7. Worldwide Tribe

Lars Peter Nissen: 00:11

We don't know what the future of the humanitarian sector looks like. But no matter where we end up, I'm fairly sure that this week's guest on Trumanitarian, Jaz O'Hara, and The WorldwideTribe she founded, will be part of it. The thinking underpinning The Tribe is simple. All you need is the world and people and love. And with that simple, compelling point of view, Jaz applies all of her talent and creativity, to telling stories about people on the move to the more than 100,000 members of the tribe. She does so with great empathy and respect for everybody she needs, and with an instinctive and awesome sense of aesthetics. If you're not familiar with the work of The Tribe, I'd encourage you to check it out on the website and listen to the podcast Jaz launched recently, it's a wonderful contribution and a great listen. The striking thing about The Tribe is the fluidity with which it operates and the way that Jess talks about the journey she's on. And I'm not just talking about social media and communication here (that's very much a generational issue, I realised that), but the instinctive honesty, learning and authenticity of her approach is compelling. If you're a humanitarian technocrat, like I am, in many ways, your first instinct may be to write off The Worldwide Tribe as a marginal, cute, nice phenomenon that won't really reshape humanitarian outcomes or achieve impact at scale. If that's how you feel after having listened to the conversation, I'd encourage you to listen one more time, because I think you've got that wrong. So enjoy the conversation. Jaz O'Hara, welcome to Trumanitarian.

Jasmin (Jaz) O’Hara: 01:56

Thank you so much for having me, such a pleasure.

Lars Peter Nissen: 01:59

It's great to be in touch with you again. We met a couple of years ago and I learned a bit about the fascinating work you're doing with The Worldwide Tribe. Why don't you tell the story about how you founded the tribe and what that is all about?

