Mauricio Lim Miller, on the Future of Mutuality

Hi, I’m Mauricio, creator of: Family Independence Initiative, a movement to change the way low-income families are perceived and invested in.

Home base: Oakland.

10 years ago, I said: Social services and most philanthropic efforts made poverty tolerable, not escapable. They were paternalistic and didn’t trust the very families targeted to make their own decisions. I had already started the Family Independence Initiative and the monthly data was showing that people naturally turned to one another for help within an environment that trusted them and encouraged mutuality rather than individualism. The question then was how to convince society and even the best intentioned to trust families with just some of the funds the social sector spends trying to help. There was a heavy distrust of low-income families and it was this distrust across the political spectrum that was the biggest barrier for those families.

Today, I say: We still need to trust families to make their own choices with money, and learn from the results, good and bad. But things are changing and given the chaos of the current period there is a chance for a fundamental change away from top-down solutions, to using technology to create an environment bolstering mutuality and getting dollars directly to families so they can work together and lead their own change. Rather than counting on outsiders to come into a neighborhood or developing country with their ideas, new platforms are being developed where people, even the very low-income, can come together around common interest, share skills and pool their own resources together. A Do-it-Yourself hub is being formed that will provide lessons, materials and access to the various tech platforms so that those groups or communities wanting change don’t need to wait for outsiders but can begin to lead their own change.

A trend I’m tracking: The stories we tell about how change happens and who is involved. Americans are obsessed with individual heroes, charismatic leaders, saviors with single solutions — but we’re starting to see a new story that has to do with mutuality, interdependency. I believe the next generation, Gen Z, can create a new society, a new environment, where mutuality—not individualism—is what we honor. A society where everyone, even those we now think of as charity cases, are recognized as changemakers and contributors.

My inspiration: I’m inspired when I look at how people do come together when things look the most dire. After a disaster or as in Liberia. After a civil war and Ebola, with government and foreign aid being disfunctional, the families there have created their own jobs, helping one another. I hope to work to make those types of efforts visible and investable.

Last thing I changed my mind about: I was becoming very pessimistic that the social sector would ever give up the power it holds over those in the neighborhoods I grew up in. But now I’m seeing colleagues and programs, as well as funders and even the next generation wanting more than to just adjust the current top-down system. I’m beginning to think that fundamental change can happen!

What I want to learn: How Gen Z uses technology to build social networks across distance. I’m teaching a class at Princeton next spring, and the project I have in mind will invite students to connect with Liberian families — those in Liberia and in the U.S. diaspora. I’m eager to see how they’ll approach this and what we’ll all learn. I would love to see the entire university come together and back the efforts of Liberians so that the world can see how investing directly in the efforts of even the lowest income can fundamentally change a society, an entire country.

Mauricio joined Ashoka in 2011 — read more about him here. And watch this short video from when he was named a MacArthur Fellow.