By Agnetta Lucia Nabukenya Msc. International Marketing Student, Jönköping University, Sweden
I went into the Open Forum curious about how the speakers would define “solidarity,” especially in a geo-political climate that has shaken global health. I left hearing it as a language for things I have long practised but never named: the everyday acts and professional choices that bridge hierarchies and carry stories across them. The speakers offered a map that was not perfect but practical, linking those ordinary gestures to the infrastructures that shape them: institutions, funding cycles, and power.
What struck me most in the Forum, held under the theme “A Solidarity of the Shaken? From Despair to Collective Action,” was how solidarity was peeled away from being a vague sense of togetherness and shown instead as something concrete, with structures, choices, and arrangements that make or break relationships. It is not just warmth in our hearts; it is contracts, budgets, authorship, who gets to decide, and who sets the terms. I realised that many frustrations I have felt in previous endeavours were not about communication but design, where solidarity was assumed rather than built.
The Forum highlighted the weight of power and dignity. Solidarity collapses when those with more control fail to create space for others to lead, to say no, or to set the pace. Without equity and reciprocity, even the best research or intervention risks becoming exploitation.
I was also reminded that solidarity is not only institutional. It lives in everyday practices: the group chats that mobilise faster than systems; the cultural labour that keeps communities together; and so many more. These are not “extras”; they are infrastructure. At the same time, solidarity can be co-opted and shifted onto communities as responsibility while institutions withdraw. That tension made me more alert to how rhetoric and reality often diverge.
From these discussions, three key anchors emerged that I am taking forward:
Solidarity is a design choice. If the budget, authorship, timelines, data access, and decision rights do not reflect equality and reciprocity, no amount of “partnership language” will fix it. We must treat these elements as the solidarity plan, not the administrative appendix.
Power must be made visible and negotiable. Pointing out unequal dynamics is not rude, but it is how we fix a broken system. We should make it standard for local or less powerful partners to lead agenda-setting, strike out contract clauses that limit their autonomy, and track who benefits from collaborations.
Care is infrastructure. The unseen labour in local communities including mutual aid systems and networks of trust are not “extras.” They are the reason why anything works under pressure. We must plan and pay for them: set budgets for meetings, protect time for relationship-building, and recognise local and indigenous knowledge/expertise.
On a personal level, this Forum helped me “put a name” to daily practices I learned long before I learned the word solidarity: the rotation of help among friends, the way information travels faster than institutions, the suspicion we carry from having been “consulted” without being heard. Giving those things a name does not make them new; it makes them legible and understandable, thus defendable, fundable, and buildable.
If I had to summarise my takeaway in one line, it would be this: solidarity is not what we feel; it’s what we build together, and it’s ours to design. That is both the work and the hope I carry out of this conversation.