in NGO management. And I've actually heard this from several of my clients, and several of my students and colleagues, the master's program was focused on large organizations and running like a massive organization, which really ignited some frustration that there wasn't enough support for smaller organizations. And I know a lot of my audience, they are the smaller organizations, so they can completely relate to that. So Vic has almost 15 years experience working within the small charity sector in the UK and internationally, and is passionate about working with small charities, and shifting the power and global solidarity work. I love it. So Vic, welcome to the podcast. 

  

Vic Hancock Fell  3:02   

Thank you very much for having me. It's good to be here. 

  

Julia Campbell  3:05   

Yes. Okay. And where are you based? 

  

Vic Hancock Fell  3:08   

So I'm currently sitting in my basement in Sheffield, England. It's raining and very dark and miserable. It's usually like a nice, dry place to live. But it has been raining all day here. So yeah, I'm kind of slap bang in the middle of England. 

  

Julia Campbell  3:24   

How did you get into this work? And what are you working on? 

  

Vic Hancock Fell  3:27   

Now, I got into this work, kind of as a kid accidentally. So my mum was involved as a volunteer with a charity that was working in partnership with a community in Kenya. And I would go along on trips that she would do to go and do work with this community. She was a teacher. And so she was working with his community in a local organization on kind of local education projects. And so first time I went was when I was 11. And I just went along with her to Kenya. And so I was just exposed to that, I guess, from being quite young. And then I started to volunteer for that organization. As I got older, I would do little big sales and little fundraisers. And then as I got older and went to do my undergraduate degree, I became a bit more interested in sort of supporting the the mechanisms of running the organization. And then it wasn't really until I was in my early 20s, that I realized that I could actually work in the voluntary sector. And this wasn't just something that I had to do as a volunteer. And I've reflected on this quite a few times before that it really did not occur to me at all, as a young person growing up, that a job in the nonprofit sector was something that I could aspire to. I really saw it as something that you did as a volunteer. And I think that was just done to my exposure to kind of Professional nonprofit work when I was a young person in school, it never occurred to me that that's something I could do. So I eventually got into doing paid work in the nonprofit sector. And it was kind of around that time where I entered into the sector as a member of staff that I decided to go back and do my master's in NGO management because I felt like I had some good instincts about what I should be doing. But I didn't do a related kind of undergraduate degree. And so I really didn't feel as if I had any kind of credentials to kind of, to back me up, I suppose. So I did that. And then that was great. As you say, it really did kind of kickoff this frustration in me of the lack of support available for smaller organizations in particular, and really doing that course, was what really kind of saw me focus very specifically on the small charity sector and the small NGO sector. So that's kind of how I got started, in more recent years, sort of worked in kind of senior roles in small international development charities in the UK. And then very recently, this year, I decided to make quite an intentional exit from that sector. And so as he said, I started fair development, which is a sort of social enterprise consulting and training, organization for small charities started that in 2016, have been doing it alongside those day jobs at small INGOs made that intentional exit from the NGO sector in the summer this year. And now I'm doing further development is my main work. So I do consulting myself on organizational strategy, organizational development, I love problem solving, and troubleshooting and crisis management. And then I've got a collective of 50, fantastic associate consultants who do everything from fundraising to charity, finance, impact assessment, program design, the goal is to be kind of a one stop shop for smaller organizations to be able to come and get affordable and accessible and appropriate consultancy for their small organizations. And I'm loving it, I kind of pinch myself every day that I'm getting to make a living from something that I really love. 

  

Julia Campbell  7:15   

I do too. A lot of my clients are very small. And certainly in my online courses, a lot of my students come from very small organizations. And I agree with the research, the conferences, a lot of the consulting, it's mostly focused on having resources and having a full marketing department and having a team of 300. And having the ability in the network to really raise a lot of funds and also having the experience you know, a lot of small nonprofits have started, just out of passion, really grassroots. And you know, not a lot of MBAs are necessarily running small nonprofits, and not in a bad way. It's just certainly not the sector, that people tend to gravitate to, you know, when they do get their masters in marketing or Masters in Business. But I love that you started a social enterprise. And I want to tell the audience, just sort of how I found out about you, I was reading the fundraising everywhere blog, which is one of my absolute favorites. I absolutely love fundraising everywhere. And your essay, the title is why I'm leaving my job in international development. I really resonated with me, because I served in the US Peace Corps, which is an international development program, run out of the State Department that places mostly younger, mostly white, mostly privileged students, or ex students in developing countries. And I was in Senegal, in West Africa, and working on public health campaigns there. And you said that looking back on your work in Kenya, you were a quote, peak white savior. So can you tell me about this, and like your journey to come to this conclusion, because that's a very brief statement. 

