Hope, partnership and impact: setting our intention for 2026

CBM UK trustee, Jim Ackers has spent much of his life working in Africa and Asia, most recently as Regional Education Adviser for UNICEF South Asia. Now an Education and Development consultant, Jim’s key area of interest is in education planning and management.

At the end of 2025, Jim shared a devotion with CBM UK on hope, partnership, and impact. It’s an important reminder of why what we do is more important than ever and helps set our intention for the year ahead.  

“It is a time when the needs of the world feel especially close to the surface. Across international development, resources that once felt dependable have been sharply reduced. Major donors are pulling back, and while consultations continue, the reality is that many communities are already feeling the effects. What is perhaps most sobering is not only the reductions, but how quietly they have happened – how little resistance there has been to the shrinking of support for those who have the least.

And yet, we must not give up hope. The needs that called these resources into being have not diminished. In many cases they have deepened—through climate change, conflict, economic instability, and displacement. Migration patterns remind us daily that desperation grows where opportunity disappears, and that fear and intolerance often follow close behind.

In times like these, it would be easy to become discouraged or defensive. But both religious and humanist traditions remind us that real progress is rarely born from comfort or certainty. It comes when people choose, again and again, to act together in the face of uncertainty. The philosopher Hannah Arendt spoke of change as something that emerges not from isolated individuals, but from what happens in the space between us—the shared, fragile, relational space where people meet, struggle, disagree, and still choose to cooperate.

This feels especially relevant in today’s sensitive and polarised world—where words are easily misheard, past actions are quickly judged, and disagreement is often mistaken for hostility. Where people retreat into their own narratives, and labels are applied before stories are fully heard.

If genuine partnership is essential to the future of humanity, then tolerance is not simply a virtue – it is a strategic necessity.

If we cancel one another, we cannot collaborate. If we label too quickly, we stop learning. If we listen only to those who already agree with us, we do not grow—we only reinforce our own narrative and prejudices.

Across cultures, beliefs, and worldviews, one truth appears again and again: wisdom grows where humility makes room for difference.

I have been fortunate in my own journey to experience the power of this firsthand – working in a truly multicultural organisation, alongside colleagues from different cultures, faiths, and disciplines. More recently, as a trustee at CBM, I have again seen how much richer and more hopeful our work becomes when it is shaped through vibrant discussion leading to shared purpose.

When I joined UNICEF 2001, funding was modest. We focused on small-scale projects and remote regions. But significant new funding came in the early 2000s, and our work shifted toward systems-level change in partnership with governments and other agencies. Today, as funding contracts again, the development community faces acritical new challenge: how to sustain influence, values, and commitment to human rights and global promises when those principles are increasingly ignored or undermined.

Yet history reminds us that some of the most profound transformations take shape not in seasons of stability, but in times of disruption. We do not choose the global circumstances we inherit, but we do choose how we respond to them. I continue to believe that commitments to human rights and systemic impact remain possible, indeed even more necessary. They can be achieved if we combine humility, courage, and strategic partnerships that hold fast to human dignity.

In that spirit, may the decisions we take be shaped by candour, generosity of listening, and a shared commitment to the vision that draws us together: a world where all people with disabilities enjoy their human rights and achieve their full potential.

May hope, openness and strategic reflection, continue to guide CBM UK’s work.”

Jim Ackers, CBM UK, December 2025

Photo: ©CBM/Rakotoarivony