Manpreet Kaur Kalra: Deconstructing saviorism from heropreneurship and voluntourism (ep309)
What harms do saviorist narratives perpetuate through voluntourism and heropreneurship—when they hold the intentions of doing good? How does the dichotomy of the Global North and Global South reinforce certain ideologies around societal progress?
In this episode, we welcome Manpreet Kaur Kalra (IG & Twitter: @manpreetkalra) is a social impact advisor, educator, and activist working to decolonize storytelling. She navigates the intersection of impact communication and sustainable global development. She educates using a variety of mediums, including the Art of Citizenry Podcast, where she shares her nuanced and unfiltered insights on building a more just and equitable future.
Musical feature: Trust The Sun by Laura Palicka
“The truth is, if we really want to dismantle systems of oppression, if we really want to solve things like poverty, if we really want to do any of that, we have to first come to terms with why these communities are the way they are.”
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Transcript
Note: Green Dreamer is a community-powered multimedia journal exploring our paths to collective healing, ecological regeneration, and true abundance and wellness for all. The values, views, and opinions of our diverse guests do not necessarily reflect those of Green Dreamer. Please do your own additional research on the information, resources, and statistics shared. This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Kamea Chayne: Manpreet, it's so lovely to have you here. I would love for you to start off by giving us a glimpse into your upbringing and background and what it was that led you to be interested in impact communication and sustainability.
Manpreet Kalra: Since I was very young, activism has always been a huge part of the work I do.
In college, I studied corporate PR and digital marketing and storytelling. That experience led me to start my first impact venture—it was this online publication for South Asian women, particularly Sikh women, to talk about topics that are very taboo within our community. And it was completely anonymous. It started as a project for one of my classes, and it made me realize the power of how we tell our stories and who tells our stories. It emphasized the importance of creating safe spaces for critical discourse.
From that to the work I do now, I’ve jumped through a bunch of different hoops and went through quite the journey professionally. After college, I ended up working in venture capital, working in startups, really getting to understand how businesses operate: what it means to be a business that’s looking for investment and what it means to be a scalable business. I realized how exploitative a lot of those systems are that we operate in that we have come to accept as the status quo.
Being from the Bay Area, from the heart of Silicon Valley, my only understanding of what it means to run a business was informed by startups. When I was younger, that was what I assumed it meant to run a business. It meant you start a company, and you either get bought out or you go public.
As I got deeper into the industry, I realized how these systems are really broken, and there was a point of burnout that I experienced when I felt that I was not staying true to what the type of work that I find passion in, which is, again, the thread of activism. I decided that I wanted to let my creativity guide me.
I recognize that I had the privilege and opportunity to be able to leave my job, take two months, and study supply chains. To understand exploitation, especially in manufacturing, I felt like it was important to understand supply chains. So I went to India—I was born in India and came to the U.S. when I was six months old, so I have a lot of family there that I stayed with. I went into different villages to understand what it means to be part of a global supply chain on the ground. Through that journey, I realized a few things. One thing is that I went in with a very privileged assumption that I, a person with absolutely zero experience in manufacturing, could be someone who can create this vision for a better solution to supply chains, because I was like, “I'm going to start my own social enterprise and start my own venture. And this is going to be great. I have no experience with any of this, but I'm just going to do it and it's going to be fine. I'm going to go work in these communities that I feel like society has told me I need to help, so of course, they need my help.”
I went in with a lot of my own preconceived notions about the communities and cultures of the Global South. Even though they were communities and cultures that are close to my heart that I identify with as well, my lived experience was just so different. So I realized my own blindspots through that process, and I also realized the ways in which power has created these exploitative structures. The power dynamics are set up so that even when we think we're doing good, we can often do so much harm. That led me to do what I do now, which is working as a social impact advisor.
I try to work with businesses and organizations to rethink some of the assumptions we have around the communities and cultures that we are working in and approach those conversations with cultural humility—which is essentially the idea of taking a step back and recognizing that we have so many stereotypes that have been ingrained in us about others.
To really understand someone's experience, we have to let go of those stereotypes, and we have to become a learner and let others guide and lead the conversation and let them tell their story versus us trying to assume that we know their story. That has really been what has led my work into this intersection of anti-racism and what I like to now refer to as really “decolonizing storytelling”.
Kamea Chayne: Recently at Art of Citizenry, you explored ways in which “voluntourism”, may it be faith-based or not, is a manifestation of colonization, reinforced by power structures rooted in imperialism. Like you mentioned, we're often trained to think that volunteer work by nature is good because it's rooted in giving and helping. But what is the significance of contextualizing it within the history of colonialism and imperialism?
