Section 6. Spreading Hope

 

This and other sections in the Tool Box chapter on Spirituality and Community Building (Chapter 28) have been written with the support and contributions of experts connected with the Charter for Compassion. For more information about the Charter and its work, visit www.charterforcompassion.org.

 

Introduction

Community building can involve long periods of uncertainty. Progress may be slow, setbacks may occur, funding or political conditions may change, and people involved in the work may become discouraged or exhausted.

Hope can be one resource for continuing that work.

In this section, hope does not mean assuming that everything will turn out well. It means recognizing that the future is not completely determined, identifying changes worth pursuing, and taking practical steps toward them even when success is uncertain.

Hope is most useful when it is connected with evidence, realistic planning, community knowledge, shared action, and willingness to change course when circumstances require it.

It should not be used to minimize suffering, pressure people to remain positive, or place responsibility for structural problems on the attitudes of the people experiencing them.

What Is Hope? Some Definitions and Qualities

Hope Is More Than Wishing for Change

In ordinary conversation, hope can mean little more than wanting something to happen.

Community work requires something more practical.

For purposes of this section, hope is the ability to imagine a worthwhile future, recognize that change may be possible, and identify actions that can move conditions in that direction.

This understanding of hope includes both possibility and uncertainty. It does not require pretending that obstacles are smaller than they really are.

Hope is different from forced optimism. A person can recognize injustice, grief, danger, loss, or a serious possibility of failure and still decide that some action is worth taking.

Hope Is Grounded in Reality

Hope does not require ignoring evidence.

Community builders should understand current conditions as accurately as possible:

• What is happening?
• Who is affected?
• What has already been tried?
• What barriers exist?
• What resources and strengths are available?
• Who has authority to make necessary changes?
• What outcomes are realistically possible?

A hopeful approach then asks an additional question: What could be different, and what can we do next?

Realism and hope therefore do not need to be opposites. Good community practice requires both.

Hope Can Support Action

Hope becomes useful when it contributes to action rather than remaining only an expectation or feeling.

Hopeful action may involve:

• Setting a clear goal
• Identifying several possible ways to reach it
• Learning from setbacks
• Building relationships and partnerships
• Sharing decision-making
• Recognizing progress without overstating it
• Changing strategy when evidence suggests another approach would work better

Persistence can be valuable, but persistence by itself is not always evidence that an approach is working.

Community builders should distinguish between remaining committed to a goal and remaining committed to one particular strategy.

Hope Can Coexist with Difficult Emotions

People working for change may experience hope alongside grief, anger, fear, frustration, exhaustion, uncertainty, or disappointment.

There is no emotional state that a person must reach before they can contribute effectively to community work.

People should not be told that they need to experience despair in order to develop “real” hope, nor should they be expected to turn every painful experience into a positive lesson.

Instead, community organizations can create space for people to acknowledge difficult conditions honestly while deciding what action remains possible.

Hope Does Not Require Positivity

Positive thinking can become harmful when it discourages people from naming real problems or makes people experiencing hardship responsible for maintaining everyone else's morale.

Community leaders can support hope while still saying:

• “This is difficult.”
• “We do not yet know whether this will work.”
• “We made a mistake.”
• “The conditions have changed.”
• “People are being harmed and that needs to be addressed.”
• “We may need a different strategy.”

Honest communication can strengthen rather than weaken hope because people are more likely to trust a process that does not hide uncertainty.

Hope Includes Openness to Opportunity

Community projects rarely unfold exactly as planned.

New participants may join. A source of funding may appear or disappear. An institution may change its position. Residents may identify a better strategy than the one organizers originally proposed.

Hope can involve remaining open to these possibilities without assuming that favorable opportunities will automatically appear.

Consider a community seeking emergency and long-term housing for people experiencing homelessness. Organizers may begin with one plan and discover that zoning, funding, property availability, service coordination, or resident priorities require a different approach.

