The Birth of Enaleni
by Fiki Bosch
Enaleni was birthed out of a desire to contribute back in Zimbabwe. Remember in 2007/8 when our nation had the very first terrible economic meltdown. Like many of us we rose into action, collected clothes, and raised funds to feed anyone in need. This was really a knee-jerk reaction without much thought and doing what we had seen being done by charities.
With much zeal and zest, we went on to register a charity called The Global Native, TGN for short. The founders were myself and Na. We understood that we need funding to do anything. So, we committed to donating a £100 each per month to the charity as we believed we could not ask anyone to do anything we not prepared to.
It was an 8-year journey of running a charity that put us squarely in the development sector. We attended many development conferences, contributed to discussions, and hosted some conferences ourselves. It didn’t take long for us to realize that the charity model and voice was not ours. Right from the images of the so-called poor to the imported solutions.
And so, with a team we paused and went back to our roots, about how we grew up. My mum used to say very loudly ‘your hands are not a sofa to sit on’ and we learned early on to put in the work for whatever we wanted done. That’s how we overcome obstacles and challenges – by sheer hard work! However, the circles of development gave an impression that the poor are somewhat handicapped and therefore deserving of handouts. Yet the Bible says we have been given ALL things for a life of Godliness and we are made in His image. Moreover, as Africans, charity spoke to our lack, our failures and encouraged hopelessness. We wanted to stand tall with dignity and pave a path that we owned and embodied. We wanted a solution that embraced all we were: African diaspora living in two worlds.
We realized that we have to define poverty for ourselves. Because the definition of a thing points to how you solve it. It was clear that 60 plus years of aid had created a dependency syndrome, a loss of belief in ourselves and our creativity. We then defined poverty as a ‘loss of capacity. That somehow along the way of our history we lost something that we have to find again. First for ourselves and then for the communities we want to serve. Coupled with loss of capacity poverty is an issue of justice. This part is a story for another day!
This led us to walking away from the charity model to creatively engaging with what we have in our hands right now and challenging our fears.
