Christina was an extraordinary woman, and she lived a daring, brilliant and authentic life – somehow managing to navigate politics and stand up for values and causes that mattered to her.

I’m glad that, in Scotland, my children have grown up in a place where funny, generous and open-hearted people like Christina can win political campaigns, and run a government.

This week, I visited the Scottish Parliament, with my family and afterwards we went for dinner to talk about what we’d seen – a handful of politicians working late in the parliamentary chamber, to comment on, engage with, and hold government to account on making things better for a group who is among our most disenfranchised, discriminated against, impoverished and exploited: migrants in Scotland, particularly those who are racialised, with no recourse to public funds or undocumented.

“It was more interesting than I thought it would be, actually.”

“They brought so much passion into the debate.”

“I just didn’t know how hard politicians actually work.”

The difference we all make

For this final Long View of the year, I wanted to return to a thread that I’m sure I’ve picked up before: the importance of believing that you can, and do, make a difference.

For people who are interested in social justice, and campaigning for change, the question of whether we’re making a difference is usually a source of both motivation and dread.

We hope that our actions will create change, and we fear that they will not.

And when we head to the streets, or into online digital communities, to encourage and inspire members of the public to take action, any campaigner knows that the threshold question we must be able to answer is:

Why should I believe that anything I do – just me, alone – will make any difference?

Perhaps you’ve had this conversation, at home, at school or out with friends:

“It makes no difference if I recycle this one bottle or not, because I’m not going to save the planet.”

”My vote doesn’t matter, it never has, and it never will.”

”The system is rigged; nothing is ever going to change it.”

Personally, I’ve always been a passionate believer that people do make a difference, and easily frustrated with people who complain about stuff without actually doing something.

But I like to think that as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to understand that people have different capabilities, experiences and vulnerabilities – and (I hope) I have become a lot less judgmental about opinionated people on the sidelines, and those who feel left behind – and a lot more curious about what can be done to change those beliefs, and restore a sense of agency and ownership about our collective destiny.

How to keep making a difference

So, in honour of Christina McKelvie, and my beloved cousin, Rob, here are a few things I see in their legacies – and that I try to return to, when I (or the people around me) feel doubtful, or fearful, that we are not making a difference:

Find and honour your motivation – We all do things for a reason, and acknowledging and embracing your core motivation is probably the single best way to keep yourself going, even in the face of hardship and failure.

Find and surround yourself with people who honour, respect and support your efforts – and who can help bring you back to your core when your resolve falters.

Focus on values and process, over outcome – Hold fast to your values (like kindness, equality, humanity) and prioritise process-oriented goals (like consistency, balance, efficiency) over outcome-oriented goals. You can’t control any outcome that is affected by external variables beyond your control – that is true of all social justice issues.

Define personal success every day as showing up and being the best you, nothing more and nothing less.

Trust (and forgive) yourself and accept comfort from others – People who live daring, brilliant and authentic lives are going to experience hardship and pain, like everyone else. And maybe also a larger-than-usual helping of public criticism, humiliation or ridicule because they have chosen to stick out, or try something different.

The people I know who keep at it, and stay true to themselves, have a confidence and groundedness that can only come from knowing and trusting yourself.

Learn to trust (and forgive) yourself first, and then how to accept comfort from others – remember that allowing others to help you is not a burden, but a gift.

Thanks again, folks, for reading The Long View again this week, and for being here to mark a whole entire year of writing and reflecting together.

…

And, as always, a little recommendation to brighten your Friday, this short poem “how do you do it?” from poet, playwright and activist Lemn Sissay, featured in his most recent collection let the light pour in

First published on LinkedIn on 28 March 2025:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/difference-you-make-every-day-jen-ang-ciqae

Here’s how I got there.

Most of my career, I’ve worked in the charity sector, and one of the reasons this has really suited me (and I have stayed so long) is that I do not mind being seriously – sometimes embarrassingly – underpaid for my labour.

(* This is not a cheap dig at my previous employers, or indeed at JustRight Scotland where our brilliant and values-led CEO commissioned an independent review of pay scales and actively encouraged staff to unionise. More just a recognition that charity sector salaries are lower across the board – and the gap is particularly stark in professions that command high salaries in the private sector, like law.)

