[00:00] Intro

Community Representative: We told this NGO that we needed education. We told this NGO we needed school rooms refurbished and we needed a place to educate our kids. They brought the latrines anyway, and we were so angry about that that we chased them out of the village.

[00:19] Podcast Theme Music and Voiceover

Lars Peter Nissen: This week my guest on Trumanitarian is Sophie Tolstrup, the Head of Policy and Climate at Ground Truth Solutions. Ground Truth Solutions have just published their report for 2025 that maps out the perceptions of more than 14,000 persons in crisis-affected communities across 10 different countries. It's a very granular and really interesting view into how communities think about humanitarian action, what are their perceptions of what we do, and how have their plans and strategies changed over the past year. It's a great conversation that needs no further introduction. So, I’ll just say that once you listen to it, please like it on social media, share it around, tell your mom and dad about it—or if you're old, tell your kids about it. And when you've done that, then think a moment about the importance of independent voices in the media picture and go to one of the content providers you currently consume for free and donate some money to them. Most importantly, enjoy the conversation.

[01:31] Interview Start

Lars Peter Nissen: Sophie Tolstrup, welcome to Trumanitarian.

[01:42] Sophie Tolstrup: Thank you very much, Lars Peter. And as always, thank you for pronouncing my own last name better than I can.

[01:52] Lars Peter Nissen: Well, you are half Danish, as I understand it, and so of course, "Sophie Tolstrup" is what I really should have said.

[02:04] Sophie Tolstrup: [Laughs] I can't even make those sounds, so it sounds much better when you say it.

[02:09] Lars Peter Nissen: Great. Sophie, you are the Director of Policy and Climate at Ground Truth Solutions. And I think before we jump into the interview, there's just a couple of things we need to clarify because normally when we have staff from Ground Truth Solutions on the show, specifically Meg Sattler, who's the CEO of Ground Truth, we have to spend hours editing out all the swear words. You know, Meg is Australian and of course has a very clear way of expressing herself. You're British and very correct and very elegant in your way of speaking. So, I thought maybe I'd put as an ambition for this interview the opposite: that we actually scratch the surface a bit and see if we can't get you to put a dollar or two in the swear jar we have here at Trumanitarian. How about that?

[03:03] Sophie Tolstrup: That's a great challenge, and I am getting much swearier in my old age, so I'll do what I can.

[03:13] Lars Peter Nissen: Excellent. Now, the reason we are talking today is that Ground Truth Solutions have just published an annual report for 2025 called Whose Priorities Count?. It's an analysis of the work you've been doing with partners in 10 different countries, and it's really an excellent piece of work.

[03:36] Sophie Tolstrup: Thank you.

[03:38] Lars Peter Nissen: But before we jump into the report, could you just give us and the listener just 25 words or less on what is Ground Truth Solutions? Who are you and what's your position in the humanitarian ecosystem?

[03:52] Sophie Tolstrup: Great, thanks. So, Ground Truth Solutions is a longtime friend of the Trumanitarian podcast. We work with people affected by crisis, people living through crisis, to understand and champion their views and to make sure that those views shape decisions about the aid that they receive. And with regards to the humanitarian ecosystem, we sit one foot in, one foot out. We're independent. We're able to speak freely, reflecting sometimes uncomfortable truths back to the system. And that, especially at the moment, feels like a huge privilege. So, we can say things that others can't. At the same time, we've been supporting humanitarian partners for more than 15 years to turn the insights from communities into action. So, we're one foot in, one foot out.

[04:47] Lars Peter Nissen: So in that sense, really, you are very similar to my day job, ACAPS. We describe ourselves more or less in the same way. So, I would say we both play an enabling function for the system. We help the system think about how we shape the problem we're trying to solve—so how do we assess and conceptualize the problem we're trying to address—and you work at the other end of the value chain, listening to the people we serve and bringing back those insights to the operational agencies to try to make sure that we understand did our action actually enhance the agency of crisis-affected populations or not. So, I look forward to this conversation also because of that similarity. I always enjoy speaking to Ground Truth because your experience is so shared with the one we have in ACAPS.

[05:40] Sophie Tolstrup: Yeah, I think that's true. I think that's very true.

[05:43] Lars Peter Nissen: Now tell us about this report. How did you do this? What's the methodology here?

