Where is the Care? By Dr Furaha Asani
Beyond the theory of ‘care’, to accountable care cultures in the sector
“Revolution begins in the kitchen sink”, read the poster in the kitchen of the community hub I visited recently. The saying originates from a 1919 poster from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), highlighting the burden of domestic labour. The saying goes: “Men and Boys! Revolution begins in the Sink! Only when men take full responsibility for their share of the cooking, the cleaning, and the washing up…only then can they join with women, and together build a new world!!!”
As I took the poster in, I couldn't help but think: what would it feel like for the brilliant folks working in the hub, immersed in community-based organising, to not have to return to a full sink of dirty mugs after all the visitors they had taken care of had gone home?
I washed my mug and a couple others that had been left to the side of the sink, and ruminated on the big and little things we do (or don’t do) that demonstrate care (and the lack thereof) towards one another..
What does it mean to be careful?
Concepts of ‘care’ and ‘care practices’ are well embedded in strategy across organising spaces where people plan towards equitable futures. But what does it mean? I define care in this context as: practices, behaviours and actions that demonstrate consideration, advocate for and uphold dignity, nurture ease, and share loads. In some cases this includes sharing domestic and emotional labour amongst others.
We are encountering a renewed interest in this specific kind of care across an interdisciplinary sector that overlaps organising, strategising, participatory action research, philanthropy, and funding. With all other hot topics that eventually get watered down, they end up circling the zeitgeist’s drain (think ‘EDI’). Therefore, our understanding and practice of care must be intentional, informed, and consistent. We can protect it from becoming yet another buzzword easily misappropriated as a conspicuous attraction for funding and career opportunities (again, think ‘EDI’).
Care itself needs to be anchored in meaning, material implication, and accountability. I state this in the very same landscape, thinking (or at least attempting to) about what liberation looks like on a granular, every day level. Navigating tensions that come with untangling my own complicity in various systems, engaging with capitalism to pay my bills and stay alive; whilst also trying to remain conscious and awake to what is going on.
My personal interest in the subject of care comes from two places: 1) experiences of being on the receiving end of a lack of care in spaces where radical politics of care were publicly espoused, and; 2) hearing too many stories from other people in this sector who’ve faced the same. Perhaps a cheeky third point is that while discreetly warning one another about the ‘who’, ‘how’, and ‘what’ is definitely effective, water cooler reconnaissance (otherwise known as ‘gossip’) should not be the primary mechanism we have to resort to- in order to gather the information we need, to preemptively structure safety for ourselves. Especially not in the absence of any meaningful accountability.
Accountable care
We might be tempted to think that those of us within this movement towards the third horizon have a working understanding and practice of accountability, as it pertains to our own praxis more so than ‘others out there’. Not so. Anecdotally, I’ve lived, witnessed, and heard of enough cases to know that horrors persist amongst us and we are all at risk of reproducing the very same problematic and harmful dynamics that we are attempting to counteract. At every given moment in time we are - as Sahibzada Mayed posits- confronting the coloniser within whilst navigating a confusing and wicked world on the outside. Mayed challenges us, as part of this confrontation, to unlearn dominant narratives. And it is this active and continuous unlearning that I’m deeply invested in, complemented by the new learnings that will plug the gaps left by the bits we discard.
And as we learn on an individual and collective level, what accountability measures can we put in place to ensure that an infrastructure of care goes beyond mere words in our spaces? What does the action of care and accountability look like in the sector?
Dr Kendra Okposo describes accountability as “a personal and collective decision made every day to own outcomes, follow through on commitments, and address mistakes with integrity, even when circumstances shift and success isn’t guaranteed.” Importantly, Dr Okposo adds, “people have to choose it for themselves” and the surrounding conditions “must encourage the mindsets and mechanisms that make accountability an authentic, self-driven choice.” I read a creative provocation within this definition; that accountability, and our understanding of it, isn’t stagnant but ever-evolving. And for accountability to be tangible, it requires personal and collective buy-in. One of either of these, on the personal or collective level, has consistently been missing whenever I’ve experienced a significant lack of care in any space. And the same goes for the stories I’ve heard.
When ‘care’ is only present in theory and not in practice, it will sap any nourishment for trust in our organising spaces. So yes, theory is useful but if it’s not put into practice then we’re at risk of simply circling back to neoliberalism. Something happens to one’s ability to optimally be and freedom dream when disillusionment takes hold. Freedom dreaming requires interdependence, which in turn requires trust.