The goal – safe and stable housing – may remain constant even while the strategy changes.

How Hope Can Support Community Outcomes

Hope Supports Goal-Directed Action

Psychological research has explored hope as a combination of goals, a sense of agency, and the ability to identify possible pathways toward those goals.

This framework can be useful in community work.

For example:

• Goals: What change are we trying to achieve?
• Agency: Who has the ability, authority, relationships, or resources to contribute?
• Pathways: What different strategies could move us toward the goal?

This approach does not mean that individuals can overcome every structural barrier through motivation. Agency is also shaped by resources, institutions, policy, discrimination, access, and power.

Effective community building therefore combines personal and collective agency with efforts to change the conditions that limit people's choices.

Hope Can Expand the Range of Possible Strategies

One value of hope is that it can encourage people to ask whether familiar assumptions are limiting the solutions they consider.

For example, a city experiencing rapid population growth may respond by asking how housing, transportation, public spaces, schools, environmental systems, and services can be designed so that both longtime and recently arrived residents can thrive.

Recently arrived residents should not be framed either as a burden or simply as a resource whose value depends on their economic productivity. They are community members with rights, needs, knowledge, relationships, and contributions of many kinds.

A hopeful approach asks how institutions and residents can respond constructively to change rather than assuming demographic change is either inherently threatening or inherently beneficial.

Hope Works Best with Community Knowledge

Community members directly affected by an issue often understand barriers and possible solutions that outside organizations do not.

Hopeful planning therefore involves more than encouraging people to believe change is possible. It also means creating real opportunities for them to shape what change looks like.

Ask:

• Who identified the goal?
• Who is affected by the problem?
• Who has been excluded from previous decisions?
• What knowledge and resources already exist in the community?
• Who has the authority to act?
• How will people know whether conditions have actually improved?

Engaging in Active Hope

Some writers use the term active hope to describe hope as a practice rather than simply an emotion.

A practical community-building version can involve three steps:

1. Understand current conditions. Examine available evidence, lived experience, community assets, barriers, risks, and power relationships.
2. Identify the direction you want conditions to move. Clarify values, goals, and what improvement would look like.
3. Take action and learn. Identify realistic next steps, assign responsibilities, evaluate results, and adjust the strategy as needed.

People may also find reflective practices useful during this process.

Depending on participants and context, these might include:

• Gratitude
• Reflection
• Prayer
• Meditation
• Time outdoors
• Art
• Storytelling
• Journaling
• Group discussion
• Quiet time

These practices should be voluntary. No spiritual or reflective practice is necessary for hope or effective community work.

People should also not be told to feel grateful for injustice, trauma, grief, discrimination, or other harmful circumstances.

Seeing Possibility in the Community

Reflection, Meaning, and Spiritual Practice

Some people understand hope through religious or spiritual traditions. Others understand it through secular ethics, relationships, political commitments, culture, philosophy, or personal experience.

A person may find hope through prayer or a sense of the sacred. Another may find it through relationships, nature, collective action, historical examples, art, or evidence that previous community efforts produced change.

Community organizations should make room for these differences.

Spiritual activities such as blessings, prayer, meditation, or religious readings may be appropriate when participants choose them or when they are part of the organization's mission. They should not be assumed to be appropriate in every public or community setting.

Building Hope Together

Community can be an important source of hope because people can share knowledge, work, resources, responsibility, and encouragement.

Useful practices may include:

• Reviewing progress as well as setbacks
• Recognizing contributions
• Making time for reflection
• Asking what people are learning
• Identifying new partners
• Creating several ways for people to participate
• Connecting people working on similar goals
• Sharing leadership and decision-making authority

Community support does not mean requiring people to remain engaged indefinitely. Rest, stepping away, changing roles, or ending participation can sometimes be appropriate.

Stories of Hope in Community Building

Historical and contemporary examples can illustrate how people have continued working toward change under difficult circumstances.

