Practice, Not Performance
Learning to be a sidekick takes continual practice. The materials gathered here are tools for formation. Some are experiential. Some are analytical. Some work on the level of narrative and identity. Here’s where we suggest beginning:
For Classrooms
Do-Goodernomics · The Mismatch Game · Two Dollar Challenge
For Facilitators & Organizations
The Mismatch Game · Storytelling 101
For Ongoing Formation
Do-Goodernomics – Some of our most harmful assumptions hide inside “common sense” ideas about charity, impact, and efficiency. Using economic thinking and critical analysis to make those assumptions visible, Do-Goodernomics is a series of provocations that examine why doing good so often serves the do-gooder as much as—or more than—the people it claims to help. It is not a moral indictment, but a mirror. Available as a short reader for classrooms and facilitated conversations.
The Mismatch Game – A simulation that reveals how volatility, risk, and limited choice shape everyday decisions for people living with poverty. Not meant to produce empathy alone, but to unsettle assumptions about control, choice, and responsibility. Designed for classrooms and facilitated workshops.
The Two Dollar Challenge – An experiential learning exercise in which participants live on $2 a day to deconstruct their hero-complex. The TDC is an exercise in constraint, dignity, and discomfort that raises more questions than it answers by making scarcity, uncertainty, and trade-offs unavoidable—if only temporarily.
Storytelling 101 – Stories are one of the most powerful tools we carry—and one of the most dangerous. Storytelling 101 focuses on narrative humility: learning when not to tell a story, how to ask permission, and how to resist turning other people’s lives into material for our own meaning-making. The goal is not silence, but restraint. This work is best done after participants have already had their assumptions unsettled.
Resources that Keep Us Honest – Doing good is not easy. And, in some cases, doing good is not good. This uncertainty can leave us all feeling a bit paralyzed. So, is there any way to do good? Yeah, but not always. The resources gathered here reflect what has shaped the Sidekick Manifesto over time: texts, podcasts, blogs, and videos that challenge saviorism, interrogate power, and refuse simple answers. They are not exhaustive, current, or neutral. They are simply where we return.
