'Every person counts': the problem of scale in everyday humanitarianism

As multiple forms of ‘vernacular humanitarianism’ are emerging, ordinary citizens, active locally or internationally, play an increasing part. Their interventions face the challenge of scale, and scale-ability of their activities. What can be their role if they only engage with small groups of people? How do they attribute meaning to these interventions, given that the scope of the problem is always larger than what they can hope to achieve? Drawing on research with privately funded humanitarian initiatives in Cambodia, the article argues that in order to accommodate the partialness of their endeavours, they deploy a particular scale, namely that ‘every person counts’. The practices carried out under this logic contain singular acts of care, and lives being transformed. Other scales are being brought into play, such as an individual ‘paying it forward’ by supporting others and thus effecting change in wider society.