What’s going on at Many Hands?

What’s next for Many Hands Foundation? When do we return to Silindile to finish the building? What about the library project? What about Bhekisipho’s business plan? What about laptops, internet access, training? How come it’s been nearly a year since the last work team returned from South Africa, and there’s nothing much about it on the website – no team member pictures or journal entries?

That’s what we’re trying to figure out.

We’re a small organization, but we have a big vision. We believe that volunteers can change the world, one small project at a time. We see the value as not so much in the actual work we do, but in the human connections we make – across language and cultural divides, across borders, timezones, continents, oceans – while working together for a common good.

So how does a small volunteer organization with no administrative budget make a big difference? How do we support volunteer work teams locally and nationally and globally when it’s just a handful of people doing all the work? How do we seek out and discuss and promote new projects, or let people know what we’re currently doing, when only one person knows how to update the website without breaking it?

By sharing the load. By perceiving ManyHands as more a community than an organization. By looking to the community for the resources we lack as a small group of volunteers. By becoming ManyHands 2.0.

What exactly does that mean? We don’t know yet. We’ll share our ideas and report our progress in this space, but we really don’t know yet. What do you think it means?