432: Mona Mahamed - How One Woman Built a Village for 500 Families Without Funding

And, you know, I think you have this really beautiful, calm, grounded presence about you as we're speaking and it's all at once refreshing because I think a lot of people who are drawn to community work also end up so incredibly burnt out and they lose that sense of aliveness that they went to it with in the first place.

A lot of

inner work, Mel.

Yes.

And we're always like, it's not a destination.

We do work and we reach a certain, you know, milestone in our life or a chapter.

And then you gain experience and you gain knowledge, you know, whether it's academic knowledge or knowledge just from experience.

You know, the village.

And that was like the CSS village refers to the place lowest.

So I don't feel alone.

Join our village or create your own.

But whatever you do, don't be alone.

Because loneliness is like really fatal.

You know, in the UK about two years ago, the government employed a minister for loneliness.

That's right.

There's an epidemic of loneliness across the planet.

That's right.

And they've been able to create the spaces that they felt were missing for them too.

So it's really marvellous to see what you've done with CSS Village.

I'm just picturing the ute out the front.

It's often just something so symbolic like that too, isn't it? And I can see people coming and going to that ute in my mind's eye.

It's really beautiful.

So tell me a little bit more about what it's like to get something off the ground to have this idea and start to create a space that was not there for you and what you needed for yourself and logistically.

And was it organic or was it planned? Tell us a little bit about how it grew.