The Pulse of Possibility: Why Ordinary People Are Still the Greatest Force for Change

On Monday, 9 June 2025, SA Harvest joined Daily Maverick at the Hermanus FynArts Festival as part of their new five-part morning talk series, Wake Up with Daily Maverick. The session, titled "The Impact of Ordinary People", featured award-winning journalist Estelle Ellis and our very own COO, Ozzy Nel, in a deeply moving conversation about how everyday citizens are confronting South Africa's biggest challenges - not with power or wealth, but with presence, determination, and heart.

This conversation reminded us that in a time where so many are overwhelmed or numbed by failure, we must radically remember: Ordinary people still carry the pulse of possibility.

We weren’t trading titles or solutions. We were telling stories. Stories of people who did what they could, with what they had. People who didn’t wait for perfect conditions. They just showed up.

Ozzy Nel spoke of arriving late to a hungry crowd with too few buckets, and how the apology mattered more than the delivery. Estelle Ellis stood in a community riddled with grief and was asked to simply "stand here." Not to fix. Just to be.

We asked:

Can ordinary people still make a difference?

And we answered: Yes. When action becomes a practice, not a performance. When consistency replaces spectacle. When anger is rooted in compassion. When support becomes solidarity, not saviourism.

But this isn’t just about individual acts of courage. It’s about how those acts awaken community agency. The goal isn’t more heroes. It’s communities rising.

Too often, we cast communities as beneficiaries. But they are also the multipliers of impact. Their energy, their innovation, their resilience. That is what makes systemic change sustainable.

So here’s what I’m sitting with:

• What if real power looks like presence, not perfection?

• What if change lives not at the centre, but the edge?

• What if we stopped asking "Who will save us?" and started asking *"Who can we stand beside?"

The most urgent work of our time is not to scale power: it’s to distribute agency.

This session at Wake Up with Daily Maverick reminded us of that. And SA Harvest will keep carrying this truth into our work, our communities, and our campaigns.

If this moved you, share it. Tag someone who’s inspired you by simply showing up. And follow SA Harvest to learn more about our work: www.saharvest.org

🎟 View the full Wake Up with Daily Maverick series: https://www.hermanusfynarts.co.za/daily-maverick

#DailyMaverick #HermanusFynArts #WakeUpWithDM #GrassrootsActivism #SAHarvest #FoodJustice #EveryActionCounts #DistributedAgency