Are you often faced with trying to achieve a lot with not a lot? Yeah, me too.

I’ve just enjoyed a very interesting virtual coffee with Daniel Torquato Fortes, journey design lead at Cancer Research UK debating the different mindsets you find in Latin culture and in British culture.

Daniel, who moved to the UK from Brazil two years ago, introduced me to the concept of “gambiarra“. It stems from facing daily problems with a bunch of incredible and improvised inventions, and they all have the same in common – a scarcity of resources, something that is commonplace in the favelas.

I really like this concept.

Too many people in charities have good intentions of aiming for the best, most perfect version of something, when a simpler, less resource intensive product will do the job and still deliver value.

With gambiarra, organisations are now seeing this as an opportunity to build solutions to challenging problems with limited resources, creativity and simplicity.

I’ve certainly witnessed this mindset having been exposed to Mexican culture over the last two years. In Mexico, resources can be scarce, but ingenuity is high and, while things might be a bit broken, everything gets done. In contrast, the UK can feel organised and perfect, yet sometimes we are barely functioning!

So, perhaps we need a little bit of “gambiarra thinking” in the charity sector, and the UK in general.