[05:49] Sophie Tolstrup: So, the report doesn't involve collecting any brand-new data. It's just summarizing all of the data and insight that we gathered or analyzed over the past year, and that's more than 14,000 individual conversations with people across 12 countries. We pulled all that together to try and identify trends and common themes, and then we layered on top key informant interviews with 16 researchers, civil society leaders from the countries we work in to give some added insight. And I think it's very clear that when we look back at the past year, 2025 was a year of unthinkable violence, of out-of-control conflicts, of targeting civilians becoming almost a normal part of war, of international law, international norms being completely trampled. And, not disconnected, it was a year of plummeting support for the humanitarian project. Funding slashed, the UN system being forced into this hyper-prioritization exercise. And so, when we look back at this year that has been, it made sense for us to look back on the year through the lens of how this shrinking humanitarian system, how those tough decisions about who gets aid and who gets cut off, have aligned with the priorities that communities have for themselves.

[07:12] Lars Peter Nissen: So in this context of shrinking resources and deepening conflict and new conflict in a number of areas, what's the pattern you see?

[07:22] Sophie Tolstrup: So overall, we see a relatively similar picture to what we've seen in previous years. We see aid that is somewhat misaligned with people's needs and priorities. We see a formal humanitarian system that acts as if it's the only game in town, that doesn't work well with local leaders, local organizations, and doesn't support communities' own initiatives and people's own aspirations for the future. But we see all of that on steroids. We see how the funding cuts, how hyper-prioritization has just increased the gap between what the system can provide and what people are predominantly interested in talking about, asking for. And we see that a lot of the prioritization decisions have been taken in faraway rooms, taken for people, not with people. And how that's caused a widening gap between people's top priorities, what it is that people want to see, and what it is that the aid system can provide.

[08:24] Lars Peter Nissen: So in essence, we are doing less of the same.

[08:28] Sophie Tolstrup: That's exactly right. We're doing less of the same and we're doing less of some of the areas that the humanitarian system had moved into in response to a changing world. And I think when we talk to communities and when we talk to civil society actors, it's really clear that less of the same isn't going to cut it. People want genuine reimagination. People want scarce aid dollars to be used in different ways, in ways that are more supportive of community-led action, in ways that fit into a broader aid ecosystem, and in ways that prioritize people's futures, self-reliance, and long-term goals.

[09:14] Lars Peter Nissen: What are the three to five main issues you see coming out of this report? And please, for each of them, give us a bit of flavor with some examples from the different countries you have data from.

[09:28] Sophie Tolstrup: Sure, thank you. So, I think the four things I'd really pick out are: the first and clearest message is that prioritization without listening, without taking our lead from communities, is really dangerous and is going to narrow—is going to increase the gap between what the humanitarian system can provide and what it is that communities really need and value. We hear across the work really egregious examples from where that's happening already. I think there's an example in the report from the Central African Republic which I really like, where a representative from the community said, you know, "We told this NGO that we needed education, we told this NGO we needed school rooms refurbished and we needed a place to educate our kids. They brought the latrines anyway, and we were so angry about that that we chased them out of the village." I mean, that's just one snapshot, but we see lots of examples like that across the piece of where, you know, people express real frustration at not being consulted, at not having their voice heard, or at being "consulted" in inverted commas where people are coming to them with a checklist and asking them to validate pre-existing decisions. So, prioritizing without listening is really, really dangerous. It's happening all the time and it's something that we need to put a stop to. We need to start listening to communities.

The second key message for me is that human beings all over the world, everywhere we are, care deeply about our futures and we want to build stable lives which aren't dependent on support. No one wants to receive humanitarian aid over the long term. And as humanitarian aid retreats from resilience, livelihoods, education—all the stuff it's saying it can no longer do—just as development aid shrinks, just as climate finance is moving out of more fragile contexts, this gap around supporting people's self-reliance and their resilience and their livelihoods is growing, and that's really, really concerning for us. Just a couple of country examples there, I think. You know, we heard loud and clear from communities across Somalia how fragile they feel their livelihoods are and how they worry that in the next five years their livelihoods, and particularly around fishing and farming, are just no longer going to be viable without government support. And that's a huge, huge problem for people. In Chad, we heard people say, "You know what? Food, water, there are problems, but they're problems we can take care of. What we really, really want from you is investments in infrastructure, investments in climate adaptation, investments in farming." So, people are thinking about their futures, they're thinking about self-reliance, and the more we shrink back to a kind of narrow livelihoods package of support, the bigger that gap becomes.

