comm-UNITY! | Season 14 | Episode 9 | The Inner Wheel of the Heart!
The Gathering of Givers 2024 carried a single, resonant conviction: giving, at its purest, is less about abundance and more about intention. This year’s spotlight fell on young givers, people whose energy, empathy, and imagination are quietly redrawing what generosity looks like today.
Episode 9 of the comm-UNITY! Podcast (Season 14) captures that spirit in motion. Titled “The Inner Wheel of the Heart,” the episode features Dr. Norah Madaya (Director, NORPAP Consults) and Hope, an education officer within the national prisons service. Guided by host Jacqueline Asiimwe (CEO, CivSource Africa Galaxy), the conversation invites us to rethink what we call “enough,” and where the first spark of giving truly begins.
“I consider a generous person to be someone with a soul, one who gives relentlessly, regardless of how much they have,” Dr. Madaya says. She tells of a mother who could scarcely provide two meals a day yet still reached outward with encouragement. From encounters like these, Dr. Madaya helped form a women’s group, twenty women who gather to share, pray, and uplift one another.
“I asked them what they had,” she recalls. “They said, ‘nothing.’ But after talking, they realized they had something, willingness.”
That single word becomes a quiet engine. For every small contribution the women make to their poultry project, Dr. Madaya adds a little more, literally. “For each woman who joins, I add one bird,” she says. “From fifty-five birds, they now have seventy-five. It’s little, but for them, it’s impactful.” The math is simple; the effect is profound. Confidence returns. Savings begin. The story reframes generosity not as spectacle, but as steady companionship.
Asked to name a generous example, Hope smiles. She points to Inner Wheel, a global women’s organization born out of Rotary, whose members are committed to transforming communities through service. For Hope, that commitment takes shape among incarcerated women, many of them mothers, who often face scarcity alongside their sentences.
She tells of newborn twins who needed milk when a fellow inmate, previously sharing milk, was released. “We mobilized quickly and sent milk. It saved her life,” Hope says simply. In a world that often measures giving in large cheques and headlines, these small acts, milk, baby clothes, sanitary items, soap, sugar, are quietly revolutionary. They restore dignity where it is most fragile.
“It’s about checking on someone who has no hope in you, and making a difference,” Hope says. “That’s giving from the heart.”
Both women trace their instinct to give to habits modelled at home. “My mother taught me to never turn anyone away,” Hope shares. “Our home was always open, strangers, guests, people who just needed a place. She’d say, ‘It’s not their fault they’re like that. Give them the best.’” Dr. Madaya remembers a father who tutored her in reciprocity. “He’d give me something and ask me to return it. If I hesitated, he’d say, ‘It’s not good not to give.’ But if I shared, he promised to give me again.”
These lessons converge in one line that anchors the episode’s title: “Sharing doesn’t come from the lips,” Dr. Madaya says. “It must come from the inside, from the inner wheel of the heart.” The phrase lingers because it reveals generosity as a way of being before it becomes a list of deeds.
As the conversation closes, both women make a gentle, insistent ask of the next generation. “A meaningful life is a life of giving,” Dr. Madaya says. “If you want to find purpose, live a life that is shared.” Hope adds a practical lens for everyday practice: “Amidst everything young people do, let them have a passion to impact lives. Giving doesn’t have to be big. Just give and give from the heart.”
In a culture that often measures success by what we keep, The Inner Wheel of the Heart reminds us that the truest wealth is what we pass on. It is the extra bird that tips a project into momentum, the tin of milk that keeps a child alive, the open door that gives a stranger a place at the table. None of these require perfection or plenty. They require willingness.
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