Also, for reasons that I haven’t fully explored but know to be true, charities tend to undercharge for their work, across the board.

This makes no sense tactically, because who needs money more than charities, who are going to use it for the public good?

How we feel about money

But I think the wider issue might go to internalised attitudes towards money. This includes the possibility that in a capitalist society where value is linked to financial reward, people may think services provided by lower paid professions are actually less valuable.

It also includes our own biases about money, and how we feel when we monetise our labour.

For me, the issues stack up like this:

• I definitely grew up in a “money is bad” home. My dad was a small college professor for many years before he joined the diplomatic service – and even as a diplomat, he saw himself more as a public servant than a working class boy from Roxbury, embracing the rewards of upward social mobility. He was pretty awkward about it, actually, much to my mom’s distress. She was raised middle class and entirely comfortable with money.
• My dad’s professional choices meant I was raised middle class, but – perhaps because of his own discomfort – he took the opportunity to knock me down a peg or two, whenever I returned home from school or college, a little too big for my boots.
• Partly for this reason, I’m aware of my positionality – my social location in relation to things like gender, class, ethnicity, ability and geographic location. When I think about asking people market rate for the work I do – even when I know it’s a fair price, that I’ll do a good job and probably even overdeliver – I feel deep discomfort.
• I’m not consistent or even very principled about this. For some reason, if someone else is taking market value for my work (and paying me less), I seem to cope better. Something I also find disturbing.

If my dad were still around, I would like to speak to him about this. As it is, I’m just left puzzling over these pieces, looking for solutions that will be effective and also feel good. For my own wellbeing, I need answers that sit right with me.

Why now?

As many of you know, I’ve stepped down from JustRight Scotland, the charity I co-founded, earlier this year, and now run a legal practice at Lawmanity. Lawmanity is, for the moment, a private limited company and I am a sole practitioner. That means I don’t work with or for anyone else, and I set my own fees for my work.

The good news (for people who hire Lawmanity) is that overheads are really low at the moment and I do all the work. This is arguably very good value for clients at market rates – and exceptional value, below market rates.

But I also want to do work for people who can’t afford market rates – this is consistent with a guiding principle for me: people who cannot afford to pay for lawyers deserve the very best lawyers.

So, Pay It Forward?

That’s how I got to the idea of a Pay It Forward fund. I already do a lot of free advice through Lawmanity for community organisations and individuals who approach me, but on an ad hoc basis. Sometimes, people ask if they can offer me a donation or compensation for my time, and until now, I have declined.

I have also (for lots of reasons) held back from paid client casework – but now that things are settling and I’m starting to think about Year 2, I wonder whether a Pay It Forward fund would be a great solution for all of these different challenges.

One of my favourite local bookshops, Lighthouse Books in Edinburgh has an unbelievably great pay it forward scheme which allows people to donate money so other people can afford to buy books.

Another example, perhaps more well known, is the concept of a suspended coffee (from Naples: a caffe sospeso) – when customers are invited to pay for two coffees, one to drink now, and another left “suspended” to be served to another person, later in the day, who might ask for one but not have the means to pay.

I love these initiatives because they are about people helping people – but more importantly, people helping strangers, who they recognise as having the same needs and desires as themselves.

This is an act of solidarity, and a very humanity-affirming thing to invite people to do.

But what if…

Of course it’s not entirely as simple as that.

I also struggle with the idea that we shouldn’t increase reliance on charity, or “taxing people” to fund what should be public services rather than just lobbying for government to spend more money on equality and access to justice. Setting up private donation schemes feels like defeat, surrender of that principle that government is responsible for all of us.

I’m also really troubled by the idea that poor people give more to charity than rich people, and that wealthy young people are more generous than wealthy older people. I would prefer a system where government gets on with the job of running a progressive system of taxation and distributes our collective resources to all, according to their need.

But, we are a really, really long way from that, at least in Scotland, the UK and the US, right now. And even if we get closer, making those systems work fairly for everyone is a longer way off still. I love looking back over 20th century progressive victories like winning the franchise for women, and desegregation in most western democracies – but the lessons we live with are that racism and misogyny are alive and kicking, still today.