The third piece, and one that we've talked about a little already, is how the formal humanitarian system has always just been a tiny piece of the puzzle for what's going on for communities in crisis. Community-led action, neighbor-to-neighbor sharing, mutual aid, faith networks, diaspora networks, the private sector has always, always far outweighed what humanitarian response can do. And as the formal humanitarian sector shrinks back, we have to get more humble and we have to get more serious about engaging better with the broader ecosystem. We have to take our lead from communities in terms of what they are already doing and what we can therefore support, and we have to recognize what is beyond the system.

And then the fourth point we've also touched on a little bit, but as the world gets nastier, as the world gets messier, and as crises get more complicated, we can no longer stay in a safe little humanitarian bubble. You know, people talk to us all the time about how the first thing they want from the international community is to end conflict, to stand up for their rights, to help them adapt to the climate crisis which is ripping through their communities, destroying their livelihoods. And we absolutely don't have the luxury of planning, of thinking, of proceeding ethically as if none of that is our problem and we don't have any influence over it. So, I think those are the four big messages that I take away.

[12:56] Lars Peter Nissen: You could argue that it's not surprising that a system that was struggling in some ways before it lost, say, half of its resources, struggle even more after the loss of those resources. I think that makes sense to me, and in that sense, the "less of the same" narrative seems logical. Do you also in the data pick up some qualitative shift, some trends that you didn't see before, or trends that have accelerated to a point where you say, "Now this is actually new, this is actually deteriorating so quickly that this is a true—this is a rupture, or this is now broken in a different way," if you know what I mean?

[13:38] Sophie Tolstrup: Yeah, I do. I do. And I'm actually going to put a more positive spin on that, I think. So, let's do the negative first. I think the worsening—as someone who comes from a climate background and thinks about climate more than is healthy—the bits of the report that really wake me up in the middle of the night and don't let me go back to sleep again are around the worsening impacts of climate change on people's lives, livelihoods, the way they plan for their future. It's changing so fast. It's disasters that are not only more frequent but are also fundamentally different in nature, taking people by surprise and just changing the way that people think about their whole futures and livelihoods. So, that for me is the scariest—not new, but accelerating trend.

But what feels distinctive about this year of data and insights from communities is the extent to which mutual aid and community-led aid is shifting and stretching as the formal aid system contracts. And I certainly wasn't expecting that to jump out so clearly so soon after the aid cuts. But again and again, when we talk to civil society actors across countries, they talk about how mutual aid networks, community-led initiatives are really stepping up, really organizing, really connecting together, how communities are looking to different sources of support. So, you know, the humanitarian system failed them once during COVID, it failed them again during cuts, and now people are getting serious about looking to other sources of support, be that diaspora networks, faith networks, the private sector, and are just working in different ways. And then I guess a kind of layer of organization up from that we hear in Sudan, in DRC, in Somalia, how those community-led initiatives are sort of connecting and coordinating in more sophisticated ways.

[15:19] Lars Peter Nissen: Can you unpack that a bit for us?

[15:23] Sophie Tolstrup: Yeah, sure. So, I think there's a couple of different bits in here. The first bit is the fact that community-led response has always, always been predominant. As we know, communities are always the first response actors. The systems, networks, funding channels that support communities have always been much more important than humanitarian funding overall, and the humanitarian system has always been very bad at recognizing that. So, all of that continues and it becomes more visible as humanitarian aid contracts. The second part is that when we talk to civil society actors across countries, they say that they see communities stepping up in new and different ways. They say they see new women-led initiatives, new savings and loans associations, people are pooling money differently. You know, in northeast Nigeria, we heard these examples of, like, community-led security patrols who will enable people to farm their fields while watching out for trouble. And then a layer higher than that, I would say, or a layer kind of more systemic than that, we hear stories from Sudan, from Myanmar, from DRC, from other countries about how community-led initiatives are linking, organizing, connecting. New funding streams are emerging. And there's a real movement in our sector at the moment around hyper-local funding, around enabling community-led assistance, and it really feels like this is something with momentum, this is something with money, this is something that cannot be stopped, and it feels quite new.

