Small Charity Week reflections: Fill Your Cup First

Written by Katy Massey, Founder, The Joyful Activists

The question is not: are you coping?

That was the provocation at the centre of our Small Charity Week session, Fill Your Cup First. What the session explored instead was a different question: do you have what you need to truly flourish? That shift - from coping to flourishing, from individual resilience to collective conditions - was the thread running through the whole hour.

What came up

Two themes emerged immediately and kept returning throughout. The first was distress caused by world events; the sense of trying to do meaningful work while absorbing an unprecedented level of global pain. The second was the feeling of never having done enough, a kind of chronic moral deficit that sits just below the surface for many people working in this sector.

These are not personal failings. They are predictable responses to working in systems that were not built with our wellbeing in mind.

Thinking about systems, not selves

The session drew on Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum's Capabilities Approach, a framework that asks not just whether wellbeing support exists, but whether people can actually access what it promises. Do you feel entitled to rest? Do your conditions allow it? The gap between what is theoretically available and what people can actually do is, as Nussbaum argues, where the injustice lives.

Kimberlé Crenshaw's work on intersectionality ran underneath all of this, because who gets to flourish, and who carries the heaviest load, is never random. It follows the lines of race, gender, class, and power that run through our organisations and our sector.

Wellbeing is not an individual project. It is a structural question.

What the research tells us

The evidence on community and connection as protective factors for mental health is clear. Social connectedness is one of the most robust buffers against depression, anxiety, and burnout. The ability to confide in others has been identified as the single strongest protective factor against depression in a UK study of over 100,000 people. Strong social ties are associated with reduced inflammation, lower risk of serious physical illness, and protection against self-harm and suicide.

Community-based approaches to mental health and psychosocial support work because they treat people as active participants in their own wellbeing, not passive recipients of services designed for them by others. That distinction matters for a sector that talks a lot about community power while sometimes forgetting to apply it inward.

Questions to take back

The session closed with four reflective questions:

• What drains me in the systems I work in?

• Where do I find restoration?

• What do I need to truly flourish in my work?

• What is one thing my organisation or community could do differently tomorrow that would signal care?

That last question is deceptively simple. For most people, the answer is not complicated or expensive. It is about being seen, being held, and having permission to be human at work.

Katy Massey is the Founder of The Joyful Activists, a global community connecting activists, humanitarians and people who care about the world with the tools and space they need to heal, rest, and keep doing the work they love. Come and join our virtual workshops and community circles, we'd love to meet you.