What if welfare policy is premised on trust and dignity, rather than suspicion and punishment? What if people in poverty were truly supported rather than monitored and sanctioned?
“At the end of the day, poverty is not about statistics. It’s not only about financials. It’s about people.”
In this episode, we speak with Dutch MP Esmah Lahlah. Based on her many years of working to address poverty – as a social worker, researcher, as a city alderman (councillor) and now national politician – Esmah, explains her misgivings about the current welfare system in the Netherlands and what should change.
“That combination, of the power of people and the failure of policy and system is what drives me.”
Esmah discusses the importance of trust and dignity, and the need to shift from the automatic assumption that people receiving benefits are out to cheat the system to an understanding that poverty is a collective problem, not individual fault.
In doing so, she elaborates on the ideas that she put forward in her book (in Dutch) “We hebben het over mensen“; We are talking about people.
Esmah also offers inspiring thoughts about how everyone can be involved in changing the prevailing narratives and structures. A taster … “To be kind costs nothing.”
Photo credit: Jan van der Wolf via Pexels.com
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