Jasmin (Jaz) O’Hara: 02:12

Okay, I'll go from the beginning. It's a good story so sit back and give me a sec to cast my mind back to 2O15 when it all began. So yeah, it was actually just over five years ago, Lars, that is... that everything started for me and it was quite a life changing moment, actually, that happened. Because I was working in the fashion industry before I worked in the humanitarian sector. I worked in London for an underwear brand, I was a designer. And I had no experience of the humanitarian sector at all. It was not something that I, yeah, had even dabbled in. But what happened was something very, very... it was a there was a clear course of events, right? So my mum and dad were going through the adoption process. They had four children already. I was the oldest of four. And my youngest brother was turning 18. So he was about to leave home to go to university and my mum and dad, I think were very fearful of having an empty house, right? They've always had this big, full house of loads of kids, and they were keen to take on another child. They weren't ready for that empty house yet. Little did they know what would happen. So there was they were scared about having an empty house, having no more kids at home, and they wanted to take on another child. So they went through the process with the local council and they were open to a child who was older, who was a boy who didn't speak English, and these are things that lots of prospective families don't want, right? And it looks very likely that my mum and dad would be taking on a child who was coming via the Calais Jungle, which at the time was a refugee camp that not many people in the UK knew about. And if they didn't know about it, it wasn't anything positive. It was, you know, swarms of migrants and marauding migrants and those kinds of headlines that we were seeing in the news about the Calais Jungle. So my mum and dad then finally got to the end of the process and adopted a boy from Eritrea called Mez. He became my little brother in the summer of 2O15. And not long afterwards, I was actually in a queue at the bank, right? And I heard these women in front of me in the bank having a conversation about Calais, about this camp, and they were talking about it. (I think my phone must have run out of battery or I was bored or something because I was listening to their conversation) and they were talking about Calais, they were talking about how there were people running around with knives, how dangerous it was, how dreadful it was that all of these people wanted come to the UK. And I knew that they were talking about people like my little brother, right? My new little brother Mez, this kid, this scared, vulnerable little kid who had been through so much to get to the UK. And I felt so frustrated by that narrative that they were talking about. But I didn't have the information, really, to contradict them to interject in their conversation. I didn't have the courage to either. And I walked out of the bank frustrated and really feeling like I wanted to challenge them, but I didn't have the words or the knowledge and the first-hand experience. So I decided in that moment that I wanted to go to Calais, that I wanted to make that journey to the camp. And three days later, I remember it was a Tuesday, I took the day off work, and I made the journey. Now my mom and dad live in Kent, it's not far away, it took me, you know, less than an hour to get to Folkeston, 40 minutes on the train, and you're there. And I've been about... I was very naive, and that those early stages, I didn't really know what I was doing. I thought about what people might need or want, and I filled my car with, you know, bits of food that I thought, you know, people might be hungry, some warm clothing. I really didn't know what to expect, or what I would find. And I remember lots of people telling me, you can't just go to a refugee camp, you can't just turn up there. So I just thought, you know, well, what have I got to lose? I'll give it a try. I'll see what happens. Worst comes to worst I come back home. Anyway, turns out in the Calais Jungle, you can just go, because it wasn't an official refugee camp. It was essentially a slum or an informal settlement, tents in the mud, you know, no one really seeing who was coming in or who was coming out. People just arriving, pitching up their tents and hoping to not spend too much time there, right? They wanted to hopefully continue their journeys to the UK. So as soon as I got out of my car, I was met by an Afghan guy who became a good friend of mine, Sikandar. And he said to me, 'Oh, you look like you're new here. You look like you haven't been here before.' I was like, 'Yeah, you're right, I haven't.' So he gave me a little tour of the area. He took me to his tent, he made me a cup of tea over an fire, you know, and he was very welcoming, he was very kind. And I think that that was what struck me the most that day. Not the fact that there were about 2OOO people sleeping in tents in the mud. Of course, that was super shocking, but what was most shocking and what sat with me most uncomfortably is the fact that people were sitting there... that people were welcoming and kind and that they were so misrepresented by our UK media. So what happened after that was that I went home, feeling very confused about the fact that it was so easy for me to get back to the UK, in the comfort of my car with the power of this little book that I happen to possess. And all of these people that I've met that day, who told me their stories, and I chatted to, were telling me that they were trying to make the same journeys, and that they were risking their lives to do so. So I wrote a Facebook post, actually, about that first initial experience that went on to go very viral. And that really was the beginning of The Worldwide Tribe. It was very unexpected and it was very organic, how it happened. And it happened pretty much overnight. So that next morning, I went to work and looked at my phone that morning, and it was very overwhelming the amount of people that had responded to this account of my journey to Calais. And in that post, I'd written that people, you know, they did need tents and sleeping bags, and they were cold at night and that they were hungry during the day and that their basic needs were not being met. And people, Lars, honestly, they responded in their thousands. It was really incredible. We had, you know, literally thousands of people contacting us collecting donations of tents, sleeping bags, physical stuff, really. And very, very quickly, we had warehouses across the UK, across Europe, of people kind of collecting stuff in their own locations. We were trying to kind of organise this... I mean, I'm jumping a few steps. But very quickly, we were trying to organise this logistical nightmare, really, of trying to get these things that people wanted to donate in Europe to the people in Calais who needed it. And it was a massive challenge. And, you know, we were overwhelmed. We had, yeah, as I say about seven warehouses in London, so many people wanting to get involved. What had happened is I actually thought that that initial post would only go out to my friends and family. So I'd put my address in it and said to people, you know, drop stuff off here at my mum and dad's house or if you're in London, drop it off here at my brother's house in Brixton. My brother's housemate had to move out because they were just inundated (just temporarily)... but inundated with people arriving to the door with, you know, warm clothing and like care packages and notes that they pinned to jumpers saying, like we care about you, we don't prescribe to this and this narrative that the media is feeding us. And it was just absolutely incredible and overwhelming the response that we had to that first post. And suddenly, I felt like I was kind of responsible for getting this stuff to the people in the camp. As I say, it was a task and it was overwhelming, but I felt like it was something that I truly, truly believed in and that I cared about and that I was passionate about and I couldn't get the hours back when I was at work and very soon after that, I quit my job and I moved back to my mom and dad's house, slash to Calais, and I focused, just 24/7 on making the situation in the camp as dignified as I possibly could for the people that live there. You know, together with the people that live there, talking to them about needs, trying to meet those needs, using social media to do so. Social media was a really, really incredible tool for us. It was Instagram, Facebook, where people would share and, you know, if any need that we had we put it out on social media. You know, 'We need blankets, people are cold.' And it was incredible the way that people responded. Anyway, what I realised very quickly, was that, yes, you can hand out tents, you can hand out sleeping bags, but it's kind of never ending. And actually, however many tents and sleeping bags that you do distribute, you're not getting to the core of the problem, you're not getting to the root, and that there's still women, like those women in the bank, thinking the way that they think about the people in Calais. And then there's still people like my little brother living in Calais. And those two realities do not match up, right? And that is where The Worldwide Tribe sits, that was the mission and is the mission to try and bring those two worlds together and try and raise awareness and tell those stories of people like my brother, to try and encourage empathy understanding. So I started to write daily on Facebook, about the people that I was meeting, the friends that I was making in the camps, and make films, you know, we started to document everything that we could through social media again. And most recently, you know, that's taken the form of a podcast. In the last year-and-a-half The Worldwide Tribe Podcast has been sharing stories of these individuals that I've met along the way. Each episode is an incredible story of an inspirational, heroic journey that somebody's made. And yeah, it's really been about amplifying these voices. And that's been through various ways, talks in schools and universities... But it's been a five-year roller coaster, really, and lots has changed along the way.