Manpreet Kalra: “Voluntourism” and “heropreneurship” very much go hand in hand. I've noticed it’s a trend. My own story is like every social entrepreneur’s story: I went and traveled for two months, I saw poverty and I discovered that I wanted to change it, and I decided to solve these global issues with my business. That is a very common narrative. So many of these stories stem from this genuine desire to do good.
But oftentimes the reason that falls flat is we feel that we know all the answers and we impose our own understanding of what is right and what is wrong on other communities and don't actually make the space to listen to them and let them lead change.
We often use the words “colonization” and “colonialism” without actually understanding what they mean. So I want to take a moment first to define what colonization actually looks like, and I'm going to talk in the context of India. Colonization is essentially this: there's a country that goes into another country and imposes their worldview and tells the people of that community, “Everything you believe is wrong, what we believe is right, you're going to practice what we believe, and you are now under our rule. You report to us. Any agency you have no longer exists.”
Colonization is taking power away from people; it's denying agency. That is such a critical part of colonial characteristics. We see that manifesting oftentimes through the way that we approach voluntourism and heropreneurship, because we go in with these assumptions that we know what's right, and that these ‘poor’ communities, because they are, in our understanding, not living the way that we would live, that they don't have it figured out.
If we really want to dismantle systems of oppression, to solve things like poverty, we have to first come to terms with why these communities are the way they are. The reason so many of these communities are struggling is that they're rebuilding after years and years of extraction and their natural resources being depleted, their cultures being erased, their languages being appropriated, their identities being denied.
Anti-Racism is a concept that is about really breaking down the systems, policies and attitudes of oppression and why we are the way we are. And if we want to really create sustainable change, then we have to understand why the systems are built the way they're built, how the policies reinforce the systems that continue to manifest, and how those policies shape attitudes.
Kamea Chayne: On a related note, there are a lot of charities in “developing” countries that focus on supporting education, implying that a lot of these countries are the way they are because there's a lack of education and people aren't well-read. So on this front as well, it's important to raise the question: What kind of education? Because I think a lot of times what these charities refer to as people being “uneducated” are people who haven’t been educated in institutions shaped by Western curricula and Western ideologies. I wonder if you have anything to add to that?
Manpreet Kalra: I think that so much of how we define success is shaped by our Western ideology of what does someone who is educated look like? What does education mean? And how do we perceive knowledge? I think that that's one of the main things.
I often struggle with the perceptions around lacking education. What these perceptions do is deny all the knowledge that people hold that we would not necessarily have. It's kind of like saying that because this knowledge doesn't fit into my paradigm of what I define as “educated”, therefore your knowledge is useless. That's super problematic.
And there is the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is essentially this idea that because a problem is further away, it seems so much simpler to solve than problems that are closer to home. So it feels easier to solve poverty in a country that’s far away than it is to solve economic disparities right in your own neighborhood.
We have to think about what we even define as education when we go into communities other than our own. And if we have an understanding of what education is within our own community, why aren't we then actively working towards creating more accessibility for our neighbors, for those who are living within our proximity, whose experiences we can probably more directly impact?
Kamea Chayne: To this point, I try to be specific now and make it a point to not say that a person is “highly-educated” to only mean people well-educated through the dominant educational institutions. Instead, I make a point to say that this person is highly educated through formal educational institutions. So I try to be more specific about that, because people can be very well educated—not having gone through the dominant system at all but just from acquiring knowledge directly from communities and learning more traditional knowledges that aren't valued in our dominant cultures.
In relation to imposing our ideas on other people, you've said before that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals have an underlying presumption of a “global north” and a “global south” that reinforces the idea of “saviorism”. How would you deconstruct this framing of understanding the world as it is today?
Manpreet Kalra: The global north-global south dichotomy essentially is the new way of saying “third-world” or “developing” versus “first-world” or “developed”. That is kind of the new accepted terminology now.
The unfortunate reality is that terminology still has a top-down approach to power, and so one of the things I always want to recommend that people do is look up the Brandt line. It's a really interesting map that you can find. Essentially what it does is it paints a line that goes across the globe and then loops down, brings in Australia, and then goes back up. That is the Brandt line. That is how we define the Global North and Global South. There's a formula that people argue as how the Global North vs. Global South is calculated, but I think that visual representation is just so powerful.