  

Vic Hancock Fell  9:08   

Yeah, of course. I really wanted to out myself for a while before I actually kind of published that blog. But as I said, like the first time I went to Kenya was when I was 11. I continued to visit Kenya through my work until my you know, recently, last last few years. And just in the last few years, in particular, I've just learned a lot, I think about troublesome power dynamics in the sector, about my own whiteness and how that plays in to my work in this sector. You know, I've learned from lots of great people, lots of great organizations and movements and just really started as opposed to like, hold the mirror up in front of myself and kind of think more about why I'm in this space and the power that I am kind of taking up in the place that I'm taking up in that space. And I started to reflect back on some of my early kind of experiences in Kenya and some of the things that I did I mean, you know, an example is, I've got photo albums, photos full of pictures with me, you know, crouching down next to a Kenyan child wearing scruffy clothing. And I'm just horrified now to look back at those pictures. But you know, they happened, and I think a lot of us have them. And I did, you know, even the way that I felt and thought about people and communities, obviously, I was 11 years old at the time. And so, you know, of course, I've got a different perspective now. But even into my sort of early 20s, I think I was still approaching it from a position of a savior ism, you know, this idea of like, I need to come in and do something about this. And I really just started to get uncomfortable with that, and then reflect on that. I got to the point, yeah, where I just felt like, you know, we're talking about shifting the power to our partner organization where I was working worked for this fantastic small NGO called Raising futures Kenya, we were having conversations as a team about how as an organization, we could shift the power to our partner organization, which we've made some really good strides in. And it was kind of written into the strategy before I left. And I just got to the point where I've done so much thinking and learning about kind of white privilege and white savior ism, and the power dynamics at play in the global solidarity sector, I just kind of couldn't reconcile it with my own involvement in that sector anymore. And I still work with clients who are international development charities through their development, but I tried to bring an angle of that sort of shifting the power to all of those clients. And with many of them, that seed has already been planted. And they're kind of on that journey. And with some of them, it might be that I plant that seed and start that journey. So I haven't completely turned my back on the global community in that sense, but I have very intentionally removed myself from being from having any position of power. In that space. I came across this amazing article recently, actually, on LinkedIn. And I just want to share a little quote from it. White Women comprise 80% of the workforce in the international development sector. And while you may be well meaning and altruistic and your reasons for working in this sector, institutionalized white supremacy and your mere presence as a white woman make you complicit in the systematic oppression of black and brown people that you feel led to serve in the Global South. 

  

Julia Campbell  12:58   

I think that this is an important discussion to have. And we've been having this these discussions in the United States, of course, but it just sort of got into the mainstream, with, of course, the murder of George Floyd and breonna, Taylor, and many others, and the Black Lives Matter movement. So I think we've been have we've been trying to have these discussions here. But a lot of what you're saying, really resonates with me, especially as a white woman, working in nonprofits having worked in development, was there a pushback from your colleagues for even bringing these things up? And like, what advice do you have for other people, even myself, I'm asking kind of for myself, what advice you have to continually have these conversations despite people being uncomfortable? 

  

Vic Hancock Fell  13:46   

Yeah, I think it is really uncomfortable. And what has helped me to navigate it is to acknowledge that everybody is at a different point in their journey on their self reflection, I guess, and learning. So I brought this up to my organization, probably a few years after I initially started having those feelings of discomfort. And so I'd already done a lot of kind of looking internally and reflecting and processing, I'd already had that knee jerk reaction of defensiveness and then got over that. And so when I was bringing it to new people, I was very aware that they were likely to have that knee jerk defensive reaction straight away, because this was the starting point for them. You know, I was coming to them a few years in on this journey. I was bringing it to them and it's the first time they've ever thought about this and doesn't feel good to be told that you're a white savior. So I think definitely just being aware of where people are on their journey and kind of going slow. I mean, I'm kind of of the opinion that we shouldn't make it comfortable for people. I'm not too bothered about trying to make sure that people feel comfortable because I think the whole point is I kind of want to make you feel a uncomfortable enough to realize that you need to, like do something different. But that is my my personal approach. And I appreciate that when you're trying to bring people on a journey with you, you do have to do it in a way that is going to have the outcome that you want, which in some cases might mean going a little bit more gently. So yeah, I think just kind of allowing people the time to process and reflect what you're seeing and not trying to rush it. And just looking at where everybody is at on their journey. And kind of accepting that. And, you know, I did get some, most most of the time, people were kind of like, yes, obviously, this makes so much sense. Let's do this. And in total agreement, and then you get generational differences, you get kind of people's own individual, like cultural differences that create different responses for different people. So there was a little bit of pushback. I guess, from older colleagues, I think it's be fair to say that it was all the colleagues that felt a little bit more anxious about doing this, but not so much the doing of it, I think everybody was in agreement that we should be shifting the power and localizing our work. Where the hesitation came in was, when I was suggested that we be very vocal about doing this, and not just do it behind the scenes, but kind of do it and acknowledge our power imbalance, and then kind of advocate for others to do it. That's where the pushback came actually not in actually shifting the power. But in saying upfront, I'm a recovering white savior. And now we're going to be doing this and kind of come on the journey with us. I think people felt like that was a bit too far. And there was discomfort. In taking that approach. 

