Empowering community-led change with Niki Banks

Meet the Mancunian-10.8-Niki Banks- transcript

Intro

[00:00:00] Hello listeners and welcome to Season 10 of the Meet the Mancunian podcast: social impact stories from Manchester. I'm your host, Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe, offering you a warm Mancunian welcome. I'm delighted to bring you Season 10 where I celebrate social impact community heroes across Manchester.

[00:00:21] I hope dear listener, you can learn from their life experiences, the challenges they've overcome, and their passion for their cause. My aim for the Meet the Mancunian podcast is to encourage you to live your life with purpose and impact, inspired by the stories my guests share every Tuesday throughout the season.

[00:00:41] You can listen to the podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or my website www.meetthemancunian.co.uk. Get ready for another season full of thought-provoking conversations and life-changing stories.

Meet Niki Banks

[00:00:56] Welcome to the eighth episode of Season 10 of the Meet the Mancunian podcast: social impact stories from Manchester.

[00:01:03] Passionate about fundraising for charities? We hear from Niki Banks, Co-founder, One World Together in this episode.

[00:01:11] In Niki's own words.

[00:01:13] Niki Banks: But that process of savings brings communities together in a way that creates a much bigger impact at the community level. So when you come together to save, you also have a cup of tea. You talk about your problems. You help each other. You support one another.

[00:01:28] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you, Niki, for joining me today.

[00:01:30] Niki Banks: Hi Deepa, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:34] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Really looking forward to hearing about your journey.

Niki's Journey into Charity Work

[00:01:37] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: So, tell us first about what sparked your interest in supporting charities. Is there a defining moment that shaped this journey of yours?

[00:01:45] Niki Banks: Charity has always been really important to me. And as an academic, I've researched the size and scale of our charity sector and the huge generosity that the British public have when it comes to supporting things like global development. For me, one of the questions that we have to ask is, are we doing that the best that we can do? How can we build on that generosity to do good better?

[00:02:07] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That's very interesting. You've come from research into the impact to thinking about a very specific way to get involved.

[00:02:15] How did you get involved with One World Together and what does it do?

[00:02:18] Niki Banks: One World Together is a new social enterprise that I launched last year with my co-founder, Chibwe Henry, and an amazing group of University of Manchester students. It's quite an interesting background story and journey because I'm actually a professor of global development in my day job.

[00:02:36] So One World Together, we can see as my passion project, but a very collaborative collective passion project. And it stems from my research really. It stems from the decades that I have been spending, researching our development sector, what works, what doesn't work, and what we can do better.

Challenges in the Charity Sector

[00:02:55] Niki Banks: And one of the problems that we have in the charity sector and the development sector more generally is that despite the huge amounts of money going into the system, that the type of funding that we give doesn't work for communities.

[00:03:08] So we fund three-year projects over and over again, rather than giving long-term support that builds community strength and sustainability. We quite often fund based on the priorities that we have here in the north, rather than recognising what priorities are at the community level and the fact that they might be very different.

[00:03:27] And interestingly, those problems are also paralleled here in the UK. So, we have a charity system that privileges the biggest and most professionalised organisations and doesn't get a lot of funding right down to the community level. So, the time I've spent researching this, it's become really clear to me that the best problem solvers are the people that are facing these challenges.

[00:03:49] Our role as the people that want to do good is not to just get money to professional charities. It's to try and get that money directly to the communities so that they can use it in the way that best suits their need at any given time. So that's really what sparked One World Together was this recognition that there's many of us that want to make the world a better place, and right now we don't have a system that allows us to make the most of that.

One World Together's Mission

[00:04:12] Niki Banks: So One World Together is this collective effort to get more funds directly to communities here in Manchester and globally.

[00:04:19] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: We hear that from a lot of the smaller charities that they don't feel as visible or smaller community groups where they have to get a variety of sources to fund projects. And that sometimes prevents them from having a long-term view of what they can offer the community. Because they want to be there for the long term, but they don't know if they can actually offer things for the long term.

[00:04:45] Niki Banks: The terms that communities access funding on is never quick. So, you have to apply for funding and that may take six months. So, you have very limited flexibility to respond in the short term to crises you face.

