Month: August 2017

Equip Yourself to Make the Change You Wish to See
November 22, 2021
As Future Generations looks forward to offering a special opportunity, Equip Yourself to Make the Change You Wish to See: Learn Mahatma Gandhi’s Social Change Methods, a chance to study at Gandhi’s powerful Sevagram ashram, this blog posting provides some background. His methods are highly relevant for dealing with today’s challenges…

Gandhi’s ashram in Sevagram, India– participants in the certificate course Equip Yourself to Make the Change You Wish to See spend part of their course time here for an in-depth learning experience

Mahatma Gandhi coined the term swaraj (literally, self-rule, though he preferred to translate it as self-control) to describe the growing capacity of a population to determine its future. Gandhi was in South Africa at the time, and the idea of people rising up with internal nonviolent energy for political independence was a new concept in the world. His idea was that people could take control of their own destiny through taking control of the most basic functions of life. Colonialism was a loss of control, but so too was poverty, caste, and illness. From taking control over lives came true freedom; it allowed people to own their futures.

The Mahatma was not was not internationally recognized when he came to believe in swaraj. He wasn’t even in India or thinking of the independence of India, but wanted to improve a few lives in an intentional community on a very marginal piece of land in South Africa. What would grow into a freedom movement for one-fifth of the world’s population, indeed launch all the freedom movements of the 20th Century, began on a marginal piece of land and freedom for a few.

Swaraj gave part of the answer, “a morality based in Truth” he often called it, a way by which people could define their destiny. His concern as his awareness grew was not simply opposition to the British Empire, but to the discrimination and poverty which underlay oppression. Fundamental social change was the objective, and the physical context for this control of destiny was the sparse land of his utopian South African Phoenix Colony. These then seeded an idea that would scale up into one of the world’s most powerful forces.

In some of his writing after the movement had started to expand in India, Gandhi expanded the term to gram swaraj, which is community-based freedom. Gram swaraj generates sustaining energy for the community from inside and with it self-correcting direction. It is inspired and regulated by satyagraha, the energy of Truth. Gandhi argued that the true forces that bring change in the lives of people come not from the marketplace, not from armies, not from a religion, not from political process, but from knowledge of Truth that is internalized and adhered to so that it continually corrects action. These forces that begin inside each individual then redefine society to bring authentic help to all people.

His spinning wheel visibly conveyed this message on the importance of process and the search for Truth. Each individual turning his or her wheel gave evidence of self-potential and direction. The act of spinning used resources grown in that place, locally-grown cotton, locally-grown wood that made the wheels. When people wore khadi cloth they showed proof that a becoming life could be made by them. Done collectively, homespun khadi showed that India could weave a new life, using threads of local resources from one direction, massive energy of the villages from the other. Actually wearing these clothes of their own making as flags of self-reliance as they marched, India’s people gave evidence that they were dressing in a new way: their way. Do that, and from that other freedoms will grow. Swaraj was to strengthen India with tightly wound new fiber to pull apart deep forces of oppression: caste, poverty, ignorance, fear of leprosy, and gender discrimination.

Today, as military powers send soldiers to distant lands to free people and label the liberators “peacemakers,” and as corporations are freed to cross the world for cheap labor arguing that they create local development by creating jobs that bind people to global labor imbalances, the question must be asked (even if it cannot be answered): what is freedom? While freeing people from oppression and providing jobs are both freedoms, going toward freedom in the way that “peacemakers” and corporations pursue misses a core principle that guided Gandhi: that truth was in the process, the never-ending journey faithful to the operating principles.

Professor Taylor teaching Gandhi’s methods of social change at the Mahatma’s ashram in Sevagram, India

Freedom is not given to people. Freedom is when people come together as communities to rule themselves. Joining together as communities not only liberates from these outside forces, but also it grows a momentum that, in his vision, would reach all. His was a vision for a new justice through new means: “If we are to make progress, we must not repeat history but make new history. We must add to the inheritance left by our ancestors.”

Inarguably, significant differences exist now than those present in people’s lives in Gandhi’s day. As such, it is helpful to focus just on that which Gandhi viewed as foundational: Truth. With information and instant access to anything people want to hear—information is awash now over the world pummeling people with falsehoods and facts. The worship of Truth is possibly more essential now than in Gandhi’s time. The response needed is not to abandon the quest and turn to fundamentalisms and black and whites, but to work with all the nuance that of how what is true in one locale is not in another, how what is true from one person’s perspective is not from another’s. Truth is understood through having a process to engage the facts and falsehoods. And so, a more complex set of principles is needed. To unpack in greater detail the principles Gandhi actually did use; we state them in the context of SEED-SCALE’s four principles:

1. Gandhi made sure every protest was successful. With each, he thought through whether he had enough people, picked his time carefully and understood the temperament of each British commandant, identifying especially those with values that would chafe when confronted with nonviolence. Gandhi wanted imprisonment and beating, but if these were to happen, he made sure that each brutalized person would not be in vain for with each success he knew he built strength.


