Direct Dialogue in Stockholm: Reflections from a Development Perspective

For a few months, I was on the streets of Stockholm recruiting monthly donors to sustain the mission of a global humanitarian organization. There are many things I reflected on from direct dialogues with many humans from diverse backgrounds I met, and I decided to highlight a few of them below.

1)     Young people are not apolitical: The first impression one may get about the younger generation (the Generation Z) is that they do not care about the politics of the world. But from my conversations with these inquisitive minds, they do care and show interest in the politics that concerns their own community, race, or other affiliations to support their decision-making process on any commitment or obligation. I once met a journalism student who preferred to not donate simply because of, from the student’s perspective, the need to stay as objective as possible if there was any cause to investigate the organization in the future.

2)     Lived experiences are strong influencers of action: For most individuals, the decision to become a monthly donor comes from their own past, related experiences with the problems than the story of the problem itself.

When I reflected on this, I realized that when we say we have “moved on” from, or “moved past” a certain unfavourable time or negative event in our lives, what we mean is that we are no longer bounded by the internal and/or external conditions that influenced our response to that experience at the time. But we are still moved by those experiences when we want to make new decisions in the future.

We should find a way to harvest untold negative stories and harness its power for social good. Every storyteller should have the agency and freedom to tell his or her story without feeling vulnerable doing so at the same time. You see, I find that when I share my own vulnerability with others, it gives strangers more comfort to share theirs with me. If we have more people who are willing to tell their own human stories, we will have more people willing to be part of a collective action for social good because of the feeling of inclusiveness that comes from shared experiences.

3)     Strangers sometimes offer safe spaces to close inequality gaps: It was also very interesting to see how sometimes people voluntarily shared very personal experiences with us strangers (fundraisers). Perhaps, the safety that comes from knowing that one may never see that person again could be a reason for the openness. Or maybe because it simply has a therapeutic effect on them to share those experiences. Whichever the case, I found those conversations very rewarding in their entirety. And I surmise that the decision to share those experiences has little or nothing to do with trust, because the time for establishing and maintaining a connection with a prospective donor is usually just a few minutes.  

My reflection on this is that we do not need to wait for industry reports to learn about and reveal the inequalities present in our world. By talking and listening to humans—strangers, friends, and family—we can begin to close the inequality gap by evaluating our realities, the realities of others, and becoming more empathetic towards others. 

4)     Success has no one, definitive winning strategy: This is a cliché, but it is also important to mention this when it comes to working in the development sector where fundraising may seem like a bland process—ask individuals or organizations to donate to a cause and it’s either one gets a yes or no. I find that, just like sales in a business environment, there’s no single approach to convincing people to become donors. Albeit it is charity, in contrast with buying something to satisfy a need or want, which is typical in business sales, I find that there’s always (at least) a desire to be satisfied by donors. Especially with young people, it could be something as simple as wanting to just be identified in the statistics of people who are donors.  It takes various pitching styles to uncover this desire and, sometimes, a blended approach of different pitching techniques could be the winning strategy.

5)    Maths skills, one of the greatest tools in a development toolbox: While storytelling is good, numerical skills help in putting human stories into perspective. A good story helps evoke an emotional response in the minds of targeted people but spitting numbers at them helps them to see how they can help without having a cognitive dissonance about their choice. Statistics, too, can help communicate the urgency of needs. For this reason, I think any development professional who has deep love for development communications should, at least, flirt with numbers occasionally. Basic maths—percentages, fractions, ratios, for instance—is a good starting point.