Over to you!

So help me out – should I start a Pay it Forward fund? Are there any great models out there for what this can look like in legal services? Have you got any advice for me?

And, where do you sit on that line between individual and collective responsibility for funding things that other humans need?

…

Thanks for joining me again this week at the Long View, and if you made it to the end, for helping me doing the thinking. Sending warmth and gratitude your way, today and for the weekend.

First published on LinkedIn on 15 November 2024:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pay-forward-acts-solidarity-surrender-jen-ang-ekxne/

John Swinney MSP is Scotland’s third First Minister in three years, and for those of you who like this sort of thing, it is interesting to compare his PfG with that of Humza Yousaf MSP (PfG 2023-24) and Nicola Sturgeon MSP (PfG 2022-23).

All three are leaders of the same party – the Scottish National Party – but there are clear differences in focus, and crucially, language which mark them out as people (and therefore, leaders) with different perspectives, values and aspirations.

Put more plainly: when a leader speaks, they have a particular purpose and audience in mind. Listen carefully.

If you don’t think they’re speaking to you, you should also question whether they are acting with your best interests in mind.

I do think that leadership matters, and leadership of a country is very serious business, indeed.

Scotland is a small country, and my previous role as Director at JustRight Scotland as well as my continuing role as a member of the First Minister’s Advisory Council on Women and Girls has given me a really good perspective on the profound impact a change of leadership can have on a government, and by extension, all the peoples of a nation.

It’s fair to say that the third sector in Scotland were also disappointed with this year’s PfG, this article from Third Force News sums up anger and disappointment at the programme from charity leaders across sectors.

We need leaders who are in love with justice

Something that really worries me about the current political discourse in the UK and the US, is that we have “liberal” (or at least centre left) political parties now in power that seem reluctant to tackle justice issues like: dismantling systemic inequality and creating greater opportunities for people who have traditionally been locked out of power and privilege.

I am particularly wary of the argument that achieving equality is costly or unaffordable.

True story

When one of my children was around six years old, she became quite interested in the concept of a Christian God. I am not Christian, but I was supportive enough to buy her a children’s book of Bible stories, and encourage her to read it.

One day, I teasingly asked her: “Tell me, why do you believe in God?”

Exasperated, she threw her hands up and fired back: “You might as well ask why don’t you believe in God?”

I think something shifted that day. And whilst there were many more things I had to teach that child (including how to eat her vegetables or at least pretend to try), I have not since doubted her wisdom, her sincerity, or her capacity.

So, when a leader tells us that achieving equality is costly or unaffordable, try this:

Tell me why you think we can afford not to achieve equality, for everyone you lead.

…

Try not to fill that silence; wait for a response.

…

…

We need leaders who will stand by courageously

Leadership is difficult, obviously. But choosing to lead is a choice, and it is one that I think every one of you readers can make, and do make at every stage of your life.

Leadership doesn’t have to be serious, or scary, or alienating. And you don’t have to be responsible for others at work, or have a formal role, to be a leader.

You lead others when you agree to step up and organise a get together with your friends, when you agree to take a voluntary role in your community or with your sports team, when you step up to challenge an unfairness, or when you step out to do a kindness that was unasked for.

You lead, by showing your values in how you do those things. You lead because other people see you, and that inevitably influences how other people feel and think.

So in closing, it’s been a bit of a bruising couple of months for people in the UK who believe in a more equal world, let’s be honest.

But I’ve got some stuff to help:

This Long View has been inspired and has borrowed liberally from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1956 speech “The Birth of a New Age,” in which he exhorts his former fraternity brother and other African-American leaders to adequately prepare themselves for what comes next:

Finally, in order to do this job we have got to have more dedicated, consecrated, intelligent and sincere leadership. This is a tense period through which we are passing, this period of transition and there is a need all over the nation for leaders to carry on.

Leaders who can somehow sympathize with and calm us and at the same time have a positive quality. We have got to have leaders of this sort who will stand by courageously and yet not run off with emotion. We need leaders not in love with money but in love with justice. Not in love with publicity but in love with humanity.