[00:04:57] The other thing that our partners have said is that funding system likes projects and they like services that can be measured. They don't like funding things like advocacy. They don't like funding, social movement building. They don't like funding the communities to build that sense of community, to build those bonds to just be the strong organisations that they need to be to support their communities over the long term.

[00:05:20] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: So interesting segue to what I'm going to ask you next. What are the obstacles that you faced, or you had to overcome in your work?

[00:05:29] Niki Banks: Ooh, big questions. Often any work in this sector is not without large obstacles. I think for us one of the biggest obstacles is that we have a system that we know. The charity system is huge. It's very powerful. It has its own ways of working. It tends to be the biggest organisations that we know about, and until now we haven't had a route through which we can support communities.

[00:05:53] Many of us don't even know the local community organisations that we have around us. So even if we want to fund better, we haven't had a platform to know about more local organisations and to get our money to them. So, for us, I feel like our obstacle is getting out there, making sure people know that there is a better way of doing things and then coming and joining us at One World Together.

[00:06:17] And it's an interesting space. I'm an optimistic person and I want to celebrate One World Together as a solution that can change the world for the better by getting funds directly to communities. But part of that messaging is the system that we have so far is not working. So we are trying to do good, but we could do better. It's bringing people on that learning journey with us to recognise that we can come together and create something marvellous. We just need to do things a bit differently.

[00:06:44] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: And what are the communities that benefit the most from your work? You talked about some kinds of communities perhaps not getting the benefits of funding. Which Communities does One World Together actually support?

Community Savers and Global Learning

[00:06:57] Niki Banks: So we've got four partners, one here in Manchester and the North West of England, two in Kenya, and one in Zambia. The ones I'd love to spotlight here on your podcast is, of course, the one here in Manchester, which is a social movement. So, a network of women's led savings groups across Manchester and in Sheffield. It's called Community Savers. And what they do is they provide this network, so they provide the infrastructure to join and strengthen and support women's led savings groups across lower income areas of Greater Manchester.

[00:07:31] It sees savings as the kind of vehicle through which communities’ bond and come together, and it's the process of savings, which helps people individually to meet targets, to build their security. But that process of savings brings communities together in a way that creates a much bigger impact at the community level.

[00:07:51] So when you come together to save, you also have a cup of tea. You talk about your problems. You help each other. You support one another. Individually and collectively, what do we need as a community? Where can we go to get support from this? What should we be doing to speak out against the problems that we are facing as a community? And over time and with the right forms of funding, these communities are going on to do huge support that have massive ripple effects.

[00:08:17] So they're starting food banks, they're planting trees, they're fighting and calling out the gentrification processes that are removing their services and meaning that their children can't live in the areas and they're supporting their communities financially. They're looking after vulnerable members. They're fighting for the recognition of, people in the community.

[00:08:36] So what seems to be a very individual savings process becomes a vehicle for an entire kind of bonding process and a strong community. And it's that social movement approach, which also our partners in Kenya were inspired by. So, we have this process of global learning in which the Manchester Savings Groups have brought this aspect of community mobilisation through savings to Manchester, which is also quite exciting.

[00:09:01] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Very interesting and love to hear more about Community Savers at the right time.

Impact and Achievements

[00:09:07] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: What's the impact that you made so far through One World Together?

[00:09:10] Niki Banks: One World Together is 18 months, so we're quite a new organisation, but with the support of our global citizens, we've already transferred more than 11,000 pounds of completely flexible funding across our four partners. That's relatively small if you compare it to the billions of pounds flowing through the aid system.

[00:09:30] But it's incredibly powerful when you hear from our partners quite how strong it is when it, it's compared to those project-based funding mechanisms. So one of our partners says that every pound you give them that is completely flexible like ours, is worth five times more than a pound given that is restricted to a project.

[00:09:50] I would say there's three main ways that all four of our partners are using the funds. The first, sadly, but maybe not surprisingly, is to cope with crises. So the cost of living crises, climate crises. Our partners in Zambia are subject to prolonged flooding and drought. And in Kenya it's been some massive flooding and evictions. Communities need money quickly to respond to crises and protect their communities.