Lars Peter Nissen: 12:59

And your podcast is fantastic. I listened to quite a few of the episodes and I... it's... there's such depth in the connection you have with the people you interview, and you hear the wisdom and the patience and the love coming out of those experiences. And it's... it really is, it's a wonderful contribution. And I'd like to talk more to you about the storytelling, the influencing the way people think about immigrants, the narrative, if you want... but maybe we can just go back because you describe two things, right? You go there, you see the horrible situation, and you collect some tents and some blankets and you give them to people. So the whole idea of giving stuff, right, of helping people directly rather than just telling stories about them. How did that component of the worldwide tribe evolve? Because you know, do you still run seven warehouses in London?

Jasmin (Jaz) O’Hara: 14:01

No, no. And, you know, for me, that was a short term solution at the time, and I recognised, Lars, that that wasn't where my skills lay. You know? Like, actually, there were people that were doing that better. And at the time, there wasn't. At the time, in Calais, there was no one: no, Save the Children, no big NGOs working on the ground, even though there were children there on their own. You know, they absolutely were not there in the camp. There was not even grassroots organisations. There was no one. I met one French lady, one French volunteer, Maya, who was local to Calais and she had been supporting refugees in the area for a long time. But that first trip, I didn't meet any volunteers or NGOs, anyone working in the camp. I really expected you know that, in this situation, in these circumstances, that they would be there, that there would be big organisations just meeting those, as I say, like basic needs. But because this was an informal settlement, it wasn't an official refugee camp, that didn't exist there. And these people lived with very, very little support. No support, really. So yeah, it was a kind of short-term solution. Tents, sleeping bags, warm clothing, you know, socks, hygiene stuff, whatever it was, and shelter. But then, over time, quite quickly, actually, in over not too much time, more and more... as more people arrived in Calais, more and more grassroots groups would pop up and people like Help Refugees, Care for Calais, Refugee Community Kitchen: people started to find their niche and started to focus on these groups, started to focus on different things. Refugee Community Kitchen were doing food, you know, Help Refugees were building shelters. And what I realised that was important for me to focus on was these stories of people. It was answering these questions that I had when I first went to the camp. Things like, why are people there? Why do they want to come to the UK? What happened to them in their own country? What's life like in the camp? All these things that people were asking on social media, it was answering those questions that I felt like was actually getting to the core. Because if we could change general opinion in the UK, and maybe that would filter up to policy, and then maybe this camp didn't even need to be there at all.

Lars Peter Nissen: 16:29

How many people are in The Tribe? How big is your Tribe?