[16:51] Lars Peter Nissen: What I find interesting about that is that this is not just something we run around and say in Brussels or Geneva or wherever, but this is something that you pick up from speaking to the communities.

[17:01] Sophie Tolstrup: Yeah, absolutely. And just maybe to give one more example, we just today published a study on how communities in Somalia are navigating the drought. And it is extraordinary when you dig into how communities are navigating, coping with the drought. The networks, the approaches, the safety nets that they have in place are so numerous, so sophisticated. But what must be said in the case of the drought in Somalia and in the case of, you know, years into the crisis in Gaza, that when crises go on and on, when crises are really acute, even those community strategies and initiatives are under strain.

[17:49] Lars Peter Nissen: So you bring on one side the unsurprising findings around the problems we have struggled with in terms of being accountable to the communities we serve—that they're getting worse. You bring a really positive finding around a strengthened resilience or self-organization or mutual aid or whatever you want to call that. Do you also, when you bring these findings to the formal system, do you see behavioral change there?

[18:18] Sophie Tolstrup: So, I would say Ground Truth has a strong track record over the 15 years that we've been doing this of driving change, driving the change that communities want to see. It's always difficult to attribute that entirely to what we are saying and what we are doing, but we certainly do see change and we certainly do see people keen to listen, keen to understand, and a sincerity around trying to drive more community-led response against all the odds, because that's not what the system is set up for. And I would say the fact that these problems—many of the problems that we're talking about today—are long-standing problems all boil down to—or many of them boil down to the fact that aid doesn't start from, listen to, and adapt in response to people's priorities. And why is that? I think from my perspective, it's because this isn't a technical problem. It's not that people don't know what communities want. It's not that no one in humanitarian organizations has contact with communities. This is a political problem. This is because the incentives to take that feedback and act on the feedback just aren't as strong as the institutional incentives to keep doing what we've done for a long time, to keep growing, and to keep hold of power. But I think our response to that is: does that mean that we should give up and stop asking people what they prioritize and stop communicating that? Certainly not. It means that we have to keep trying different channels, different messages, different partners, different audiences, and it means that we need to build a movement of actors and voices calling for more community-led aid until it becomes impossible to ignore, and that's what we're working on at the moment.

[20:13] Lars Peter Nissen: I guess if I put my cynical hat on—I haven't used that one for a long time, so I think it's time to put it back on—yeah, I mean, I agree. I think it is by and large a question of how we handle risk. And the problem with both ACAPS and Ground Truth's work is that the system is incentivized against using evidence or data that complicates reality in ways that they did not describe to their donor. So, if you got money from a donor to do a certain thing and suddenly Ground Truth comes out with a report that says actually that's not really working according to what we can see, that makes your life really difficult and creates a risk, in terms of a financial risk with your donor in terms of maybe future funding going down or whatever, right? So, it's a money issue. And I think the question I was trying to ask is: when you bring back this evidence, do you see anybody who is able to begin to change the way money works? Or is it more individuals who take very brave and good decisions that go against the stream?

[21:18] Sophie Tolstrup: So interestingly, we do see in particular funders at the moment thinking about changing the way that money works. And I convened a panel recently, and a donor who was on the panel said, "We need to think about risk differently, and we need to realize that, yes, there's risk in changing who we fund, yes, there's risk in funding more locally, funding organizations that we haven't worked with for hundreds of years that haven't gone through due diligence, but there's also huge risk in continuing to do what we do now. We know that the systems we're using at the moment are not effective. We know we're not squeezing the most out of every available dollar to meet needs in the best possible way, and that has to be factored into the equation." And what I've been pitching left, right, and center recently is: I think to move beyond this risk conversation—or to get out of the stalemate that we're in on this risk conversation—what we need to do is we need to really carefully evidence what it looks like when you put a million dollars through, say, the UN system and what it looks like when you put a million dollars through hyper-local funding mechanisms where decisions can be taken at the community level about what works best. You need to put that money through the system, walk away for a year, and come back after a year and really evidence what has happened, how sustainable are those changes, how does that look from the community perspective? And when you have that evidence, and when you wrap a number around it—say, you know, this is 10 times more effective, this has resulted in impacts that last 10 times as long—if you can get the right brains around that, then you can start to change the conversation with funders about what risk looks like. And last point on this, I think there are new and emerging funders, particularly on the philanthropic side, that are able to embrace risk in a different way from government donors and are pushing the conversation and pushing the thinking about what wise investment looks like. So, yeah, I do see that change.

