Reaffirm our common humanity to face world's challenges

Somehow, Wakahiu said, we must find ways to collectively contribute to solutions, "recognizing that our world's systems are interconnected beyond geographic borders. In this interconnected system, climate, health, education, and socio-economic issues are intertwined."

In order to address these challenges, she said, we need "a holistic perspective," and must break down superficial boundaries and find new ways of thinking about problems.

One way to do that is to become more empathetic and see the challenges facing the world from the perspective of those made most vulnerable by long-standing injustices.

"People who are vulnerable are rarely vulnerable in one way," said Emtithal Mahmoud, a Sudanese American slam poet, social activist and a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations' refugee agency, UNHCR, and a featured speaker at the Hilton event. 

As an example of the multiplicities of challenges, those most affected by climate change are also living with economic poverty and are usually the first ones facing displacement, she said.

Yet, Mahmoud and others underlined that even in seemingly difficult times it is important to pay attention to hopeful outcomes. "There are problems," she said, "but problems have solutions."

I liked that balance of idealism (needed) and practical spirit (also needed) that animated the Hilton event — a spirit noted in the theme of the day, "Roots of Resilience." 

Raj Kumar, who moderated a panel on the power of narrative in humanitarian response, caught that spirit well when he acknowledged, yes, the world may in some ways feel like it is spinning out of control. 

But, when you surround yourselves with people committed to (and working for) a better world, "you see the world in a new way," said Kumar, the president and editor-in-chief of Devex, a media platform for the global development community.

That undergirds a point that Phillip Picardi, a Harvard Divinity School graduate and the chief communications officer for the Los Angeles LGBT Center said — that the commitment to a better world shared by humanitarians is an antidote to present tensions.

He added: "I want us to hold on to our humanity," and argued that "the closest we'll get to God is in helping each other."

Helping also means, however, viewing the world through a critical lens. Alicia Ely Yamin, a lecturer at Harvard Law School and senior adviser to the humanitarian organization Partners in Health, said the global community must recognize the many burdens faced by the Global South.

These include the fact, she said, that poorer countries are spending more on debt servicing than on needed social programs — underlining a belief by Yamin and others that the global economic system is in many ways rigged, requiring a change of rules so that poorer countries can get out the many "polycrises" they face. 

She and others on the panel, including moderator Peter Laugharn, the president and CEO of the Hilton Foundation, said funding local projects — those "closest to the people," as Yamin said — is better practice for those seeking sustainable change. "To fund local is for the long haul," Laugharn said.

At the same time, though, those seeking change must not lose sight of "thinking big," said Rajiv Shah, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation and the former administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID. 

Shah has recently written a book on the theme — Big Bets: How Large-Scale Change Really Happens — and while lamenting recent reversals in achieving the United Nations' ambitious sustainable development goals, or SDGs, said global progress on tackling challenges like HIV/AIDS shows that when governments and humanitarian groups "work together, we can achieve extraordinary things." 

And when that happens, he said, "we can be optimistic."

Doreen Ndishabandi, an officer with the One Acre Fund, a group supporting smallholder farmers in Africa. and which was awarded the 2023 Hilton Prize — affirmed that idea. She said humanitarian groups and governments can "learn from previous crises" and take advantage of past experience. "Let's start with what we know now and the tools we already have."

And, Ndishabandi added, use the expertise of those at the grassroots with the lived experience to know what can and should be done. "African women farmers are on the frontlines" in the fight against hunger in countries like Rwanda, she said.

That is something that Catholic sisters in Africa know well, Wakahiu told me, adding that the symposium theme of Roots of Resilience "has so much interconnect with how sisters are resilient, working with the poor and staying in these spaces helping one life at a time."

She added that sisters "lead initiatives such as tree planting, promoting better agricultural practices, responsible investing, and raising awareness on climate issues in schools and communities and serving the most vulnerable — for example, the Cabrini Sisters."

Whether it's the work of Catholic sisters or non-religious groups like the One Acre Fund, humanitarians are doing important and needed work in a broken world, and a day spent with some of them was renewing and hopeful.

I wasn't alone in feeling that. Andrew Youn, One Acre's CEO and co-founder, told me in an email that the Hilton symposium "was a day of inspiration and shared humanity."

"It was terrific to feel a sense of renewed energy and learning," he said, "in a community of change-makers in so many different fields of work, all working towards the common goal of a better world."