That is my most significant realisation of 2024.

It confronted me most starkly at the Resource Alliance International Fundraising Congress (IFC) where I had the great good fortune to meet some utterly remarkable people.

 Hani Almadhoun is Senior Director of Philanthropy at UNRWA USA. In November 2023, Hani’s brother Majed, his wife Safaa, their children Riman, Siwar, Ali, and Omar, and their cat Lucky were all killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza following the Hamas attack on Israel in October. A cousin had been killed only a few days earlier.

On Valentine’s Day, 2024, Hani started the Gaza Soup Kitchen with his brother Mahmoud and their family. Producing what food they could, with foraged produce, hard-won water, and such supplies as can be found, the kitchen (and its offshoots) provides besieged, displaced and desperate Palestinians in Gaza with meagre sustenance.

Confronting the loss of beloved family members, his parents’ grief and the horrific devastation of their homeland, Hani was preternaturally calm and measured (at least on the outside) as he described his work at both UNRWA and the Gaza Soup Kitchen when we spoke. His quiet grace and dignity belied the stark horrors he was describing.

Hani’s social media posts and interviews have become a window into the lives of the people of Gaza amplifying their living conditions to the world. The daily activities of the heartbreakingly enchanting 3-year-old Hamoud, the many other displaced, hungry, children, the unceasing effort of resourceful family members, and the people whom they serve, keeping starvation at bay day by harrowing day, are a constant reminder of what we often call resilience.

On November 30, 2024, Hani’s 33-year-old brother, Chef Mahmoud, a mainstay of the Gaza Soup Kitchen initiative, was killed by an Israeli drone strike. Forgoing the luxury of mourning, Hani and his family persevere in their work, raising awareness and resources, and serving communities in the face of ever more daunting challenges. What does one call such courage, resolve and fortitude when confronting unspeakable horrors?

At IFC, I met others who are transcending their personal grief, heartbreak and struggles to somehow turn up each day in service of others. And those who, with seemingly few resources, are changing their communities and countries.

There was 23-year-old Jady Veríssimo, from the favelas of São Paulo, who has worked to support her family since she was 15. Jady not only won, through scholarships and crowdfunding, a place at a premier business school, but has also raised the resources to support the education and employment of 500 teenagers in her community and is building a sports facility for neighbourhood children. She has already contested her first election in her quest to achieve justice for the underprivileged in Brazil.

Since 2019, Mathilde Caillard has combined dance and techno music to mobilise people across France starting with action for climate justice. Overcoming scepticism about their capacity to seriously challenge established political forces, she successfully built a coalition of influencers to combat the rise of extremist parties in the most recent French elections. Her clarity is breathtaking. "It's absolutely impossible," Mathilde told us, speaking on the elections, "to normalise what a far-right government could mean... We'll be even less capable of organising because our fundamental rights will be under attack, our democracy will be under attack. It means a world in which we lose our capacity to fight.”

Here in India, social entrepreneur, change leader, and sanitation advocate, Archana KR grew up in poverty facing every kind of gender and caste discrimination. Her work of the past 15 years in climate, education, and health, particularly through empowering women and young people in marginalised communities succeeded in ensuring a budget of ₹1 billion (almost €11 million/USD $12 milllion) to improve sanitation in 49,000 government schools in 2021. Archana is presently working on raising the resources to support 100 girls to be the changemakers they, their families and their communities need. Like Jady, Archana too aspires to run for political office to magnify her impact.

How, in the face of pervasive gloom, facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles, armed with only most meagre resources, and confronting powerful opposition, are Hani and his family, Jady, Mathilde and Archana and thousands like them able to resist the temptation to slide into that pit of despair with which we are all growing familiar? What is the secret ingredient to their indomitable courage, relentless persistence, and undying belief that they can effect change? Why are they not reduced to apathetic resignation to their circumstances like the rest of us? Could it be that for them, unlike many of us, despair is an unaffordable luxury? And that they believe, like folk singer Joan Baez, that the antidote to despair is action?

Perhaps not all of us will respond to the very dire situations in which we find ourselves by dancing on the streets like Mathilde, or challenging politicians on social media like Archana, or defying norms and expectations like Jady, or risking our very lives as Hani’s family has. Nevertheless, what actions can we take that are bold, inspiring, and unconstrained by financial, social or political obstacles? Could we extend our support and solidarity to Hani, Jady, Archana and Mathilde? Could we look around for the Hani, Archana, Mathilde or Jady in our own contexts and get behind their campaigns for equity, justice and freedom? Decades of working in civil society and philanthropy has taught me they are everywhere – in every neighbourhood, community, country and region. And they’re not hard to find.

Could we make 2025 the year we transcend our own scepticism, apathy, inertia, and fear, to take meaningful action that vanquishes despair? Wishing you peace, joy, love, solidarity and the transcendental power of action in the year ahead.