Stories should be treated as examples rather than formulas. A person's perseverance does not prove that everyone facing similar circumstances can or should respond in the same way.

Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Beloved Community

Martin Luther King, Jr. used the idea of the Beloved Community to describe a society grounded in justice, nonviolence, human dignity, and shared community.

The usefulness of this vision for community builders is not simply that it offers an optimistic picture of the future. It connects a future vision with organized action.

A community vision can help people ask:

• What would justice look like in practice?
• What institutions would need to change?
• What relationships would need to be built?
• What policies and resources would be required?
• What can be done now?

Community builders may draw on King's framework or another vision that fits their own community and values.

Paul Farmer and Persistent Work on Health Equity

Physician and anthropologist Paul Farmer's work is frequently used as an example of persistence in addressing health inequities.

One lesson from this work is that conditions sometimes described as impossible are shaped by systems and decisions that can be changed.

At the same time, community work should not depend on extraordinary personal sacrifice by one individual. Sustainable efforts require teams, institutions, resources, local leadership, and systems that distribute responsibility.

Kay Nakao and Japanese American Community Life after World War II

During World War II, the United States government forcibly removed and incarcerated approximately 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of them U.S. citizens, in camps and other facilities.

Kay Nakao, a Japanese American resident of Bainbridge Island, Washington, was among those forced from their homes.

After returning, Nakao described efforts to rebuild her life and participate in her community despite having experienced racism and exclusion.

Her story can illustrate persistence and the possibility of changing relationships, but responsibility for reconciliation should not be placed solely on people who experienced discrimination.

Meaningful repair also requires recognition of injustice, institutional accountability, historical education, and changes that reduce the likelihood of similar harm.

Nurturing Hope in Organizations and Community Efforts

Several principles can help organizations create conditions in which hope is more likely to be sustained.

Possibility

Possibility means recognizing that present conditions are not necessarily permanent and considering more than one route toward improvement.

In a housing effort, for example, possible strategies might include:

• Affordable housing development
• Preservation of existing housing
• Rental assistance
• Supportive housing
• Emergency shelter
• Zoning or land-use changes
• Tenant protections
• Partnerships with nonprofit, public, or private property owners

The people experiencing housing instability should participate in defining the problem and developing the response.

Agency

Agency means having meaningful ability to influence what happens.

Organizations can strengthen agency by:

• Sharing information
• Providing meaningful decision-making roles
• Supporting resident and community leadership
• Making meetings accessible
• Compensating substantial community expertise when appropriate
• Clarifying who is accountable for implementation

Avoid describing participation merely as obtaining “buy-in.” People affected by a decision should have opportunities to shape it, not simply be persuaded to support a plan developed elsewhere.

Worth and Purpose

People are more likely to remain involved when they understand why the work matters and can see how their contribution connects with meaningful outcomes.

Ask:

• Is the goal worth pursuing?
• Did the community identify it as important?
• Are people's contributions recognized?
• Are responsibilities reasonable?
• Is progress visible?
• Are the organization's practices consistent with its stated values?

Openness

Hope should be supported by transparency.

Organizations should communicate honestly about:

• Risks
• Uncertainty
• Funding limitations
• Disagreement
• Mistakes
• Evidence that a strategy is not working
• Changes in circumstances

Openness does not require assuming that everything will ultimately work out for the best. It means acknowledging current reality while considering what actions remain available.

Connection

Community work is strengthened by relationships among people, organizations, and institutions.

Connection may include:

• Support among team members
• Partnerships with other organizations
• Relationships with people directly affected by the issue
• Communication across differences
• Shared values or goals even when people disagree on other matters
• Connections with broader movements or networks working on similar issues

Strong connections can distribute responsibility and help prevent community work from depending too heavily on a small number of people.

Adapting When Community Needs Change

Hopeful community work includes willingness to revise a program when residents, evidence, or circumstances show that another approach would be more useful.

For example, an organization originally established to provide one service may discover through community participation that people identify different or broader priorities.