‘Thinking with an abundance mindset’ is not care when offered as the sole solution to anyone living in financial precarity. A portfolio of ‘care-centred’ work with scores of harmed collaborators and participants left in its wake, is nothing more than a vanity project. ‘Rest' is not revolutionary if the expense is exploiting those even worse off than us, and leaving them over-burdened. That isn’t even rest. We’re all tired and can take turns- that’s equity; rest being the norm, and not just for some, is part and parcel of liberation.
An honest practice of care requires accountability- internal, and externally.
If the problem lands with a material impact, so too must the solutions
What does accountable care look like? We have useful case studies and road maps that demonstrate these in practice.
Careful Industries undertook a participatory project with people from across UK civil society, imagining future worlds foregrounded in belonging, care, and repair. “Rather than health or social care, care in this context relates to respect, empathy, and communicating and learning across boundaries.” This body of work, planning for possible, plausible, and just futures for civil society, surfaces the importance of collective futuring and structured communication in thinking about what care infrastructure should look like.
The framework they used in one portion of the work centred on non-violent communication (NVC*), and the cohort’s recurring hopes were, “developing social connections and relations; developing new systems of care in which people are not marginalised and care is equitably distributed; and developing somatic and global/indigenous practises.”
NVC is a process comprising four elements: communicating through observations, feelings, needs, and requests. It’s structured communication that invites reflection and opportunities for repair (via requests).
Communication as part of the process towards accountable care requires surrounding conditions and infrastructure that encourages individual and collective checkpoints. It must be part of the system and the culture of our sector.
Another useful case study comes from the Digital Freedom Fund and European Digital Rights, who set out to co-create a decolonising programme for the digital rights field. An account of this participatory project details how organisers responded to critique from participants as and when it arose, adapting plans towards repair and continuation. Notably, organisers implemented a pause in their process to conduct one-to-one consultations, reflecting on structure, and reconfiguring the design process.
“Welcoming the conflict wasn’t easy but taking in the criticisms instead of dismissing them was a pivotal moment in the process.”
A nuanced approach that invested capacity and resource into resolution enabled forward movement. Centring joy, creativity, and connection also supported progress.
The team also spoke candidly about a “harmful racist incident” that occurred on the very same day after they had enjoyed building collective enthusiasm in-person. “It became clear that the deeper one immerses themselves in an anti-colonial ethos, the more unbearable the violence of our colonial reality becomes. Engaging truly with anti-colonial dreaming means realising all that is intolerable about what is present now – again, and again, and again.”
A third useful example to highlight is that of FundAction, who faced an internal crisis that required dissolution of the fund’s facilitation group in 2023. In this case a temporary task force supported in making sense of the crisis and FundAction transformation. Together with the FundAction community, the task force undertook a careful process to draft a protocol for conflict prevention and transformation.
FundAction published a 2025 paper evaluating this co-produced care protocol and its impact in practice. Findings revealed that the protocol itself wasn’t referred to frequently. However, and quite notably, “...there have been several cases where members of our community have reached out to either the Facilitation Group, the Community Council or the community at large for support. These cases serve as good examples from the point of view of making use of the structure set out by the Care Protocol and have shown that these structures have been beneficial to the organs and the community of FundAction.”
The accountable care here, rather than being the care protocol itself- which is no doubt useful guidance, seems to be that very initial process of learning and unlearning as well as embodying the learnings for the community to be able to draw on in times of need.
In Conclusion: the power of bearing witness
Accountable care is careful design, building trust, understanding that interdependence is iterative, proactively building accountable communities, contracting care and safeguarding relational tissue, enacting repair, and sharing responsibly about all of these. We are constantly learning and unlearning, and bearing witness for one another.
I return to the water cooler, where we tend to share our thoughts, hottakes, and analyses with radical candour; there is power in exchanging stories about our mistakes, evolution, and how much we don’t know. And while our “beautiful reports, slide and card decks, and podcasts” might not always have extensive reach, it is still important that we capture aspects of our collective growth for those who need them to be able to find them.
Footnote:*As a caveat, I appreciate the etymology and intention behind the name of ‘Non-Violent Communication’ and respect the NVC process. It would however be remiss of me not to acknowledge that the concept of violence, and accusations of violence, are often deployed against marginalised and disenfranchised peoples. Furthermore, I am in agreement that as an act, a logic, a system, and a way of being, “the violence of the oppressed isn’t the same as the violence of the oppressors”. In conclusion, I refer to the NVC framework in the spirit with which it was conceptualized whilst acknowledging that “non-violence” does not mean the same thing and is not perceived in the same way for everybody. And therefore the designation of “non-violent communication” might not be conferred and perceived equally, across all peoples, even within the confines of a peer-reviewed framework.