Overcoming A Poverty Mindset: Toss Mukwa

One day, Toss was visiting a small rural community in Congo and talking with the local people about the challenges they faced.

After hearing a little about their community, Toss started asking questions about their resources and assets: What do you have?

The response was silence.

As the meeting continued, the community offered little more than polite nods and lowered eyes. Finally, someone spoke up. “Our village is poor,” he said, “we have nothing.”

Rather than pushing back, Toss leaned in. He acknowledged the weight of their sentiment, but started another line of questioning. “Alright,” he said gently. “Tell me about the problems you’re facing.”

People started engaging.

They spoke of the monsoon season, when heavy rains created rivers that rolled down their hillside, rushing through their main road, washing it out completely. “It happens almost every year,” they said, “and it’s really challenging.”

Others in the group spoke out about how sometimes the flooding caused even bigger problems—homes damaged, families displaced. The road wasn’t just infrastructure; it was their lifeline.

“Ten years ago.”

Toss paused. Then he stood up and drew an invisible line down the center of the room.

“Okay,” he said. “We’re going to divide into two groups. Anyone who wants to keep waiting for the government to come and fix the road—go stand on this side. And anyone who wants to start fixing the problem today—come stand over here.”

People hesitated. Then, slowly, they began to move.

Toss turned toward the group that gathered to work on a solution, and he started asking questions. At first, the old refrain returned: “We don’t have money. We don’t have resources.” But Toss kept circling them back to the same question, not as a challenge, but as an invitation: “What do you have?”

Eventually, a farmer spoke up. “I’ve been collecting old tires for years—tires no one wanted, tires everyone threw away. I have stacks of them. Can we use them?”

Another person’s eyes lit up. They had heard of tires being used elsewhere to prevent erosion, packed with dirt, anchored into hillsides to slow water and stop washouts.

“But we’ll need a tractor,” someone said, “and we don’t have a tractor.”

Silence. A beat passed before another was heard. “My family does. Two villages over. We can bring it.”

And just like that, the story changed.

The community got to work. They packed the discarded tires with soil, dug them into the slope, and built a barrier strong enough to let the rain pass without tearing the hillside apart. When the monsoon came again, the water flowed—but the road stayed intact.

No government trucks arrived. No outside funding appeared.

But something changed: the community began to see itself differently.

If they could solve this problem together, with what they already had, what else could they address? What other challenges had they been waiting on someone else to fix?

That was the real transformation.

Toss Mukwa didn’t bring answers or resources. He brought a shift in thinking, a new mindset, one rooted in community-centered development, a belief that change doesn’t begin with what’s missing, but with what’s already in people’s hands. He helped them understand that when communities stop seeing themselves as poor and start seeing themselves as capable, change begins and momentum follows.

They didn’t just fix a road, they reclaimed their agency, they realized their potential.

And once that happens, everything else becomes possible.

Toss Mukwa is a Development Worker in the Democratic Republic of Congo who believes in the power of changing mindsets. He works with the Five & Two Network in the area of Global Mobilizing.