[00:10:15] Another area that our partners are using our solidarity funds is in filling in gaps in project funding in ways that deepen their impact. So, a really nice example there is our partners in Kenya, Raising Futures Kenya, who provide vocational training to low income young men and young women. They recognise that training alone is not enough in a context in which young people are very vulnerable. So they use our funds to provide mental health support alongside that training, to really empower young people, to really give them the confidence to thrive despite their otherwise difficult circumstances.

[00:10:52] Another area is to build in new strategic investments and to work towards strategic priorities before there's funding available to them. So you can't really apply for project funding until you know what you're doing. But you need the resources to invest in those priorities until they're ready for project-based funding.

[00:11:10] A really nice example there is again here in Manchester, so our partners Community Savers have invested our solidarity funds, putting the Manchester Social Housing Commission up and running. So that's in this context in which the 17,000 households across Manchester on the social housing waiting list. So they've created this incredible campaign to ask the council to build more social housing as new housing stocks are developed.

[00:11:34] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Very interesting and quite varied from crisis to filling in the gaps between the project-based funding to the more exploratory and strategic investments.

[00:11:46] Niki Banks: My hope is that as we grow and as we scale up the amount of funds we can provide our partners, the communities are able to go from firefighting, from responding to crises, to really investing in the strategy and to really investing in the strength and sustainability. So that over time we move from struggles to thriving, which is really what we need in this world.

[00:12:07] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Absolutely. Is there something people misunderstand about the field you are in? Especially when we are thinking about solidarity funding or, I've heard the term microfinance.

[00:12:18] Niki Banks: I would say it's not just about misunderstanding; it's about the things that we don't talk about. So from One World Together, I would say the thing that is absolutely at the heart of what we do, which we never talk about is trust. It's this idea that we need to trust in the communities that are best placed to understand and experience their problems, and that they are the best place to design solutions and to implement those solutions.

[00:12:49] They are the only people that can do that. But we have a system that has told us that we cannot trust that process. We have a system that says we have to have such carefully designed programs that technical experts have drawn up and then expect that they are successful. And that's because we don't like risk. We don't like to be able to not give strong numbers and report jazzy figures. The system is so wrong because actually if it's me, potentially, if it's you Deepa, if it's anyone on the streets, you want to know that your money's going to the right place.

[00:13:24] And it would be a conversation with a community when that would suddenly open up this realisation that, oh, this is what counts. So that's the other aspect of what we want to do with One World Together, is to bring our global citizens on that learning journey with us, hear from our partners about how useful smaller amounts of money can be when given the right way so that they stick with us over the long term too. Because One World Together is here for the long game because change cannot happen overnight. And we need to all come together over that long term to build a new system that does this much better.

[00:13:57] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: What's your top tip for people trying to make an impact in the community? Either thinking about the specific work you're doing or something more broad.

[00:14:04] Niki Banks: So I think my lesson over setting up and getting One World Together where it is now is that you need to find your people. So none of this could ever happen as an individual with good intentions. Good intentions alone are never enough, and none of us have the power or the knowledge to take on everything.

[00:14:28] So what you need to do is find people that care about the same things that you care about, come together and build that collective strength. Often bringing diverse skill sets and diverse experience to the table. That's when we can start addressing problems. That's when we can start building new systems. That's when we can have the collective voice that everyone hears and pays attention to. So yes, for me it's about finding other people that care and then figuring out what to do together.

[00:14:56] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I think it's so nice to, like you said, find your tribe. People who care about the same causes, but maybe from different perspectives, different experiences, different skill sets, but together some magic can happen.

[00:15:09] Niki Banks: I think we live in a world where we all have to come together across different groups, across different sectors, across different countries, and somehow figure out a way to work together. Because many of us feel that we are heading in the wrong direction, and certain voices are very loud. To stand up against those voices, we need a collective voice, and we need a collective strength. So, we must build that together.

Volunteer Opportunities and Events

[00:15:36] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: An opportunity now for you to talk about anything I haven't asked you about.