What is so critical to recognize when we talk about this Global North-Global South construct is that it doesn't take into account the amount of harm that these communities have had to navigate because of years of colonialism and colonization and extraction.
We also have to recognize that the Sustainable Development Goals, the SDGs, are written in a Western construct and that Western construct imposes, by its nature, our own understandings and beliefs on these communities.
The other thing that I think is really important is looking at how we define human rights under the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Declaration of Human Rights came out after World War II, and it was written predominantly by the ‘winning’ countries. The way it was written is so ambiguous that it allows for imperialism to continue; it allows for communism to continue; and it allows for capitalist structures to continue.
If you start peeling back the layers of how it was written, it's so ambiguous. It's still a very powerful document, but we have to recognize the shortcomings of anything that we have put on a pedestal.
It’s the same thing with the SDGs and with the Human Rights Declaration. With all of these systems, at the end of the day, we have to recognize that power plays a role in these conversations, and power influences how certain systems and policies are built and how they then continue to manifest and go into action. And then they, as a result, influence the way we, as individuals, continue to allow the systems to exist.
Kamea Chayne: To expand upon storytelling by social enterprises and charities, you've said, “From ‘saviorism’ to poverty porn, for decades, storytelling has become part and parcel of marketing and fundraising efforts, and mission-driven products are often sold using some level of someone's trauma.”
What are some concrete examples of the savorist narratives used by nonprofits or social enterprises that have ended up doing more harm than good? And how should those working in these spaces navigate the line between extractive storytelling ultimately rooted in things like viewership, fundraising, and sales, and storytelling rooted in collaboration and reciprocity that does not uphold but might even help to dismantle exploitative power dynamics?
Manpreet Kalra: Oftentimes, storytelling is used as a tool for transparency, and I think we need to shift that paradigm. I've also noticed that oftentimes these stories reinforce stereotypes about communities of color.
An example that I often think about is human trafficking. When we think about it in the lens of the social impact space, when you see photos of people who have been trafficked, when we're looking at or talking about storytelling and brands are saying, “By buying this product, you are helping this person who has been trafficked. You are doing so great, so much good.”
I want to first take a pause and recognize the fact that if that person lived here in the United States, we would never do that because we would recognize that we are potentially putting that person in danger. For some reason, though, we feel that because they live far away, that it's okay to share their photo and share their story of trauma. So I want us to recognize that that is not okay. And that is, by all means, how power plays out.
Oftentimes when brands and organizations and nonprofits are talking about human trafficking, they're using photos of communities of color in the global south. But human trafficking exists in every single zip code of the United States. Yet somehow those are not the communities that we see when we talk about and think about trafficking. That's what I mean by how our stories, especially our stories as communities of color, get shaped not by us, but by the way our stories are marketed. And that is how internalized racism continues to occur because we start seeing ourselves in our communities that way.
That's why I think it's so important that we really think about the roles that colonization and power have in the way that we see, hear, and tell stories because we need to really recognize that that power needs to be in our hands. The only way that that power can be in our hands, as communities of color that are often shaped or painted with this paintbrush of stereotypes, is by calling out when we see great harm happening. That's what drives my work. It's really painful for me to always see women that look like me being painted in a particular way. I've seen it play out in my own life.
At my first Fair Trade conference, every single person I interacted with asked me what artisan group I worked with. They couldn’t even fathom the idea that I could be someone who is not an artisan and potentially lives in the United States.
When that is the whole global view that you've come to accept, that's when it becomes really problematic. It reinforces stereotypes about communities. It reinforces how we see people and how we see power and how we see the power someone else has and the agency they have.
Kamea Chayne: To pivot to your more recent work, I know you've been helping to organize in Seattle in support of India's ongoing farmer protests. We had Nishanth Chopra, who runs a regenerative farm, on the show recently and he gave his perspective from living in the south of India—in a region where he said many farmers still retain traditional farming practices and knowledge and where he said people aren't as involved in the protests compared to farmers in the north most affected by the Green Revolution.
You personally have roots in the northern region of Punjab and actually are engaged with the protests on the ground there. I wonder if you could speak to the relationship between the Green Revolution and the farmers most impacted by these bills and why that may be the case.
Manpreet Kalra: I really appreciate you taking a moment to recognize and understand that even in India, there's so much diversity of experience. As you mentioned, my ancestral roots are in Punjab, my family's in Punjab, and my ancestors were displaced as a result of the British dividing Punjab between India and Pakistan. My ancestral homeland is in what is now Pakistan. I talk to my parents about this often—about how amazing it would be to visit the village that my ancestors are from. And maybe one day we will. But it's one of those things that just hit really close to home for me. So I appreciate you recognizing that.
