Ep. 3: Manjit Basi

In this extraordinary podcast, “What Makes a Philanthropist”, Ep. 3 of PhilanthroThink, Manjit Basi talks to Megan Skyvington and Emily Goodwin about her early memories and philanthropic motivations, offering insights from her journeys in the business, public and nonprofit sectors. Manjit reflects on a defining moment early in her career when she was first called a “philanthropist” and how she wrestled with the label. Listen or watch on YouTube (below) — or via “PhilanthroThink” on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

This is Manjit at 9:10 of the podcast:

“I’m an immigrant in Canada. My father was living in Vancouver. He emigrated in 1959 or 1960… My parents had seven daughters; I’m the youngest of seven. Once my father could afford a house, which was not until 1968 — I think I was two, no, I was one and a half — all of us came, so that we could move here and build a life here. To make a long story short, we were a blue-collar family. My father was a sawmill worker. It’s not easy to support seven girls, in a culture, also, that was more patriarchal; so, there was some energy around what it means to take care of the girls.”

“That first summer, we arrived in May, and by June, my mother, with her five youngest girls — we were living in cabins in the Fraser Valley, and I was basically a migrant berry picker, even at almost two. My mother would tell stories of how I would be crawling behind her in the rows of strawberries. There was a lot of hard work, and there was a lot of sacrifice. And to come from there to be able to go to at a place where you feel so lucky to be able to contribute — and understanding that we can actually contribute at any level. But yet, not thinking that I want to be known, that I’m able to contribute, was a really interesting dichotomy to work through.”

“My first sense of what it means to be generous and to be kind, and to not be judgmental, was in those farm communities. It was mostly immigrant South Asian women, who were living there without their partners, with their children, in their own cabins, sleeping on bunk beds and things, but that was the only privacy you had. There was the communal kitchen, the communal bathroom. I remember these women singing, my mother included — stepping up for one another to feed one another if one wasn’t doing as well one week. I also remember my mother saying she would let one of the daughters who was old enough take care of sick kids, because she didn’t want other women to not have an income that day. There was this beautiful community that was rich and vibrant in support, in cooperation and in lifting each other up. That’s never left me. For me, that has been one of the key foundations of driving whatever I do: how do we bring people together to be more human together?”