How traditions of solidarity can rebuild community agency eroded through aid dependency

Below is the contribution of Nour Nusseibeh, Dalia Association (Palestine) to the online session “Building the New: Reimagining Civil Society Resourcing in Times of Global Transformation”, held on 30 October 2025. Nour shares her perspective from the midst of an ongoing genocide and from years of community-rooted work at the Dalia Association in Palestine. Nour’s reflections illuminate how aid has reshaped Palestinian civil society, leading to fragmentation and dependency, and why returning to cultural practices of solidarity offer a meaningful alternative.

You can read the full report / transcript of the session here, or the individual contributions from the other three speakers: Marko Aksentijević, Ministry of Space (Serbia); Martin Macwan, Navsarjan (India); and, Kamala Chandrakirana, Indonesia for Humanity (Indonesia).

Jenny Hodgson, GFCF (JH): When we were thinking about this conversation around reimagining and looking ahead to the future, we first turned to you Nour, as you are sitting in Palestine in the midst of a genocide. The Dalia Association has also undertaken an important piece of work looking at long-standing traditions of solidarity and giving in Palestine [see the paper Community Philanthropy in the Palestinian Context: Concepts, Alternatives and Challenges]. Can you tell us a bit about the context for that work and why you felt it was so important to do at this time? Please also say a few words about Dalia itself, an organization that has been swimming against the tide of a dominant system for some time now.

Nour Nusseibeh (NN): Thank you. In this time, these spaces where we can collectively and safely reimagine the kind of civil society we want in Palestine are important. It’s not about creating something new — alternatives have existed in our culture for a while, but this moment demands that we raise our voices more boldly. Even with a ceasefire, we are still living through the consequences of the genocide and its impacts across our communities. As well as a global resourcing model that has been failing us all for many years.

Over the last 20 years, we have witnessed a steady reduction in the power of local actors to drive change. Our voices are increasingly dominated by a donor driven agenda. This is why within the Giving for Change programme we began to ask ourselves: What is the alternative we want? How do we want to redesign the system? These questions led Dalia to publish a short piece of research on community philanthropy in the Palestinian context. In it, we explore the concepts, alternatives, and challenges that we have faced because of the aid system and the colonial context in which we live, as well as the dominance of what one might call “politicized” funding. These forces have created dependency, fragmented community work, and pushed us into a model where decisions are driven not by the community but by donors.

Through the research process, we realized how much we have lost in terms of justice, and the rights of our own people to make decisions that shape change. This is the context we are living in — not only during the current genocide, but long before October 2023. For years, there has been deep control over people’s decision-making and over communities’ ability to set their own priorities. And the truth is simple: if we do things that are not relevant to what the community needs, it will leave no impact. This is visible in many different contexts, but in the Palestinian context it is especially and painfully clear.

One of the main pillars that emerged from this work is that we need to go back to our roots, to our culture, our norms, and the ways that we have historically worked collectively for change. One expression of this in Palestine is Al Ouneh, which means philanthropy, giving, solidarity and support, and which rests on trust and accountability. This is the model through which we imagine change. It’s not just an idea: at Dalia, we have been working with it for more than 20 years, and today we see this being replicated in Palestine as an alternative.

“One of the main pillars that emerged from this work is that we need to go back to our roots, to our culture, our norms, and the ways that we have historically worked collectively for change.”

In the research we also describe some of the challenges we face — especially the challenge of convincing people that the aid system is not enabling them to do what they want. Instead, it is driving communities down paths they did not choose. We explored this further in a recent article on conditional funding and the famine in Gaza after the genocide. This piece reinforces the same conclusion, i.e. the need to revive our cultural practices and the roots of Al-Ouneh. One of the major recommendations of the research is how we can approach development based on trust and accountability, on giving and solidarity, moving away from a broken aid system towards philanthropy and change.

JH: Palestine has been in a state of extreme crisis for the last couple of years, yet one of the key insights of the research is relevant to a wider context. This is the idea that external aid, which was supposed to help and build civil society has instead contributed to its “professionalization”, which has shifted it further away from the people it is meant to serve. At the same time, traditions of giving and solidarity, what people know, how they have organized in the past, have not just been overlooked, they have also been actively undermined by the systems and structures of aid. This also feels like a profoundly political framing: if you want to build your own autonomy, you have to start with what you’ve got and build from there. With the implication being that external resources then builds on that. As the report notes, it’s not about a complete rejection of a system, but rather finding the appropriate interplay between the historical legacy and the realities of the present moment.

NN: What you have just said is very relevant. Despite all the different challenges we face all around the world, what ultimately matters at the end of the day is the decision of the people and how we choose to reorganize ourselves. Aid and philanthropy should come after that, supporting the resilience and liberation that grows from our own decisions.

JH: Palestine has endured profound trauma — genocide, war — for the last two years. You have urgent, daily work to do. People rely on you. Communities are surviving day-by-day. How do you hold on to the big picture in all this? What supports would help you to hold that vision and not get caught up in the hamster wheel of just doing the work?

NN: Actually, it is the aid system that pushes us onto the hamster wheel, to run after resources, forcing you to implement and spend, even when the resources are very limited. And yet there will be a time when there will be no resources left. So, we need to build something different.

“That is what we mean when we talk about the ‘alternative’ — the idea that sovereignty matters, people’s willingness to live in community, in liberation, and with dignity is what holds up our humanity. This is what we need to protect.”

In the early days of the genocide in Gaza, we were talking with different groups — youth groups, women’s groups, etc. — and thinking together with them how we can make change. And one woman who had been very active with us before the war said something I will never forget, even now, two years later. She said: “Everyone is looking to open community kitchens just to feed people, but if I had seeds, I would be happy and I would be surviving. Because if you’re giving me bread today, you won’t be giving me bread tomorrow. However, if you give me seeds, I will sustain not only myself, but also my family, friends, and neighbours.”

That is what we mean when we talk about the “alternative” — the idea that sovereignty matters, people’s willingness to live in community, in liberation, and with dignity is what holds up our humanity. This is what we need to protect.

The Dalia Association is a community foundation that realizes the rights of Palestinians to control their resources for their own durable development for generations to come. Its mission is to mobilize and properly utilize resources necessary to empower a vibrant, independent, and accountable civil society, through community-controlled grantmaking. Its community development approach focuses on the ecological, local economy, social and cultural dimensions.

Read the full report / transcript of the session, or the individual contributions from the other three speakers:

• Marko Aksentijević, Ministry of Space (Serbia)
• Martin Macwan, Navsarjan (India)
• Kamala Chandrakirana, Indonesia for Humanity (Indonesia)