[00:15:39] Niki Banks: Because it comes from the University of Manchester space, one of the things we're really passionate about is bringing in our students, bringing in young people from across the city, many of whom are global together to get involved in One World Together and to help build its strength.

[00:15:53] So at the moment, we've got a group of student volunteers building towards our first One World Together Community festival, which will take place in Manchester in June. That feels quite far in the future. But in the meantime, if you'd like to get involved head on down to our website, you can sign up for our mailing list. We quite regularly have events in Manchester and are always open for new, interested people to come and join us.

[00:16:16] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Is there anything that you're specifically looking for from volunteers? Do you want volunteers to get involved with some special skill sets or is it just open?

[00:16:24] Niki Banks: So we are always open to volunteers with any skill sets to come and join us. Quite often, we don't know what we're looking for, if that makes sense. Everyone brings something unique to the table and as a movement, the beauty of it is it is a kind of a matchmaking process where everyone finds their place.

Signature questions

[00:16:41] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I will now move us to the signature questions I ask all my guests. And the first one for you is what makes Manchester a unique place for social impact work?

[00:16:51] Niki Banks: Oh, Manchester. I love the Manchester spirit. I moved here in 2007, and I've never left. That's because we're a city that cares. We're a city that smiles. We're a city with a heart and we're a city with dynamism. So there is so much going on here. And recently joined a group of people that are interested in sustainability across Manchester. So we're finding ways to connect about the things that we care about. There is so much going on.

[00:17:19] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Manchester definitely has that warm heart. And like you said, a lot of passion for their own and looking after their own. Absolutely.

[00:17:29] If you could have dinner with any historical figure in Manchester, who would it be with and why?

[00:17:35] Niki Banks: Ooh, good question. I can't think off the top of my head. Was it the Pankhursts that were in Manchester? I would definitely love a conversation around how they took on the establishment and did the unthinkable. Because it feels like we are setting ourselves up for another, I won't say fight but setting ourselves up for another big challenge at the moment.

[00:18:01] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Definitely, she's very popular on the podcast, Emmeline Pankhurst and her family. We've had different questions in the past. This is a slightly different one.

[00:18:12] If you were to create a social impact superhero, what powers would they have and what cause would they fight for?

[00:18:19] Niki Banks: I think the biggest superpower in the world today would be bringing people together, starting conversations that are difficult because I don't think until we have those difficult conversations, we can start coming to similar beliefs and similar viewpoints. And I think that would be the superhero, the conversation starter, and the person that brings people to together.

[00:18:46] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: And what's the cause they're fighting for?

[00:18:48] Niki Banks: Humanity. And that's humanity in its broadest sense- it's people, it's planet. And I think that's the beauty of bringing people together because we all ultimately, I hope, want that same thing. We want a future that will be here for all of our generations to come. Maybe not everyone believes in equity in the same way that I do or justice like many of your listeners will do. But there are some fundamentals that we all believe in and that we can all come around together.

[00:19:16] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Definitely, there's a real power in good people coming together and the power of all of us as I would say.

[00:19:24] What's the most important life lesson you've learned so far?

[00:19:28] Niki Banks: Never give up. That sounds far too simplistic, but when you start something like One World Together, it is a rollercoaster, and you cannot change anything overnight. And there are more challenges thrown at you as a team, then you can begin to imagine. Thankfully there are also massive opportunities thrown that kind of make up for it. But you need a lot of faith, you need a lot of optimism, and you need a lot of camaraderie to keep going and pick each other up when times get tough.

[00:19:59] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Love that. Faith, optimism and camaraderie to work out your resilience muscle to make something really real happen.

[00:20:09] So how can interested people reach out to you and learn more? Where can they find you on your website? Where is your social media?

[00:20:16] Niki Banks: So the best place to start would be to head on down to our website, One World Together.org.uk. You can sign up to our mailing list there. Even better, you can join us as a global citizen and start your journey with us. We're also on all of the social media channels. So you'll find us there too. Our email addresses are on the website. We always welcome inquiries getting in touch. Join us for any Manchester events.