Jasmin (Jaz) O’Hara: 16:32

It's a good question. So I would say we are a community online, on social media, so I think the worldwide tribe has a combined following of about 100,000 people across all social channels. But in terms of, kind of, organisation, over the years, you know, it's been a very kind of haphazard, whoever I can get on board to help me at different times, comes on board for short periods, and everything's volunteer led. But at the moment, you know, it's... I would... I'm the driving force. And I have some amazing people around me who helped me with certain things like the website or design work and things like that. But yeah, I would say that the tribe is an umbrella term for lots and lots of people who care about refugees and that makes up about 100,000 people.

Lars Peter Nissen: 17:29

And who are they? Are they young people like yourself? Are they...

Jasmin (Jaz) O’Hara: 17:32

Mainly women, 75% women on social media, which is interesting to me. And actually, I've had, across the board, in lots of kind of similar humanitarian or refugee related groups that you kind of see that spread, which is interesting. Because yeah, I actually work with a lot of guys, I post that a lot of guys, I don't really know why that is. I haven't got to the bottom of that. But yeah, I would say that they're mainly Europe, UK, Europe focused or centric women who care and want to... are interested in finding out more and what... and also what they can do. So I guess, potentially similar to me, at least, that's probably where it started. And then it's kind of expanded from there.

Lars Peter Nissen: 18:24

You have 100,000 people who follow you, listen to your stories on the podcast, read yours... your blog posts, or Facebook updates. And then, apart from them clicking like, what do they do?

Jasmin (Jaz) O’Hara: 18:43

Well that is a good question. And it's something that is unique to each of those 100,000 people, right? People always ask me, How can I help? And I'm like, 'Well I don't know, you tell me.' Because each of us have something unique to give. And I do provide those options. And I do make them clear. I do have lots of call to action, you know, off the back of each post. And it depends on that what the post is about. So, you know, you can donate if you have money, you can volunteer, if you have time, you can share a post, if you don't have either of those things, you can start a conversation, you can fundraise. But maybe for you it looks different. Maybe in your local area, you know that there's a refugee family down the road from you. Or maybe it's not even a refugee family, maybe it's a new family to your village that have come from another country or another town and that they need a welcoming ear or someone to show them around. You know, it looks different for everybody. And that's what's really important, I think is that this is a movement of people taking action in their own way. And it's about looking inside and thinking about what is it that I have to give? You know, I can I can give you a starting point, maybe a little nugget of inspiration, but it can... it has to come from within and what feels right to you. And absolutely, there is something there for everybody.

Lars Peter Nissen: 20:06

I remember when we... when we first met, and I was trying to understand what you were doing, I asked you, So do you have like a strategy? And you answered, Yeah, I guess I have to update my brand bible. And I had just never heard about a brand bible before. And I found that utterly interesting. And it's... when you... when I look at your website, and your... listen to your podcast, and... it's so Uber cool, right? It is so fantastically well-designed and the aesthetics are just stunning and the result is that the people you portray, you really see them as individuals, you really show these wonderful people that you come across, and you can feel the passion that you have for these people. But I was also thinking when I looked at it, I've seen that in refugee camps. I've seen that in terrible settings, the beauty and the humanity that you come across. And I think that is what moves many of us to be in this field. But you also see some ugly stuff. You see some difficult things. And if you want, the mainstream organisations have a tendency to focus on some of these tragic aspects of nodes or for fundraising purposes. And you seem to make the opposite choice. So what is your thinking around aesthetics, portraying the beauty the... Does is have to be cool? Should you show some of the more difficult things as well, that must be there? What's your thinking around that?