  

Julia Campbell  16:50   

I think it all starts with the discomfort. And that's so important that you recognized, and you couldn't name it at the time, necessarily, but you just knew something was wrong, something was off, Something didn't feel right. And I think that's such an important place for people to start from another great quote around privilege is from Brene Brown, who's one of my favorite speakers and authors. But she says, and I'm I'm not quoting her directly, but she says the definition of privilege is being able to avoid tough conversations, because your life doesn't depend on it, you know, and that doing nothing to address inequality is actually supporting inequality. So, you know, it's I think it's just so brave and important that everyone that's working on the shift the power movement, you mentioned, you know, the organization, no white saviors. Charity. So White, a lot of my listeners might be familiar with. And you mentioned two podcasts disrupt development, and rethinking development. So tell me more about the shift the power movement, how can we get involved. 

  

Vic Hancock Fell  18:01   

So the shift the power movement started, I think, kind of informally, like 2016 ish, it was, it's a hashtag, initially, it sort of started as a hashtag. And then it became a bit more of a formal movement. And it's now kind of organized by a group of people. And there is kind of, I can't remember what they refer to it as, but there's like, some things that you should be doing, you know, these are some sort of principles, if you like, that if you're working to shift the power within your kind of organizations, that these are some things that you should be looking to do. And so anyone can Google shift the power, and you'll find, I think it's just shift the power.org or have a look afterwards to make sure you've got the right link for anyone who's listening. But it's an official movement, I guess, that you can join in on and start to be a part of these conversations, and how do we start to do this? Like, how do we publicly commit to doing this? I have to say, I got into the shift the power stuff, and started to try and be involved in some of these conversations and start to be kind of feeling like I was part of this movement. And I think it's really important that there is kind of some convening of this sort of thing. But I also think that we can get to sort of caught up in being a part of the movement and what exactly it should look like. And I felt at first, I'm not in the right rooms, having the right discussions, you know, I'm not in I'm not sort of doing this with the right people. I'm not doing it the right way. But when I started to go to these meetings about, you know, how do we localize power, how do we do this? And there was, you know, various academics and various kinds of people from organizations, I just sort of became a bit disillusioned, not with the shift the power movement, but just with the whole approach to this. And as you alluded to before, it's not like this is a new conversation. This has been happening. You know, we've been talking about this in the sector for a long time. And I started to go to these discussion groups and sessions about localizing and I was like “We're just talking again”. 

  

Julia Campbell  20:01   

We're just talking, we're not acting. 

  

Vic Hancock Fell  20:05   

And also, you know, the vast majority of the people in these rooms are white people working in global North international NGOs. And again, I'm sort of coming out of them thinking. So we've just had another conversation there about in theory, how to do some of this stuff. But it was just a group of us as white people then having that conversation. And so I kind of became a bit cynical, I guess, about those kind of bigger, more convened movements, and then just instead, went internally, within my organization, started speaking to colleagues, both in the UK and Kenya about how we would do it and what it looked like for us, and then we just did it.  

  

Julia Campbell  20:46   

And so did it. And it's it, you know, like you say, in the blog, you know, you say, I'm not saying we've done this perfectly, we're still learning every day. But the point is, you did some things. Can you tell me about some of the things that you did? 