Adaptation should be guided by the people affected rather than by assumptions about what is best for them.

When working in communities affected by poverty, HIV, gender inequality, or other serious conditions, avoid describing people primarily through deficits such as being “impoverished,” “terminally ill,” or “beneficiaries.”

Describe the relevant conditions accurately while also recognizing people's agency, leadership, knowledge, relationships, and rights.

Some Challenges and Questions for Reflection

What About Unrealistic Hope?

Not every desired outcome is achievable, and not every strategy deserves continued investment.

Hope can become unhelpful when it prevents people from examining evidence, considering risk, or changing direction.

Ask:

• What evidence supports our strategy?
• What evidence challenges it?
• What assumptions are we making?
• What would tell us that the strategy needs to change?
• Are there alternative pathways toward the same goal?
• Are we continuing because the work remains useful or simply because we have already invested heavily in it?

A community can remain committed to a value or long-term goal while deciding that a particular program, campaign, proposal, or tactic is no longer the best way forward.

When Is It Appropriate to Let Go of a Goal?

Sometimes circumstances change enough that a particular goal is no longer achievable, appropriate, or the highest priority.

Ending or redesigning an effort is not necessarily a failure of hope.

It may allow people to:

• Use limited resources more effectively
• Respond to new evidence
• Protect staff or volunteers from exhaustion
• Focus on a more urgent need
• Develop a different pathway toward the same underlying purpose

Decisions to continue, change, or end an effort should ideally be made transparently with the people most affected.

Avoiding Forced Hope

Community leaders should be especially cautious about telling other people to remain hopeful.

People experiencing poverty, displacement, racism, disability discrimination, violence, illness, grief, or other hardship may have good reasons to feel discouraged, angry, or uncertain.

Their emotional response should not be treated as the problem that needs fixing.

Rather than saying, “Stay positive,” consider asking:

• What is making this difficult?
• What would need to change?
• What support would be useful?
• What remains within our control?
• What responsibilities belong to institutions or decision-makers rather than individuals?

Being Honest with Communities

Organizations should not create unrealistic expectations simply to maintain participation or morale.

Be clear about:

• What you know
• What you do not know
• What you can promise
• What remains uncertain
• What authority your organization actually has
• What barriers may prevent the desired outcome

Honest uncertainty is often more respectful than reassurance that cannot be supported.

In Summary

Hope can be an important resource in community building, but it should not be confused with optimism, prediction, denial, or a requirement to remain positive.

A useful form of hope combines a desired direction with realistic assessment and action.

Community builders can strengthen hope by helping people identify meaningful goals, develop several pathways toward those goals, build collective agency, recognize progress, create supportive relationships, and adapt when circumstances change.

Hope should not place responsibility for structural problems on individuals. People cannot overcome discrimination, inadequate housing, underfunded services, inaccessible institutions, violence, or other community conditions through attitude alone.

People experiencing hardship should also not be required to express hope, gratitude, optimism, forgiveness, or positivity in order for their concerns to be taken seriously.

Spiritual, religious, reflective, or secular practices may help some people sustain hope. These practices should remain voluntary and should respect different beliefs and ways of finding meaning.

Hope also needs accountability. Organizations should evaluate whether their strategies are working, communicate honestly about setbacks, and be willing to change or end approaches that no longer serve the community.

Demographic change should not be framed as an “influx” of people who must prove their usefulness. Immigrant, refugee, and recently arrived residents are community members whose rights, needs, knowledge, cultures, relationships, and leadership should help shape community decisions.

Historical stories of perseverance can inspire action, but they should not imply that people who experience racism, violence, disability discrimination, poverty, displacement, or other harms bear the responsibility for overcoming those conditions through personal resilience.

Ultimately, hope in community building is less about promising that everything will improve than about recognizing that change remains possible, identifying what can be done, sharing responsibility, and continuing to learn together.

Contributor
Reed Price

Editor
Bill Berkowitz