How to Work with Passion

This chapter is about how to work with passion. This is difficult. Passion helps bring people close, it feeds solidarity, it empowers leadership. But it is also, unfortunately, easily dismissed as a sign of naiveté or a lack of skills. These are real risks, and working with passion requires avoiding these pitfalls.

When the g7+ was established, its overall ambitions were big: the group wanted to achieve important changes on the ground and to fundamentally modify donor behaviour, making cooperation in international development more equal. However, when trying to achieve these goals, passion can’t compensate for preparedness, and personal relationships have their limits. Institutionally, although the close ties of passionate solidarity played an undoubtedly crucial part in what the g7+ has achieved, they are vulnerable to changes in government and to the exhaustion of those involved. That said, although joy, passion and solidarity can’t do everything by themselves, they can still achieve a lot.