The Spaces in Between

Natasha Freidus
NeedsList
Published in
2 min readMay 19, 2022

Resilience, Agency, and Community Sponsorship

Jaivet Ealom at TedX Toronto

Last night I ventured out to my first public event in over two years to hear my colleague Jaivet Ealom speak at TedX Toronto. The room was packed. Our local team was in attendance, and the rest were tuning in from home. It’s hard to express the emotion in the room as Jaivet walked up and began to share his story. You are going to have to wait for the recording to watch yourselves — but trust me, you will want to listen. Jaivet spoke about the potential impact on an individual’s life when we choose the path of kindness to a stranger. Following the talk, in the Q&A period, he had the chance to dig in a bit further to his reflections on resilience. He says that narratives of survival are typically framed in terms of the story of the survivor, and the story of the helper.

“Both narratives are not wrong, but they are incomplete. It’s either the story of survivor or the story of saviour. In my experience, resilience doesn’t lie in one person. It lives in the relationship between two people.”

I’m struck by the implications of these reflections as a new framework for solidarity — and even more specifically, how we think about the growing model of community sponsorship for refugees. Jaivet provides a way for us to consider sponsorship terms of the agency it provides for refugees, who have gone to incredible lengths to help themselves, and have now reached their limit — they now require assistance from others, who in turn, can act to support the stranger. The power of sponsorship in this model is that it provides a structure for Jaivet’s definition of resilience, for that space in between. In doing so, Jaivet provides an alternative to the false narratives of “victim” and “saviour” that pervade the aid sector.

Learning from Jaivet and others on my team has been far and away the most rewarding experience of the work I do at NeedsList. I can’t wait to see what he does next, but I have no doubt that it will be something special. Watch him. Follow him. There’s a lot to learn there.

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Natasha Freidus
NeedsList

Reflections on innovating crisis relief, standing with refugees, tech for good, and mission-based entrepreneurship.