  

Vic Hancock Fell  20:57   

Yeah, definitely. So when I left kind of this, what was written into the strategy was basically two themes of like power shifting, one was shifting the power at kind of thinking and decision making levels. So the goal was when for the first time ever, it was 20 year old organization, for the first time ever, just before I left, our partner organization in Kenya, a separate registered NGO had their own strategic plan and theory of change for the first time ever, in that 20 year partnership. And so that kind of autonomy of decision making and autonomy of what do we want to do as an organization that was a big focus of the shift was enabling decision making, and program implementation and management and kind of room for innovation, management of budgets, and all of that, we wanted all of that to be on our partner side, where historically, they've probably been a bit too heavy handed management from the UK kind of saying, This is what we want you to monitor, these are the programs that we would like you to implement, we tried to shift that so that the leadership of decision making was coming from the Kenya part, the Kenyan partner. And of course, we were aligned in what we were doing. But it wasn't kind of a donor and recipient relationship. It was like we were being led by what our partners were telling us they wanted. So that was part of the shift was decision making, thinking planning. And then the other big part of the shift, which we realize as much of as much more like a long game, I think, is the money. How do we shift the money from us as the UK organization to our Kenyan NGO directly. And the way that obviously, it works kind of, for most organizations with an implementation partner in another country is that we in the UK do fundraising, the money typically comes into our bank account for the UK charity, and we then distribute it to our partner NGO, and I've had some horrifying conversations with funders as to why that is, you know, we need to know where the money's going, we need to know that it's not going to be, you know, spent on dodgy stuff. And I sort of think, just be aware of what you're seeing here, what gives you any kind of what gives you the feeling that we are any more trustworthy as an organization than a Kenyan NGO. And I think we all know the answer to that. And so the power of the money, I think, was the thing that we also wrote into the strategy, but that we felt was a much more long term goal. So we did move our program related reserves to the Kenyan bank account. So we sort of agreed that doesn't make sense for us as the UK organization to hold any of the financial reserves that relate to the program, because it's going to be the partner organization who is delivering the program. So they should have the financial reserves relating to that work, made budgets more flexible in so much as the partner organizations had more decision making power about how money was spent within budgets. So there wasn't we weren't having to sort of come to ask for, you know, approval for spending on certain things like, we made sure that that was kind of decision making power was held with partners. And then we had kind of, I suppose, unrestricted pots of funding to be spent on things that well, whatever they wanted, basically, that they didn't have to kind of lock in with. 

  

Julia Campbell  24:21   

They didn't have to jump through 10 million hoops. 

  

Vic Hancock Fell  24:25   

Yeah, exactly. And I think we can we kind of recognize that as much as we could try and do this internally. There was also a major piece of work externally with funders and and sort of donating public to do a bit of educating around why can't you give this grant directly to our implementation partner. And if there are some barriers to that in terms of due diligence or bank, international bank transfer fees, or whatever it might be. Let's just think about what those barriers really are, and whether actually, we can quite easily remove those. And so we did start to have conversations with funders who said yes, We're happy to give this grant directly to your implementation partner. Because we were really an intermediary. You know, there was, we were doing nothing other than applying for the funding, it was then going to be our partner organization who implemented the work who monitored the work, who reported back on the work. And so we tried to encourage donors and funders to give it directly to them. The final thing was to start supporting our Kenyan colleagues to then be able to start asking for the funding as well, to remove us from that equation so that they don't have to rely on a sort of Western partner organization to fundraise. 

  

Julia Campbell  25:38   

Now, these are all incredible suggestions. I do love the theme of let's stop talking, let's start doing and then you learn along the way, what works and what doesn't work. And I know that you founded a Facebook group, the small international development charities network, is this the kind of conversation you're having in this group? Like who should be? Who should be joining this Facebook group? And what will they learn? And I will link to it everyone, I will link to it in the show notes. 

  

Vic Hancock Fell  26:07   

So yeah, I started that in about the same sort of time that I started fair development in 2016, because I was basically a sole member of staff in a small charity, a small international development charity, I had gone on this Master's course, all of my peers on that course, or most of them, at least, were from Amnesty, Oxfam Action Aid. And I was kind of looking around the room for some peers that really felt like my peers in the small charity sector. And I just felt like I couldn't really see any. And I was thinking, Where are these people? And I'd started to meet a few people at, you know, training events that were for small charities, not specifically for small international charities, but you know, you'd go on a training event where it was sort of like, you know, fundraising strategy for small charities, and there'd be me and maybe one other person who was from an international charity, and you'd sort of clock eyes across the room when you mentioned the work that you did. And so I started meeting people, and just felt like we needed to have a way to be connected and stay connected. So I started this Facebook group, and invited those people that I've met, and it's sort of just gradually grown since then. So we've got sort of over 2000 members now. And really, it's a place to come to kind of meet other people who understand the context that you're working in to share resources. There's a shared resource drive link to a Google Drive, where people are very generous and putting in templates and policy examples and example, funding applications and so on. And it's about, I suppose, like friendship and collaboration and learning. And we talk about good stuff that happens. And we talk about the bad stuff that happens and the frustrations that we have, and we do have conversations about this sort of thing about, you know, what should our place be as international development organizations? I mean, I'm not in one anymore, I suppose. But I still kind of convene this group. And we are having these conversations. And when I when I wrote that blog, and I posted it in that group of so many people respond, I was nervous, because I thought. 

