While hiking the mountains of Upper Kalinga, my heart and mind brought my consciousness on how to be an effective Inclusive Development field worker:
- My main task is primarily to listen to the peoples’ imagination of their realities. In their various languages and expressions, they articulate their present realities (what is) and their future aspirations (what ought to).
- My secondary task is to commit myself to walk with them in-between the present and the future, not a 100-meter dash sprint, but a life-long-journey.
- My third task is to keep listening as I walk with them until they have affirmed that I actually get what they are saying so I can resonate their wisdom, concerns, and aspirations to those outside their respective communities.