2. He was a strong believer in partnerships. Top-down he got the liberal British on his side, as there was a growing powerful contingent and sentiment of progressive British. Also Top-down, he got Hindu leaders on his side through using their religious texts. Outside-in, he masterfully used the media to carry his actions to all the world. And Bottom-up, the third aspect and foundation of partnership, three hundred million people, the largest voluntary mobilization ever achieved, not only his soldiers but in giving momentum to nonviolent movements ever since.


3. Fear-filled, timid villagers stood strong against British batons. They stood because Gandhi had given them evidence for each protest—and he made certain that evidence of their protests was clear, with an attention to detail that encouraged people to wear clean white clothes so the dirt and beatings would show well on photographs all over India and the world. He studied what happened each time, treating them as ongoing experiments, then out of that new options turned up.


4. Gandhi changed behaviors among victimized people; to achieve this he taught them that their victimization was a consequence of their acquiescing behaviors. He argued that freedom did not come from killing oppressors (American, French, and Soviet revolutions had until then pointed in that direction.) Freedom comes by changing the oppressor’s behavior. To achieve that, the participant starts by changing his and her behavior. When confronted by wrong behaviors there is a tendency to blame those behaviors of others without realizing that in our behaviors that allow those of others resides a basis for such continuation.

We can all still take inspiration from his perseverance and learn the lessons he left behind in his philosophy and methods. The application is timeless and invaluable in preventing history from repeating itself. By participating in Future Generations certificate course, “Equip Yourself to Make the Change You Wish to See,” you can learn Gandhian social change methods right where the Mahatma himself taught them to his followers, at his Sevagram ashram in central India.

Learn more at learn.future.edu.
This week’s blog contributed by Future Generations founder and current president and professor, Daniel Taylor. Daniel has been engaged in social change and conservation for four decades with a focus on building international cooperation to achieve ambitious projects. He founded the nine Future Generations organizations worldwide (including the accredited Future Generations Graduate School). He also founded and led The Mountain Institute. In 1985, after providing the scientific explanation for the yeti, he led creating Nepals Makalu-Barun National Park, then, in close partnership with the Tibet Autonomous Region, Chinas Qomolangma (Everest) National Nature Preserve and Four Great Rivers Nature Preserve protecting one-seventh of Chinas forest reserves. He is one of the synthesizers of the SEED-SCALE method, an understanding of social change initiated by a UNICEF task force he co-chaired from 1992-95. Since 1995 he continued to lead global field trials of SEED-SCALE and is senior author of Just and Lasting Change: How Communities Can Own Their Futures and Empowerment: From Seeds of Human Energy to a Scale of Global Change. Among his honors, Taylor was knighted by the King of Nepal Gorkha Dakshin Bau III; was made the first Honorary Professor of Quantitative Ecology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; and was decorated with the Order of the Golden Ark by HRH Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands.

 

Cultural Poverty Reduction as a Strategic Policy
November 23, 2021




Future Generations University believes in the importance of supporting its alumni and creating a community of changemakers. It is for this reason that Future Generations Global Network awards a number of collaboration grants every year for which alumni can apply to implement projects that embody our philosophy and demonstrate the SEED-SCALE method. This week, we hear from Rohan Sagar and Suzanne Munro, who received one of these grants in 2016 to fund their research into cultural poverty reduction…

 

 


 




The Cultural Poverty Reduction as a Strategic Policy project funded by Future Generations Global Network was a response to the ethnic and social landscape of Guyana. This project was conceptualized and implemented by two alumni, Rogan Sagar and Suzanne Munro, of Future Generations University (then the Graduate School), Class2014. The project implementation period commenced in August and concluded December2016, and was built around three main components: (a) Research, (b) Applied Ethnomusicology, and (c) Observations, which was an application of Evolutionary Psychology. Essentially, the project as a research praxis validated the main hypothesis encompassing ethnic and race relations and the outcomes validated the application of Applied Ethnomusicology as a possible bridge between present political structural policies and a culturally based epistemic.

