V2-2.07| THE TEN PRINCIPLES| Sep 07
Updated: Sep 7
S.01 | A test, not a label
01| Not every social project counts as Peoples' Impact. The label gets attached to a lot of work that has not earned it, and that loose usage is part of why the sector has produced so much activity and so little structural change. Peoples' Impact is a specific category with a specific test. Ten principles. Miss one and the work may still be valuable — but it is not Peoples' Impact.
S.02 | The relationship between the platform and the people
02| The first four define the relationship between the platform and the people inside it.
Transfer of decision-making power. Decisions about what gets built, when and how move to community members. Not consultation. Decisions.
Make people smarter in collaboration. The work must leave participants more capable than it found them, particularly in working with people unlike themselves.
Create paid work. Income is the engine, not goodwill.
Diversity and freedom-for-all. A bias-free environment where effort and commitment determine position, not status or background.
03| That fourth one is the hardest of the ten and the easiest to write down, so let me state the problem instead of the slogan. We intend to run a bias-free platform staffed entirely by biased people — us included. Everyone arrives carrying something, and some of it is the hypocrisy of people who fight passionately against the bias aimed at their own group and then deny others exactly the acceptance they are demanding. Declaring the platform free of that changes nothing. What we can do is decide what identity means here: on this platform a person is the sum of the contributions they have made. Against the backdrop of building things and leading initiatives, ethnicity, skin colour and gender tell you roughly what shoe size tells you. People keep whatever identity is theirs. It just is not the thing that determines position.
S.03 | The shape of the work
04| The next three define the shape of the work.
Nurture a local talent pool. The goal is not to deliver a project and leave. It is to leave behind people who can run the next one.
Universal scalability. A model that only works in one barrio because of one charismatic leader does not qualify.
Substantial barrio effects, felt in the guts. Visible, tangible, emotionally real. Statistical improvement nobody can feel is not Peoples' Impact.
S.04 | The conditions for survival
05| The last three define the conditions for survival.
Long-term, perpetual funding. Three-year grant cycles produce three-year solutions.
Deep collaboration with government. Bypassing the public sector feels cleaner and cuts the work off from scale and legitimacy.
Self-propelling dynamics. Without momentum of its own, every gain depends on a new injection from outside, and the work stays permanently fragile.
06| These ten are not a wishlist. They are a structural test, and they push toward a single conclusion: Peoples' Impact has to become an integral part of society — like police, army, hospitals — rather than a discretionary line in a foundation's budget.
07| Ten principles. One test. Either the work qualifies or it does not.
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