[23:25] Lars Peter Nissen: Now, if we go back to your data and pick up on what you just said about needing to show how different models operate and how things can be done better. When I look at some of the country comparisons that you have in your report—and I love the report, it's an excellent piece of work, really it was great to read it—but I see for example in Sudan, I see 75% answering negatively to a question around whether aid and services are being distributed or provided in a fair way, right? So, really negative. And then I look at Chad where that same number is less than 20. So, actually predominately people feel, yeah, this is actually pretty fair. Those differences between the country contexts, what do they reflect? Is that that we are seeing changes, is it just coincidence, is it because there happens to be a really good NGO in Chad, or is it humanitarian access? How do you interpret the significant cross-country differences in your report?

[24:22] Sophie Tolstrup: Yeah, it's a good question and it's good that you mentioned Chad because we've really scratched our heads over this one. So, we've worked in Chad for many years, and this year, both historically in Chad and across all of our countries, Chad is a super-positive outlier in terms of perceptions of aid. People are telling us that they feel very respected by aid providers, that they feel able to provide feedback, and then are also telling us that what they really care about is long-term self-reliance and how aid is not helping them to get there. So, we've scratched our heads about it. We don't know what the answer is, but we think that the population we spoke to in Chad have generally very positive perceptions of aid and are obviously in contact with humanitarian aid providers that take that feedback loop seriously. But it certainly is an outlier and we have been thinking hard about what creates that positive outlier and whether there are lessons that can be shared across other contexts. And of course you mention Sudan, the data that we collected in Sudan was at the end of 2024 in areas that were very difficult to access. So, it would make sense that there was less dynamic and granular information about what people needed and prioritized. But the data doesn't always follow that pattern. We find very tough, very low-access contexts where people are saying actually aid is providing what we need, and we also find contexts where aid providers have been for decades and decades and decades and people say they're still not getting it, we still can't talk to them, they still turn up and deliver whatever it is they want to deliver. So, I'm afraid I'm not helping us find a pattern here, but I agree with you that Chad is an interesting outlier.

[26:15] Lars Peter Nissen: When I was reading the Sudan stuff I was thinking, okay, it's very negative, but at the same time we also see Sudan with a very powerful mutual aid emergency response room network, right? That whole—I think everybody who has gotten had some kind of contact with them have—it's just impressive the way they think, the way they govern themselves, the reach they have, what they manage to do. Have you also asked people about them? What do you think of the ERRs as compared to some of the more big aid actors? Do you see a difference?

[26:56] Sophie Tolstrup: Yeah, so from the piece of research that we're talking about now, it's hard to scientifically say there is a difference. But we've just finished some work looking at people's experience of different types of cash support in Sudan, and we've looked as part of that at group cash transfers and how group cash transfers deliver to emergency response rooms function differently. And some of the really interesting feedback that we had through that is how people both within the emergency response rooms and also community members talked about how aid where decisions are taken at that hyper-local level and where aid providers are in constant touch with communities and can turn on a dime and can adjust response to what's needed, hear feedback all the time, feels concretely different, both in terms of relevance and I think emotionally, to aid that comes from a long way away and maybe kind of operates a bit more like an oil tanker and takes a while to turn around. And the work that we did in Myanmar this year was also interesting in that regard because we were looking at the earthquake response which was, certainly in the areas that we were talking to people, almost 100% a locally driven, community-led response. And yes, people talked about relevance, people talked about the how different it feels emotionally when it's members of your own community, working on a voluntary basis, in touch with you constantly to try and make things work, how different that feels from donations that come in from the capital city, they feel quite arbitrary, no one's been consulted about them. So, definitely across pieces of work this year, we see a really substantive difference between how mutual aid looks and feels and how international aid looks and feels.

