Synergistic Satisfiers
To help meet myriad Human Needs, we seek to coordinate “synergistic satisfiers”. For example, a person can satisfy their need for identity through various combinations of their family, their work, the things they own, the country they live in, the groups they are affiliated with, the activities they enjoy, etc. – and different cultures will use different combinations of satisfiers to different extents to meet the same need. This is why helping people and communities sufficiently satisfy their own needs offer the best chance of meeting the goal of supporting healthy, fulfilled, resilient people and communities.
Fellows work through our resource partners to help find “synergistic satisfiers” to most effectively meet the basic needs identified by village stakeholders. Synergistic satisfiers meet one need, and at the same time contribute to meeting many others. For example, preventative medicine can satisfy protection, subsistence, participation and understanding. Community supported agriculture can satisfy the needs for subsistence, participation, affection, understanding, identity, and leisure. Popular education can satisfy the needs for understanding, freedom, identity, creativity, protection, and participation.
In looking at how communities allocate resources – how they spend their time and money – it is useful to think of what needs those activities are actually aiming to satisfy, how effective those activities are likely to be at satisfying those needs, and if there are any better alternatives for satisfying them. While there is no cookie-cutter formula, as each community is different, we think Village Corps and its partners can help the members of each community learn from one another, and apply successful approaches in their own way.