Writing articles was recently adopted as a monthly routine at Casa Hacker. It was a long-standing wish of the teams: to create more space to share publicly the experiences, lessons and encounters that arise over the course of our projects.
When the idea was put forward, it made sense to me straight away. Writing has always been a way of organising thoughts, recording processes and giving meaning to what we live through. But along with the enthusiasm came an unexpected question:
Do I have something to say?
The question sounds odd. After all, I spend a good part of my days following projects, monitoring results, talking with community leaders, taking part in meetings, analysing challenges and building collective solutions.
In theory, there is no shortage of material.
In practice, sometimes there is too much of it.
Over a single week I might follow the path of a community leader who is strengthening an initiative in her territory, take part in discussions on shared governance, hear accounts of transformation from young participants, talk about the financial sustainability of social organisations and help build strategies to widen impact.
There are many stories.
Perhaps too many stories.
And precisely because I am so close to them, I often fail to notice how extraordinary they are.
There is a curious phenomenon among people who work with social transformation. After a while, what once seemed surprising starts to seem normal.
A meeting where people with different views manage to reach consensus.
A leader who discovers new capacities in herself.
A group that turns an idea into collective action.
A community that finds ways to solve long-standing problems.
When that becomes part of the routine, we run the risk of forgetting that, to anyone on the outside, none of it is obvious.
Sometimes I feel this very concretely.
I come out of a conversation about civic participation, free technology or community development. Then I go to the supermarket, sit in on a meeting at my son’s school, or simply walk through the city.
In those moments a strange feeling arises.
As if two worlds were happening at the same time.
On one side, people devoted to building alternatives, strengthening communities, creating opportunities and trying out new forms of organisation.
On the other, a daily life marked by haste, individualism, disinformation and disbelief.
My friend Punka likes to joke, quoting a well-known expression, that “the whole world lies in wickedness”. She recently released the album Sincericídio and, like me, divides her life between art, production, management and social transformation.
Perhaps that is why our conversations so often return to the same question: do people know that these stories exist?
Perhaps that is exactly the role of writing.
Not to prove that social transformation happens.
But to record that it exists.
To build bridges between those who live these experiences and those who may never have heard of them.
To tell stories that might otherwise remain invisible.
And that is when I realise the initial question was the wrong one.
The question is not whether I have something to say.
The question is how to turn into words everything I see happening every day.
Because, deep down, we make it look easy.
But anyone inside the projects knows that it is not.
There is invisible work.
There is care.
There is conflict.
There is learning.
There is persistence.
And there are many people building, every day, futures that do not yet make the headlines.
Perhaps writing is a way of making sure these stories are not lost.
Perhaps it is a way of remembering that what has become routine for us is still extraordinary.
And perhaps that is exactly why it is worth carrying on writing.