[28:51] Lars Peter Nissen: Now, if we then go back to your theory of change and the way you described Ground Truth when we started this conversation. You spoke about being inside-outside the system, but I think if I look at the origin story of Ground Truth Solutions, it was founded by Nick van Praag, who had a big career in the World Bank, in UNHCR, in some of the main organizations. If I look at ACAPS, same thing, it was founded by people who were really very focused towards the IASC echo chamber, if you want. And I've always felt with ACAPS like we were trying to carve out a space for at least having an independent opinion around the table in the big setup, if you want. But everything you tell me is that the positive change and the future is with a different set of organizations, with a different set of donors, with a different business model, with an ability to adapt locally and do so quickly. So, what is Ground Truth Solutions doing? What's your theory of change here? Is it still that we bring our annual report to the attention of the IASC and then they will change their policies and then operations will change? Or are you looking to push some different buttons?

[30:06] Sophie Tolstrup: Good and very timely question. I think a couple of things are happening here. So, one, I don't know if you would agree with this assessment, but we have certainly found that this year of all years, the UN-led system is particularly tough to influence for understandable reasons. So, it's making these impossible decisions, having to deal with these massive funding cuts, and so putting evidence on the table, engaging with evidence and that leading to behavior change is something that's been particularly difficult this year.

[30:51] Lars Peter Nissen: So, this is where I just have to say, right? If you wanted to use a swear word, this would be an excellent opportunity, instead of expressing "I understand that it's difficult," so of course, and—but this just where—you could throw in something. You don't have to, but—

[31:06] Sophie Tolstrup: No, but come on! If I'm going to use swear words about anyone here, it's not going to be about our colleagues in the system that are trying to make these impossible choices. It's the fact that these decisions should not have to be taken. We're in the middle of an illegal war in the Middle East where a billion dollars a day are being thrown up the wall, people are being killed, money is around, money is in the system. We have just chosen as a global population to use that money on bombs rather than on meeting the needs of people who are worst affected by those bombs and by the carbon that those bombs are belching out. So, that's what I'm furious about. For our colleagues in the system that are having to make impossible choices, yes, I don't think those impossible choices are always the right ones. No, I don't think those impossible choices should be being taken in faraway rooms on people's behalf, not with them. But my anger and my swear words are not directed there. My anger and my swear words are directed at a world that has wholesale abandoned the people that need support most. That's what I'm angry about.

[32:22] Lars Peter Nissen: So, I agree with you, of course. That the big crimes are not being committed in the humanitarian sector and that we have many wonderful colleagues who are working under impossible circumstances. I think where I get upset with us is that I don't think we speak honestly about what's happening. I feel like we are trying to pretend that we are still in control in ways that we are not and that we are not being honest about just how diminished we are. And I think that's—I think it's natural to of course try to optimize and do as much as we can for the people we serve with the dwindling resources we have. But I also think we have an obligation to tell a true story about what's what. And part of that story is that we are a very small—we're an important player, I think, I think we do very important work, but we have a small voice and I think we have to start saying that instead of pretending sometimes how much we can do. I think we have to come to terms with our reach and I think that doing that will open our eyes to engaging with other actors who can do heavy lifting. So, that is probably my beef with the humanitarian system and the way we have reacted to the reduction of funding.

[33:43] Sophie Tolstrup: Yeah, I'd absolutely agree with that beef in two distinct ways. So, one, as you always say, this crisis needs to involve getting real about what a small piece of the puzzle we are and about what the best division of labor, division of expertise is with mutual aid, local actors, the private sector, faith networks, all of the other actors that are out there. We can't simply say, "Oh, we, the people in this room, can only reach or think about reaching 87 million people, so they're the only people we're going to talk about or pretend exist." There's a bigger world out there and we're just a small piece of the puzzle, and I really think this crisis has to push that realization. And the other realization, if I may, which I think you alluded to, is: in a world on fire, we can absolutely no longer stay in our lane. Whenever we talk to communities, they talk to us about the need to end conflict, the need to adapt to the climate crisis, stand up for people's rights. And we no longer have the luxury, if we ever did, of planning, of delivering, of thinking as if none of that is our problem. Because the same donors that are delivering funding to meet humanitarian needs have a seat at those tables, have a seat in those diplomatic conversations, and are not always playing a very benign role in those conversations. So, I agree with you that we need to get real about engaging with a nastier, messier, more violent world, and we no longer have the luxury of keeping our hands clean.

[35:18] Lars Peter Nissen: And that is not an admitting defeat for me. That is playing offense.

