Danny Sriskandarajah
Danny Sriskandarajah learned the value of citizenship at a young age as a child of Tamil migrants who moved from Sri Lanka to Australia. Arriving in the UK as the first Rhodes scholar from an Asian immigrant background, he has gone on to run a series of civil society organisations and has become a leading voice in the third sector.
Dr. Sriskandarajah is currently the Chief Executive of the New Economics Foundation. He was previously chief executive of Oxfam GB, where he developed a bold new strategy, raised Oxfam’s profile, stabilised the organisation’s finances, and reformed its business model and governance. Danny has extensive experience leading organisations across the civil society, intergovernmental and policy worlds at a national and international level. Prior to joining Oxfam, he was secretary general of the global civil society alliance CIVICUS, with members in more than 180 countries. Before that, he was the first non-British CEO of the Royal Commonwealth Society and the deputy director of the Institute for Public Policy Research, where he led its work on migration and inequalities.
Power to the People: Use Your Voice, Change the World is his radical manifesto for change designed to inspire citizen action around the world. The book presents a blueprint for how we, as individuals, can make a difference through greater community engagement and how we can deliver a society that works for the many and not the few. He speaks to voter apathy and a growing sense that elections no longer matter, with politicians and institutions too focused on short-term issues to grapple with complex global problems such as climate change, rising inequality, and digital disruption. Yet the book is also filled with inspiring real-life examples of citizen power in action, ranging from a volunteer-run repair café in Danny’s local suburb to Avaaz’s successful campaigns to tackle endemic corruption in Brazil.
From public ownership of social media spaces to democratizing share ownership, from re-energizing co-operatives to creating a people’s chamber at the United Nations, this campaigning book clearly aims to help us reclaim our power as citizens of the world.