Jasmin (Jaz) O’Hara: 21:44

Yeah, I'm really glad you asked that. Because it's interesting for me to hear you remind me of that from all those years ago, when I was maybe a little bit more in the headspace of my days before The Worldwide Tribe and still in like, brand mode, because now I don't think that I think about it in that way anymore. And that it's not a brand. But I do think that what the brand bible, essentially... what I was looking for there, and what I was referring to, was making sure that we were clear on our messaging---clear on our purpose, clear on our vision. Those things that like you do define as a brand, you know?Like, What's our goal? What's our mission statement? What kind of wording? What kind of aesthetic? You're absolutely right. And I think I made the conscious decision quite early on to focus on the positive, focus on the uplifting, focus on the inspirational, because that was what was coming through time and time again when I was in these camps. It was the person who had a falafel restaurant in their own city and that they've made a falafel stand in the camp, and tha... it was entrepreneurial, people entrepreneurial and resilient. And even though I don't really like that word, because it kind of, you know, means that they've experienced suffering. But it was true that that was what came through and I didn't want to undermine or underplay what these people had... were doing and how they were living because it was incredible over and over again. And it was the stories of overcoming adversity and how much people can actually go through. And those were the stories that connected with me and those were the stories that I think resonated with the people who followed or were part of The Tribe. And also those were the stories that we weren't really hearing in the news. You know, you hear a lot of doom and gloom and death and destruction and negativity in the news, so I think it was a conscious effort to counteract that, definitely. And I guess I could talk about that in terms of something very recently to bring it up to date. I've just got back in the last couple of days from Beirut. And the situation in Beirut right now.... It's very different from when I was there last year. So obviously, last year, it was pre-Corona, pre-COVID, pre-this explosion and also in the last year, Lebanon has been through a devastating economic crisis and a crash which has meant that, you know, my dollar last year would have got me 15OO Lebanese pounds now I've got me 8OOO Lebanese pounds. So it was unbelievable the amount that their economy has been affected just in the last year, less than a year. So they really had a string of devastation in Beirut and it was a very different city from when I was there last year. Last year, you know, it was a hub of like nightlife and bars and restaurants and people having fun sitting out on the streets and eating good food and smoking shisha and just... it was alive. And this year, it felt very different. And before I went back this year, I was talking a lot about the fact that I was going to Beirut, I was fundraising for a group on the ground that we support there. And, to try and fundraise for them, I was sharing stories of the explosion and the impact it had. And I was talking about people who had lost their legs or they'd, you know, lost their homes or they lost their lives. That's the kind of thing that I was talking about. And I was posting pictures of beautiful buildings that had been destroyed. And when I actually got there, I realised that I got it all wrong. That I completely bucked up on my communications about Beirut, that actually, when I was there, all that I wanted to focus on was this incredible grassroots response in Beirut of young people (it reminded me very much of 2O15 and the response to the refugee crisis in Europe) getting together and using their resources and rebuilding their city. And the energy was incredible, the positivity, the resilience, it was just overwhelming. And I realised that posting pictures of broken stuff is not what The Worldwide Tribe is about. And actually, that was not what was important when I was there. It was just incredible to see these people coming together to help each other within their communities and connecting through something that was out of their control and it brought people together and it was an energy, again, that I was just totally inspired by. And I came back uplifted, and, as I say, inspired and overwhelmed and apologetic to the people of Beirut for getting it wrong before I got there.

Lars Peter Nissen: 26:33

Fantastic. So that's just such a wonderful reflection and I think... I lived in Zimbabwe for four years. And during a very difficult time for that country as well. And I... we sometimes, from ACAPS side, write reports about that part of the world and you read the report and think this is terrible. But then you remember what that country actually is about, remember the people and the resilience... and I think the distance we have to things sometimes... we sort of fall into that preconceived ideas of what people are like in a crisis, and we forget that they're still people. You say you engage with grassroots organisations in Beirut and you somehow collect money for them and pass them on. So the technocrat in me, of course, has the question, how does she do that? When she's on her own? How does a one woman army manage a partnership with local grassroots organisations in Beirut? It's a lot of administration there. How do you do that?