To your question, let’s talk about the Green Revolution and how it's influencing the farmers’ protest. I'm sure that your listeners probably already have some understanding about the Green Revolution, but I always find it important to remind people that the Green Revolution did not start in India, and the Green Revolution is happening currently in Africa.
When we talk about the Green Revolution and its impact on farming and generational knowledge, it's important to recognize that it was very much an export of the United States—an export of American scientists at the Rockefeller Foundation. It’s a result of international interference.
What the Green Revolution did was introduce high-yielding seeds. It took the traditional farming methods of Punjab and replaced them with these high-yielding seeds. So you took this diversity of crops that were native to Punjab and you replaced them with high-yielding seeds of wheat and patty. Patty is rice unhusked. But Punjab is not by any means a place where rice would make sense to harvest, because for rice to be harvested, you have to have shallow water. that's not the case in Punjab. Punjab, the name Punjab, is the land of five rivers. And when the British left and split up Punjab between Pakistan and India, it continued to be split up. It got split up into Haryana as well. It's very important to recognize that what was once very fertile land was over the years, first through the partition and then through the Green Revolution, depleted of its natural resources.
So the Green Revolution was essentially this moment in Punjab's history when you took generational knowledge of agriculture and replaced it with these agrochemicals that the farmers had no training or knowledge on how to use because this was all new, it was forced on them.
And the underlying idea was to fight famine by overproducing. We don't want to have famine in the country. So we're going to take this region and we're going to plant all of these high-yielding seeds. We're going to create a lot of wheat and rice. Cool. Awesome. So you've got this overproduction of wheat and rice alongside a rejection of all other farming. And in order to incentivize farmers to grow wheat and rice, you have an MSP, which is the minimum support price. It's essentially the idea that at the bare minimum, you will make a certain amount for the rice and wheat that you produce.
The issue with the Green Revolution is you have farmers who know the land, who understand the land, who have a relationship with the land, who have generational knowledge of how to care for the land, and are basically being told that they have to reject all of that and use these particular seeds and these particular pesticides and fertilizers in order to now continue to farm.
They're pushed towards using these items. And what ends up happening is that Punjab and the regions that were impacted by the Green Revolution have become hotbeds for cancer, birth defects, and farmer suicides, because farmers are in this cycle of immense debt. In order for them to continue to farm, they have to invest in those high-yielding seeds—they have to invest in fertilizers, and they are buying all of these items at retail price, not wholesale price. As a result, they're in such immense debt that many have reached the point where they have resorted to taking their own lives. That's a problem. And now you tack on these three new bills that essentially take away any support blanket that existed.
These farmers have essentially recognized that we can either die protesting or we're going to lose everything anyway if these bills continue as is.
Kamea Chayne: Yeah, and what you just mentioned really touches back on the points we mentioned earlier in terms of questioning the ideas of “development” and “advancement” as defined by the West. So, for example, with these people coming in and saying “these are the ways that you should be farming” and “you're not educated because you haven't studied how to do it this way” and really questioning the land-based and place-based knowledge that the farmers had – a wealth of knowledge and wisdom.
Besides the farmer protests being historic and making headlines around the globe, I'm curious whether this has any implications for our global food systems? Or what parallels it might have with the struggles of other farmers around the world against the same big agricultural giants and powerful forces?
Manpreet Kalra: One of the things I've heard people say is how can people in the West be so up in arms about these new bills when in reality you have the same thing happening in your own country? Which is incredibly true. We very much have privatization of agriculture in the United States. That is why when you're driving through the Midwest, you are driving through cornfields back and forth and back again. We have seen this happen. And the same thing has happened in India, where if you go into regions like Punjab, you are driving through wheat and rice. That is it. Biodiversity as we know it is what is at risk. We've seen that happen in Punjab. The agricultural diversity that once was there has been replaced by two staples. And we've seen that in the United States. Agricultural diversity is really hard to come by.