  

Julia Campbell  28:16   

Yeah, this may seem for now it gets set it off. 

  

Vic Hancock Fell  28:19   

Is this implying that I think all these people are terrible people, because they're still working in the international development sector. And I've had conversations with quite a few people who'd kind of alluded to feeling this way. And I thought, I bet loads people are feeling this way. And yeah, I posted it in the group and loads people responded to say, this resonates for me too. And you know, I'm on this journey. And so yeah, it's in terms of who should join, you know, if you're involved in a small development charity in some way, and you want to connect with peers, and you want to share learning, and you want to share kind of the highs and the lows, and also you want to kind of have, maybe start this conversation or continue this conversation of the shift the power work, then it's definitely a safe space to do that. And it really is a very safe and like supportive community. It is probably mostly UK charities, I guess. But we do have like great representation there from our partner organizations who contribute to conversations as well. 

  

Julia Campbell  29:20   

Okay, the small international development charities network. Yes, it's not the 

  

Vic Hancock Fell  29:23   

most catchy name. 

  

Julia Campbell  29:26   

I didn't, I didn't really anticipate to see 

  

Vic Hancock Fell  29:29   

Yes, I didn't really anticipate it will turn into anything significant when I set it up. But maybe it's do a rebrand at some point. 

  

Julia Campbell  29:36   

It's amazing what happens when you connect people. And when you connect people so specifically, so it's not just a group for all nonprofits. It's very specific people that have have really identified challenges and struggles and wins and they want to network with each other, but they want to learn. I think that's really the power of a good Facebook group. So I encourage people to So check that out. Where can people find you tell me all about where they can get in touch with you, your organization? And where do you spend your time online where, where people can follow along? 

  

Vic Hancock Fell  30:12   

Well, I think I've accidentally created a personal brand of being like angry charity lady on Twitter. So I often say that to people is this kind of accidentally happened, but I am quite active on Twitter. And my Yeah, my ad on there is just my name. So that kind of got fell. I use LinkedIn as well. But I found that being vocal about things that dissatisfy me in our sector has led to a lot of great connections with other people who feel equally dissatisfied and want to kind of make things better. And happily, it has led to being able to now do this work through fair development. People seem to like that as an approach. So I am going to just try to continue to be authentic and brave and keep kind of seeing when I don't like the look of something. But yeah, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, the Facebook group, I'm still active in that, and I still kind of admin and moderate that. And so if people want to join that Facebook group can also find me there. 

  

Julia Campbell  31:20   

Fantastic. So what's next for you? 

  

Vic Hancock Fell  31:22   

Oh, I don't know. I think I'm really like, since I decided to sort of exit development work in any kind of in house rule. I'm doing consultancy still with international development charities, but I'm really getting interested in like my local sort of civil society, kind of sector around me and Sheffield. And I'm kind of, I always felt really drawn to international development as a sector. And now that I don't feel that quite as much. I am starting to look around me a bit more at home, and you know, where I live around Sheffield, and just thinking like, How can I be involved in what's happening around here. And you know, I'm still really passionate about having a will a sort of equitable world. And I'm still really passionate about the problems that exist. And the reason why sort of global development work is a sector. So I'm kind of working out, I suppose for myself, how can I still be involved in that in a way that feels like it's kind of the powers in the right place. And so I guess for me that might look like sort of making donations directly to local organizations or providing pro bono consultancy support or connecting people with other people who can help them in their region, and trying to build up a wider network of local consultants. So fair development is still predominantly white consultants based in the UK. And we do have a growing group of local consultants doing things like impact evaluation work. And so I really want to develop that further so that when a charity comes and they say, we want to do an impact assessment, and it's in Uganda, that I can connect them with a Ugandan consultant who's working in impact assessment. So yeah, I think that that's kind of what's next is just working out how I can continue to contribute to global solidarity without taking up too much power in that space. And also just like learning more about my, my local sort of city in the sector, in the UK, and around Sheffield in particular. But to be honest with all of this, I've never really had any kind of great plan. I've just been kind of following it around. And it's working so far. And so my plan, I guess, is to continue following it and just see where it goes. 

  

Julia Campbell  33:37   

We'll we'll have to have you on again and get an update. Thanks so much. Thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks for being a voice in the sector. And just thanks for you know, raising these issues and having these important conversations. So thanks a lot. 

  

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