Jasmin (Jaz) O’Hara: 27:53

So I went there last year, and I spent some time getting to know lots of groups on the ground. And the same this year, actually, I made it my mission to go and chat to as many people as possible, spend some time seeing what they're doing, following their operations, connecting with them, understanding their needs. Lots of people in Beirut right now need volunteers, they need people to come from outside to actually support with manpower and hands and, you know, energy on the ground. But also, of course, they need funds. And what I usually do is follow my instinct and connect with groups that I really feel are doing incredible work. So for example, whilst in Beirut this time, I actually connected with an incredible group called this is Lebanon, who are working with the domestic workers in Lebanon, who I guess were the most affected, or some of the most affected by the string of events that's happened there. Because essentially, you know, if the middle class of Lebanon are now, you know, struggling to survive and struggling to feed their families and struggling to live, what about the people that were struggling before all this happened, you know, the people, essentially, at the bottom of that pile, the refugees in the city, the domestic workers, and many of whom come under this system of sponsorship called the Kafala system, they're sponsored by a family in Lebanon to work for them as a domestic worker, as a maid, as a... in-house and they're often not paid. It's modern day slavery in many, many cases. And, you know, lots of them have been thrown out of the houses that they were living in and left outside their embassies, because Lebanese families are not able to even house or clothe or feed them anymore. So they... you know, the most the people that were most vulnerable before even more vulnerable now, right? And so I spent some incredible days with a group called This Is Lebanon who support these women and try to get them back home--try and repatriate them working with their embassies and in the meantime, looking after their needs, putting them in to... paying rent for them to stay in these accommodations, just one-bedroom apartments with lots of girls packed in whilst they wait to go home, but also paying for their food and things like that. And, you know, I really feel like I've got an insight into what they're doing and how incredibly they're doing it and these grassroots groups are... it is often very transparent, you know. It is a case of like, this is what we need and we... people will respond quickly and no one's getting paid and it goes directly to the people that need it. There's a lot less bureaucracy and hoops to jump through. So actually, I identify the groups that I feel like are doing incredible work on the ground with the people that need it the most, and then connect with them, and then write about them and fundraise back here in the UK through my writing, through the podcast and through our fundraising groups, we have pages, we have pots for different organisations, when I write about them, I direct people to the right fundraiser, and then I transfer them to cash. This is quite... it's pretty simple.

Lars Peter Nissen: 31:13

And in terms of scale, how much money are you able to raise this way?

Jasmin (Jaz) O’Hara: 31:17

It depends, Lars, it depends. Like when things are on people's minds and agendas, for example, you know, in the initial couple of weeks after the Beirut explosion, we raised... we raised about 5OOO pounds for Beirut. But it very quickly moved from people's minds and very quickly passed on news... from our news agenda. And that makes it difficult... then that makes it harder to engage people and continue to engage people. So then it's more of an uphill slog. But if you know something is in our news, and you're directing... you're responding directly, then that can be easier because, you know, in the past we've... that initial fundraiser back in 2O15 for the Calais Jungle, we raised like a quarter of million pounds in like a matter of like a few days. And that was crowd funding through this amazing community. So yeah, it depends. And it's getting more difficult, definitely, as people get fatigued with stories and the refugee crisis is something that we've been hearing about for many years now. So it gets harder, but I'm still at it [laughing].

Lars Peter Nissen: 32:26

I think you were... When I when I met you, I immediately thought, Here, this is the future. This is the next generation of humanitarian organisations. And this is a cool project that speaks to a different generation, and obviously can move some things. How do you see us? How do you see the the Big Aid, the humanitarian establishment, whatever you want to call it? What are we?

Jasmin (Jaz) O’Hara: 32:57

Honestly, I feel like lots of those big NGOs, you know, I'd love to work more closely... I think that if there was a bridge between the humanitar-... the grassroots groups and the larger players in the humanitarian space, that there would be great power in people connecting, but I often feel that they're a bit impenetrable, and difficult to find the right person to do what you want to do and so big and slow to react. From my experience in Europe, you know, there were a lot of gaps that needed to be filled by grassroots groups and local people, for example, on Lesbos, you know, people were arriving to the shores on boats, and they needed humanitarian assistance and the big NGOs, they were not there, for a long time. It took a long time for them to be able to actually set themselves up there, you know? And in Calais, still, there's no one, none of those big names that you would hear about, and that you would know about, working in Calais. So, yeah, at times, disappointing, I guess, that I had this idea of like, if there's a humanitarian crisis, that's when these agencies, you know, come into their own. But then I have to say, I have learned a lot over the years as well. And at the end of last year, I spent some time in Bangladesh, working with the Rohingya. And now I saw how effective large organisations can be and that the UNHCR is doing incredible work there, and that the camps are much more formal and managed by larger NGOs. And the same in Jordan, for example. I've been to Za'atari and to Azraq Camp there that are both very... ru-... they run in a very different capacity and in a different way from these kind of informal settlements that I'm talking about in Europe like Calais, like Lesbos. Yeah, and like Beirut, too, I guess. They're much more informal around Beirut, lots of Syrian camps and even Palestinian camps in Beirut that... yeah, not UNHCR branded everywhere, they look very different.

