Atishi Quotes

My theory of change is that there are already millions of people working day in and day out on the ground to deliver on promises on global change. We need to strengthen those institutions and help those people in the field.

I had this epiphany that I like the interaction with people. I wanted to make things happen at a grassroots level.

Real, sustainable community change requires the initiative and engagement of community members.

By bringing the voices of the ordinary people faced with extraordinary challenges to television screens around the world, I hope to affect change in one community at a time.

Change happens from the bottom up - all of us as individuals deciding that we will and we do have an impact.

If you believe in making change from the bottom up, if you believe the measure of change is how many people's lives are better, you know it's hard, and some people think it's boring.

I've done community organizing my whole life and I think to myself, as an organizer, we don't wait for people to come to us and say, 'Help us organize something.' We go out into the community, and we bring the skills to a group of people to organize themselves.

I know that government doesn't have the all solutions that real solutions do not come from the top down. Instead, the ways to end poverty come from all of us. We are part of the solution.

As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved - it's the citizen who changes things.

We need to take responsibility and educate people. That's why black folks don't like me. I always say it's our responsibility to make safe neighborhoods. It's our job to get them cleaned up.

In India, we now see many highly qualified professionals ready to work in the rural hinterland and in their own towns and cities to tackle development issues directly without depending much on the government.

But when others suggested that the poor should not simply be the objects of these programs but also the subjects - that they should be actively involved in shaping the programs, making decisions about how to spend the money etc. - some of the previous supporters reconsidered.

Community development has a long history of innovation and learning from experience.

I love being a part of something that is grassroots, and you can see the actual changes, the effect of what people do.

Social change comes through people.

I emphasize self-esteem, self-confidence, and dignity, not as an ideal, but as a real test of community organization. Without leadership development, community organizations do not have staying power.

We were facing a situation where some preachers have completely alienated themselves from the everyday concerns of the ordinary Muslim. Despite the fact that there are social issues that local preachers are in the best position to address because of the huge influence they wield, particularly in rural areas, they simply were not doing so. We did not want them to preach hellfire but rather to restore hope for Muslims.

Maximum Feasible Participation of the Poor

The way to change the world is through individual responsibility and taking local action in your own community.

The leaders come up from the volunteers that do the work, and it's amazing because then they do these incredible things in their community that they never thought they had the power to make that happen.

I think, in terms of activism associated with my films, be it 'Salaam Baalak Trust' or 'Maisha,' taking the idea of cinema as a way to change people, I feel heartened. I am glad that we have impacted thousands of lives.

The first step in community organization is community disorganization.

Public service and community organizing and movement building is such a part of my DNA that it's really hard to separate it.

Svatantra's journey began with a vision to make women in rural areas self-sustainable.

The only difference between Compton and other cities is the ZIP Code, you know, and the mindset - it's just really about challenging people to take ownership of our community.