[00:20:40] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you. We have listeners from 72 countries. I don't know if Zambia and Kenya are part of it at off the top of my head, but it is a wide range of people who care about social impact.

[00:20:53] Is there a funny or a heartwarming story you'd like to share with listeners to end the podcast?

[00:20:59] Niki Banks: So in Zambia, our partners Play It Forward, are an incredible organisation that work with young men and young women and using sports as an entry point for development. So they play football, alongside that football, they do homework clubs. They help young people move from primary school to secondary school. They give health and sexual education. They teach young men how to be good men and allies to women.

[00:21:26] So they're playing football, but they are addressing so many social and educative needs in a community that really needs it. So they used our solidarity funds recently to buy a solar panel system, which seems crazy or it doesn't, it seems normal. At the same time as doing all of this brilliant work with young people, in the background the area in which they run is experiencing a terribly prolonged drought, and as an area that relies upon hydroelectricity, they're going through these massive power outages of 17 hours a day.

[00:22:02] They were able to play football outside with young people, but the team at Play It Forward couldn't do any work whatsoever in the office. So they couldn't do any fundraising, they couldn't do any project reporting. They couldn't do any communications. They couldn't do any of the things that helped that organisation run over time.

[00:22:19] When we gave them a starter grant of 1500 pounds almost, they were able to bring in a solar panel and get everything back up and running. And when our partners told us that, I said, but this sounds crazy to me. How were your other project supporters not able to see the need that you have for a solar panel system and support that? Or how can you not reallocate funds? And Lima said to me, but that's not how the system works.

[00:22:47] The system expects that we have everything it takes to run every single aspect of our organisation, and they just want to fund the project. That is the world that we live in. And then we wonder why we do not over the long term, despite the billions of pounds and dollars that have supported development around the world, why we don't have long-term change because we are not supporting strong organisations.

[00:23:12] So it's a heartwarming story in the sense that 1,500 pounds from our solidarity funds was able to transform things for the better overnight. It's less of a heartbreaking story because it also reveals the kind of absurdity of the system that does not recognise that strong organisations and strong communities is what it's going to take to change the world.

[00:23:35] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I can totally relate to that. I've spent some time over the last many years volunteering in different parts of Africa and power cuts were part of the routine and you had to kind of plan for it, manage your water situation. It wasn't just electricity because obviously the pumps and other things also don't work.

[00:23:56] So I can totally understand how transformational that would be. And you're right, this is the basic infrastructure you need for a project to be established and to be able to reach out to people or even communicate to new students who might be wanting to get involved.

[00:24:13] Thank you for sharing the story and sharing the impact that these funds can make, which might seem relatively small in a big picture, but actually for that community group, it was transformational.

[00:24:27] Absolutely, very small donations can make a massive impact when you give them on the right terms, and that's exactly what we do at One World Together.

[00:24:36] Thanks so much, Niki. It's been great to talk to you. It's been a real pleasure and amazing work that you're doing. I'd love to see if I can get involved in some way in your festival when that comes out and keep us posted.

[00:24:50] Niki Banks: That would be amazing. Thank you so much, Deepa.

Outro

[00:24:53] Niki. I really enjoyed learning about supporting the charity sector today.

[00:24:58] Dear listener, thank you so much for listening to the eighth episode of the Meet the Mancunian Podcast, Season 10. I hope today's episode has inspired you to make positive change wherever you live. Tune in every Tuesday for a new episode or log on to meet the manco.co.uk to listen to all the episodes and learn more about my podcasting story.

[00:25:21] Next week on Tuesday 15th April, 2025, I speak to Ghada Soliman about sustainable clothing.

[00:25:30] It's wonderful to hear from you, dear listener. You can share your story or send me a message on my website www.meetthemancunian.co.uk or on social media @MeettheMancunian on Instagram, Facebook and Blue Sky, and @MeettheMancunian on YouTube.

[00:25:49] Thank you to my wonderful community of listeners. Remember your voice, your story, and your actions matter. Share this episode with someone who needs to hear it, and let's inspire even more positive change.

[00:26:02] To a better kinder world, and until next time, let's continue making Manchester and beyond a place of greater impact, compassion, and action.