The speech is a great read, and some of that advice still feels timely, including the part where MLK, Jr., urges his listeners to continue to fight for, and protect, the right to vote.

And for those of you who like something a bit audio/visual and soothing, I’m a big fan of the Headspace app, so here’s a lovely five-minute video from Kessonga Giscombe that I watched this morning, to help shift your perspective on feelings of powerlessness.

Thanks for joining me again this week on The Long View. Thinking hard about how to encourage people who don’t see themselves as leaders, but who would be great leaders, to step up, and how we can support them.

Would be great to hear your thoughts on that, as well as reflections on this week’s Scottish PfG and what can be done to keep up the energy for positive change, over the coming year!

First published on LinkedIn on 6 September 2024:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/we-need-leaders-who-love-humanity-jen-ang-zk32e/

The new strategy, led by JRS CEO Emma Hutton, is a broadening and deepening of the founding principles of the charity, with commitments set out across five strategic aims: defend, extend, build, nurture and sustain.

I had the honour of closing the event with a few words to the JRS team, board, closest partners and supporters – sharing from the how proud I am of everything we have accomplished together, and how positively joyful I feel about the future, knowing that the JRS team – with all their skills, compassion and dedication – are striving every day to make Scotland a better place, for everyone.

Someone asked me, last night, how we had achieved what can be elusive for some: such strong consistency of values and principles, embedded in the framework of our organisation and in the decision making and behaviour of our team, across multiple “generations” of the organisation.

Values matter, but only if they are real to people

Do you know your organisation’s values? Most people don’t. And this is why most people feel like this about corporate values:

But values do matter. They draw people together, they set expectations about how we treat each other, and they create consistency of decision making and behaviour, even in decentralised structures.

Think about a group you feel a part of, where you experience a positive sense of belonging and purpose. This could be a friend group, or a voluntary association, like a sports team, a book group, a neighbourhood project, a music ensemble or faith group.

Now consider the values you hold in common, even if they are not formally acknowledged. These are the connections that run through you and draw you together, allowing you to build a collective that is greater and more effective than the sum of your individual efforts.

We make values real

For values to be real to people in a workplace, they must be lived, and spoken about and demonstrated, every day. They must run through the work – how we lead, how we prioritise our time and resources and how we treat one another.

If that feels like a stretch, if you see a lack of consistency or hypocrisy in the behaviour of others in role modelling and applying an organisation’s values, then either the values are wrong, or the structure you are asking people to work within (time, resources, processes) needs to be changed.

If not addressed, that dissonance will undermine and then destroy relationships, teams and movements.

We nurture and sustain by giving future leaders the power to sense make and remake our values

Something that I really admire about the JRS strategy launch, was that each strategic aim was presented by a different member of the JRS team, connecting that aim to the work that they do now, and their plans for the coming year.

I loved this example of a leader intentionally making space for our future leaders to reflect, connect, role model and share their sense making publicly.

It often takes more time to support others to do a thing, to give time and space for others to find their way, than to do something yourself. It takes patience, too. But there is no more important task for leadership in movements for collective change and organisations like JRS – systemic change takes many leaders, and many generations to achieve and secure.

What else is new?

The other brilliant thing I did this week: travelling to Belfast, where I spent two days facilitating workshops for The PILS Project with expert stakeholders to research the environment for public interest litigation in Northern Ireland.

This was massive good fun – and my first outing as Lawmanity. Thanks to all the participants for going with my wacky space themed activities and to Maria McCloskey Emma Cassidy Hilary Perry and Kate Barry for such a warm welcome to Belfast!

So long, and thanks for all the donuts!

Massive thanks to everyone who attended the launch and farewell event yesterday. Here a selection of some of the lovely gifts I’ve received, including a cool new mug and glass coaster, a copy of Against Landlords, a new book from barrister Nick Bano of Garden Court Chambers and of course… a special treat from Tantrum Donuts!

First published on LinkedIn on 3 May 2024:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-we-build-nurture-sustain-movements-jen-ang-xxwte/