[35:23] Sophie Tolstrup: Yeah, absolutely. The other thing that I wanted to flag here is: we talk about adapting to a changing world and we talk about this system of ours being anachronistic. And I think that is important when it comes to the need to engage with a nastier world and get our hands dirty. It's also important when we think about what role we play. So, without aging myself too much, I think it's fair to say that when I started working on and thinking about humanitarian issues, the paradigm, the thing we had in mind was that the arc of humanity was trending upwards. We were going to make poverty history, we were going to, you know, one laptop per child—the arc of progress was trending positively, it was the end of history and humanitarian crises were just a blip. And so, the role of humanitarian actors was to address those blips, get people back on their feet after a crisis, and then leave them to build their glorious futures. In the 15 years that I've been knocking around this sector, wow has that changed. We're now talking to communities who are actively planning for their environments falling apart, their livelihoods no longer functioning because of the impacts of climate change, who are having to adapt to these conflicts where they are increasingly targets. And we are no longer in the business of addressing blips. We're now in the business of addressing massive global linked crises. And so the boxes that we built for ourselves, the boxes in which we neatly sit and say "anything outside this is not our job," are no longer fit for the problems that we face and are no longer fit for the priorities and the concerns that communities raise with us. And I—another thing that makes me angry, while we're on the subject, is the response from our colleagues that when we get feedback from communities that doesn't fit with what we can provide, we can simply tune it out or ignore it. Absolutely not. We need to engage with what it is that people want and need and prefer, and engage with the fact that people are whole human beings and are of course thinking about their futures, their children's education, their livelihoods, escaping aid dependency, bringing an end to conflict. We need to engage with all of that, and even if it's not within our gift to do anything about it, we are, as you say, in these networks, in these rooms, in these spaces where someone is. And so, I think getting messier should be our tagline for the coming year.

[37:34] Lars Peter Nissen: You speak of a narrow window of opportunity for genuine reimagination. What does that look like? Because we've now spent a good half an hour slogging away at the problems we have complained about for years, and I think that is important to continue that conversation, but how do we truly reimagine this project? Especially within that narrow window of opportunity, if that is closing, what does that look like?

[38:22] Sophie Tolstrup: So, here I can be more optimistic because I think it's going to happen whether or not by design. We are going to transform. I think, you know, we've spoken a bit about how these cuts have made the fragility and the limits of the UN-led aid system really clear. And it's abundantly clear whether you're the biggest apologist for the UN system or whether you're a long-time cynic that the formal humanitarian system just can't meet growing needs in isolation. Of course not, we'd all agree on that. And I—do I think that means that the formal system is going to wake up one day and decide to transform itself in ways which mean shrinking its delivery role, handing over power, thinking of itself differently, letting go of control? Probably not. But do I think that there's this growing movement of new kinds of funders, growing and strengthening grassroot networks and other actors that are working differently and funding at this hyper-local level, powering up mutual aid networks and supporting communities' own initiatives, that will make engaging differently inevitable? Absolutely yes. And I think, as you've already said, the sooner that the formal aid system sees this shift as a win and not a loss and starts moving towards it with energy and with purpose, the more constructive a role the formal aid system can play in this emerging aid ecosystem. And I think there is a really important role to play.

So, just back to this narrow window. I think I see a narrow window for two reasons. So, one is positive: we have this kind of once-in-a-lifetime window of opportunity because the UN-led humanitarian system is having to change. It's in this rare period of flux and reimagination. I don't think the UN-led system has been super open to new ideas so far in the process, but I think as the dust settles it will be in the market for thinking about creative ways of working differently. So, this is the moment. This more than any other moment I've lived through, this is the moment when that system can change. And then on the slightly darker side, I think we've got a narrowing window because things are getting worse. So, I think as conflicts continue to spiral out of control without any end, as the climate crisis gains pace, we have this narrow window to be creative before we're in constant, constant crisis response mode and before that creative window closes. So, the time for that creativity is now or never.

[41:18] Lars Peter Nissen: Sophie, I think that's a good place to end our conversation. Thank you so much for coming on Trumanitarian. Thank you for your optimism and your belief in our ability to do better. That is so helpful for an old cynic like myself to be exposed to that. So, thank you so much, it's been a wonderful conversation.

[41:40] Sophie Tolstrup: Well, thank you so much for having us on, for letting us share this work. You've given us lots of food for thought, lots of conversations we should continue to have. So, thank you, I've really enjoyed talking to you today.

[42:04] Outro Music