Lars Peter Nissen: 35:20

But if you had a wish, and you could get the big system to do something for The Worldwide Tribe and the people you you serve, what would that be? What do you actually want?

Jasmin (Jaz) O’Hara: 35:33

I'd like to actually work with them on communications, and have their reach but tell the stories of the people that I meet, and I know. Yeah, I think, as you said previously, that sometimes communications within these bigger charities, NGOs, focus on those... on the pain and the needs. And, you know, I'm sure that that does... that is effective in raising money. But I think that we need to move on from that now. And we need to stop painting people as victims, and we need to see ourselves in these people and if they're, you know, looking very different from us, and like you said, looking hungry, or sad, or with flies around them, then that's not something that we can relate to, right? And actually, when I meet people, these are people, these are people and I can relate to everybody that I meet. And I know that in the same situation, I would act exactly the same. And that's what I try and highlight is that there's so much shared humanity there that I can connect with anybody. And also, you know, if we're different, it's the celebration of those differences. It's the fact that these differences are beautiful, and that we learn from each other, and that we've got a lot to gain from embracing these differences and welco-... being welcoming to them and not fearful.

Lars Peter Nissen: 37:08

I was thinking, maybe you should run a class for some of the communication guys from the big organisations. Maybe that could be a fundraising activity for you.

Jasmin (Jaz) O’Hara: 37:16

Cool, maybe you can help me, let's make it happen.

Lars Peter Nissen: 37:23

The thing that really struck me... We haven't spoken for a couple of years and what really struck me in talking to you now is how much your thinking has evolved and the constant learning that you're having and the way you... you're very agile in the way you sort of develop the tribe. So where are you in five years? What's the tribe in five years from now?

Jasmin (Jaz) O’Hara: 37:45

Who knows? Who knows?

Lars Peter Nissen: 37:49

Take a wild guess.

Jasmin (Jaz) O’Hara: 37:50

Well, I hope that... what I want to get to is a place where we are not using terminology like refugees and asylum seekers and illegal immigrants and these things, and we are just connecting beyond all of those things that might divide us, race, religion, nationality, gender, all of those things, and recognising ourselves in each other, beyond all of that, and I think that we live in an age where that's possible, with social media, with, you know, the internet, we can connect these... with people from all over the world so easily. So I'd really like to be living in a world in five years time where we have a politics of empathy and understanding. And I hope that The Worldwide Tribe can be instrumental in that. But yeah, I mean, as you say, I kind of take things as they come and I have learned over these five years that all I can do... I think my biggest learning is to do my best at that time, until I know better. And then when I know better, I can do better. And it is a constant learning. It's a constant progression. And I'm very open to that. I'm very open to being called out to listening to people to being like, okay, yeah, you're right. Like, I think I can do it. I can do it better. But at least, you know, I'm doing something. And I think that we live in a space of... a time where there is a lot of fear of being called out, saying the wrong thing, doing it wrong. And actually, it's so important to just d. And if you do it wrong, put your hands up and say, like, I was wrong, but I'll do it better next time.

Lars Peter Nissen: 39:27

Jaz, you're such an inspiration. You do fantastic work with The Tribe. Thank you so much for taking time to come on the podcast and all the best for your future work.

Jasmin (Jaz) O’Hara: 39:37

You are so welcome. Thank you so much for having me.