Daily Inspiration Quote by Jaha Dukureh

Power, in Dukureh's telling, starts with who gets to be in the room. The insistence on an organization "by people like us" is a direct challenge to the familiar charity-and-NGO dynamic where affected communities are treated as case studies, not decision-makers. She is drawing a bright line between advocacy that is extracted from lived pain and advocacy that is built from it. "Lived experience" here isn't a buzzword; it's a credential, a shield against voyeurism, and a claim to authority in a policy world that too often rewards polished distance over intimate knowledge.

The phrasing also does quiet rhetorical work. "Important" sounds modest, even procedural, but it's carrying a demand: legitimacy. When Dukureh says people who have lived it "know how to tackle these issues", she's rejecting the idea that expertise must come from institutions, degrees, or outsider "best practices". It's an argument for competence rooted in proximity: survivors and community members understand not just the harm, but the social terrain around it - family pressures, stigma, religious framing, immigration status, the consequences of speaking out.

"Respectful manner" is the pressure point. It's an implicit critique of campaigns that sensationalize trauma to raise money or win headlines, flattening complex communities into villains and victims. Dukureh signals an ethic as much as a strategy: change that doesn't humiliate the people it claims to help, and leadership that doesn't reproduce the same power imbalances that enabled the harm in the first place.