I was talking to small farmers in Ohio and they’ve all had the exact same experience in which the success of their farming has come down to farming what they are asked to farm, which is corn because corn gets repurposed and repackaged into all these other items. And when we think about the global food chain, what we have to recognize is that if we want to get back to the way farming is meant to be, it's meant to be communal. It's meant to be about your community. It's meant to be about supporting each other. One of the most beautiful things I think about is before the Green Revolution, the way farming existed in Punjab was you would have farmers, you would have people who were helping take care of the land, you would have people who would have different roles in the community, and those roles would support each other. And it would be very regenerative and restorative in many ways. And the unfortunate reality is that the notion of farming being communal has slowly over the years been replaced by private interests and the privatization of agriculture. And so we have to take a step back and recognize how we are being complicit in letting these systems continue to operate within our own communities.
So for me, I live in Seattle. I live where Amazon is and where the Gates Foundation is. And the Gates Foundation is actually leading the Green Revolution in Africa at the moment. In fact, if you go to the Gates Foundation and you go to their visitor center, they have a whole exhibit on high-yielding seeds. So this is not just a conspiracy theory. The Gates Foundation is doing this. This is very much being led by the Gates Foundation right now. And so we have to recognize that there is a battle between do we focus on technological development or do we focus on preserving some of the traditional methods of how things have been done? And if we go the route of really advancing technological development, then we can think of new, innovative ways to continue to do what's been happening, but do it faster.
So essentially, what we have to recognize is that the way that these new methods of farming have become so exploitative is that they are demanding and asking and pushing for more production at a very fast rate. So instead of allowing for the earth to produce crops the way it's supposed to, we are demanding so much more at such fast rates that it's really depleting the earth of its natural resources and in turn also harming the farmers themselves.
To really see the results of an unregulated market-based marketplace and to really see the results of what it means to demand products at such a fast rate, we don't have to look any further than fast fashion. When you look at India's garment industry, we know that it's been built on the exploitation of workers by large international fast-fashion companies. Why can you buy a cotton t-shirt for five dollars? Because essentially, at the end of the day, everyone from that cotton farmer to the garment worker is being paid pennies and it’s all in an effort to maximize profits because you're producing at a rate that is absolutely astonishing and harmful to the planet and to people. What ends up happening is out of this need to maximize profits, you're hurting people. At the end of the day, you're hurting and creating this need for more and more and more. And it's developing more waste. So when you have a free market and you have high competition, at the end of the day, there's always going to be people who are willing to accept a lower price for their work and therefore you're going to increase competition. And competition is essentially what's driving our agricultural industry. It's what’s driving fast fashion and it's what’s allowing people who are at the top to continue making money and those at the bottom to continue to be exploited by these systems that have been put in place. So when we talk about what this means for the larger global economy and the larger global community, we have to recognize that the issues that we are seeing these farmers protesting about very much exist within our own communities as well. They're built on this need to constantly be asking for more. And they're built on this need to further the exploitation of those who are already at the bottom and are being exploited at every step of how we continue to operate as a society.
Kamea Chayne: And as we bring back this idea of decolonizing storytelling and really examining power within that, what have you been paying attention to in terms of the media narratives that are revolving around the farmer protests? And what should people reading about the current events from various sources keep in mind?
Manpreet Kalra: A lot of the media narrative that is surrounding the farmers’ protest is very much being controlled by the government. And that is not unique to the farmers’ protest – that has existed throughout India’s history whenever the government has had conflicts with marginalized groups. And I think that when it comes to how these stories are being told, we have noticed that with the farmers’ protest, anyone who is dissenting is essentially painted as an anti-national. Anyone who is dissenting is being painted as a terrorist. Anyone who is dissenting is considered a threat to the country.
And the reality is that people who are questioning the systems at play are not questioning the systems at play because they don't love their country. They love their country. That's why they want it to do better and be better and treat others better and treat them better.
And so when I think about the farmers’ protest and how we can be better informed about what is happening on the ground, I think it's really important to check your sources. And most importantly, to really give yourself the time and space to understand the historical context behind the farmers’ protest, because at the end of the day, when we think about the farming industry, the story is the same across the board. We're seeing this in communities across the world where small farmers are essentially struggling to stay afloat because they have been caught up in these very exploitative systems that are demanding so much from them. And so if we really want to understand the nuance behind the farmers protest in India in particular, we also have to understand the history and the historical context around the communities that are protesting and are at the forefront of this protest because there are layers and layers of oppression that are playing a role in the narrative that is being shaped.
When I think about the Green Revolution’s impact on Punjab in particular, one of the biggest costs was that Punjab is no longer able to sustain itself agriculturally because it has been put into this cycle of wheat and rice farming that’s made it so that any other fruits or vegetables are just not possible to farm. And so what really heartens me is to hear about the small farmers that are trying to challenge these systems.
I encourage everyone to understand where you're getting your news from, but also think “how am I seeing this play out within my own community”? Because chances are that farmers, even within your own community, are struggling because they, too, have been caught in these systems that are incredibly exploitative and taking away so much of their livelihoods. And this dependence that they have on agrochemicals is costing them their livelihoods and lives.
Kamea Chayne: It sounds to me like it really all goes back to power and people being forced to take on a certain ideology of what advancement should look like and how things should be done, oftentimes in the name of “improvement” or “betterment”. But it's a very limiting view of what that even means.
What else do you feel called to share about the protest, about how people might be able to support it whether they are on the ground or not in India? And also feel welcome to share anything else that I didn't get to ask you about that you wanted to leave our audience with.
Manpreet Kalra: As far as the protest in India goes, I think that one of the biggest things I just want people to recognize is that one of the notions that have been tossed around in regards to the protest is well, isn't a free market essentially a good thing? Why are people up in arms if the government is just pushing for a free market to exist?
And the thing that I think is just so important to recognize is that capitalism at its core is built on the existence of inequities and the goal of any business operating in a capitalist society is to maximize its profit. So at the end of the day, corporations are going to be prioritizing profit over people and that only ends up hurting those workers.
And so when we talk about the farmers' protest or global development, we have to recognize that at the end of the day, there's so much complexity, there's so much nuance to why communities operate the way they operate, why systems have been built the way they have been built. And to deconstruct those systems and understand why certain problems exist, we have to peel back those complex layers in which there is a lot of nuances that cannot be ignored. It's when we ignore nuance that we are essentially creating solutions that do not actually solve the root of why a problem exists.
And so when we talk about global economic development, when we talk about creating more opportunities in certain communities, when we talk about the farmers’ protest, at the end of the day, the issue is that there's no cookie-cutter approach and we need to recognize that there is so much complexity. And it really requires us to deconstruct a lot of layers of deep-seated cultural and often even religious influences. And so if we really want to create change, we have to talk about power and the various ways power shows up. It's not always economic, it's not always on the basis of race, it's not always on the basis of religion. It is all of those things. Power is intersectional and it shows up in a variety of forms, depending on the context of the situation that we are in.
And so if you are interested in understanding more about the farmers’ protest, I encourage you to just surround yourself with information. Read more, learn more, really try to understand the economics and background of how the farmers got to the point at which they feel that they need to protest in order to be able to secure their livelihoods. And so we have to understand all of that.
One of the things I would say is if you want to support the farmers’ protest, I highly recommend looking into organizations like Khalsa Aid and also just helping create more awareness. Host conversations. Really just take the time to educate yourself. And most importantly, I would say, see how these issues are occurring within your own communities. We cannot expect each of us to know the ins and outs of why problems exist in every single scenario. We cannot all understand every problem that exists in the world. But what we can do is think about if this is something that's happening, how am I seeing these same issues play out in my community? And what is something I can do to lead change within my own community? That's what I want to encourage everyone to think about.
*** MUSICAL INTERMISSION ***
Kamea Chayne: What is an uplifting social media account or publication you follow or a book that's been really profound for you?
Manpreet Kalra: Two great media resources that I recommend [for following India's farmer protests] is a Substack called Boz News and Trolley Times.
[For books,] my all-time favorite book of poems is Salt by Nayyirah Waheed, because it really beautifully captures power and the way that we tell our stories and the power of us telling our stories. The second book is called How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. And what I like about it is that it's made me reflect on the way in which my creativity is sometimes hindered by social media.
Kamea Chayne: What do you tell yourself to stay motivated and inspired?
Manpreet Kalra: A lot of my work is incredibly heavy. So I'm working to actively make space for things that give me joy, like spending time with my partner and our dog, going to the farmer's market, being out in nature, spending time with my plants, knitting. Those are ways that I help myself stay positive.
Kamea Chayne: And what makes you most hopeful for our world at the moment?
Manpreet Kalra: I think at the moment, it's the surprising consciousness and willingness to create space for critical discourse that is interdisciplinary. That's incredibly important and that is what gives me so much hope and joy for the planet.
Kamea Chayne: Well, we are coming to a close. I really appreciate you and your time. What final words of wisdom do you have for us as green dreamers?
Manpreet Kalra: Don't be shy to have conversations that are nuanced because that is where the most growth happens, and that is often what is missing when we try to have really complex conversations through online mediums. Creating space for nuance and the gray is just so important because that's where we can create truly sustainable change.