 

 

Our research component sought to establish a baseline of cultural knowledge bymeasuring depreciation (of fixed variables or not known by the respondent). According to research articles on Evolutionary Psychology and Music Psychology,”‘music is the main marker upon which identity is constructed.‘” Therefore, according to the research objectives, the level of knowledge of ethnic based traditional musics will be an indicator of the broader levels of cultural knowledge. The data is clear that interethnic as well as intra–ethnic cultural awareness exists at very low levels, with less than25% of the respondents actually aware of their own ethnic identity constructs. The majority of the respondents(75%) also indicated lack of awareness of the identity of specific cultural tools indigenous to their specific social group, and could not relate to indigenisable sonic designs. In Evolutionary Psychology this phenomenon could be referred to ‘psychophysical’ and provides a referential marker located in the absence of being rooted within one’s own identity; this response then became a referential point of departure to locate from the respondents own experiences their relationships to other groups.






To understand and diagnose the openness or receptivity of respondents to multiculturalism and multiethnic universals, the project relied on the principles of Applied Ethnomusicology. Here the process was guided by the alumni and two facilitators: Mr. Somdatt Ramessar and Mr. Handel Neptune. The scope of this component was confined to observation and was tested on the youth demographic. According to new studies on music and its impact on the brain, specific rhythms and melodic designs usually generate psychophysical indicators on which was premised the main hypothesis. What both the investigators and facilitators noted was the presence of genuine positive reactions to rhythms and melodic designs that could be defined as both indigenous and endogenous. We found this behavior not to be surprising given the existence of evidence of cosmopolitanisation within Guyanese society. Two percussive rhythmic pieces identifiable to two ethnic groups, Africans and East Indians, the Patois Hand and Keherwa Taal or(8 beats) as well as two vocal materials, Ba Ta Taa and Harey Krishna were used in this exercise . Additionally, the Amerindian percussion instrument, the Sambura, was used to interconnect as a part of the overall orchestral arrangements.



What the researchers and facilitators did note as an interesting find was the dichotomy between the research findings (the less than25% knowledgeable marker) and the observational high ratio positive response. The research seems to suggest that the demographic in question, the youth, seems to be more susceptible to endogenisation, a process likely to have generated greater traction outside of their primary place of habitat. What is yet to be discerned is the impact of this endogenous experience within ethnic enclaves, additionally the research protocol did not address or clarify this fundamental question. Guyana is often called the ‘land of six races’ which is often a source of pride and is a benchmark used to establish comparative distinctiveness between the high levels of co–existence here in Guyana and ethnic or race based conflicts universally. From the Amerindians, who it is scientifically accepted were the first settlers in this part of the world, to the other four ethnic groups who were forced migrants as a consequence of European colonial adventures and conquest, Guyanese have found a unique method to co–exist.
But this phenomenon is not without it‘s historical antecedent. Historians have commented on pre–Independence race relations as always being on the positive side, except of course for a few misadventures which somehow became characterized as ‘race–related incidents’, until the early1960s when serious race and ethnic violence erupted causing population dislocation, ethnic realignment, and killings. The Cultural Poverty Reduction project being aware of the historical roots of co–existence, as part of the project’s declarative objectives, attempted to resuscitate and re-germinate these positive deviances to, as indicated previously, contribute to a cultural epistemic that previously existed. The main results will be included in the policy paper, which is another of the project’s objectives and was submitted for publication. It was the studied opinion of many experts that what contributed immensely to the positive race relations in the colonial era was the strong bonding between ethnic groups, perhaps in common opposition to the then colonial authorities, and for which there were many a good reason. However, it is also that this ‘discovery’ of the ‘other’ generated significant empathy post–realization that the immediate social conditions demanded co–existence and the presence of any other options were in themselves not only significantly reduced but quite dangerous.

Out of this condition arose evidences of homogenous and heterogeneous communities, mix marriages and relationships, and the interethnic experimentation with the phenomenon, creolization. Creolization was for all intents and purposes a grassroots learning process when ethnic groups were forced to coexist, not deliberatively, but through the many life sustaining mechanisms, and knowledge and awareness essentially blossomed so that each one got to know the ‘other’ culturally. Some of these phenomena include social concepts as weddings, celebration of births and deaths, commerce, as well as sharing other ecological spaces. As Guyana progressed towards Independence political self–governance awareness was gaining traction amongst the citizenship and in1953 Guyana elected its first form of self–government after winning universal suffrage. But in1962-4 Guyana entered into a dark period as the country descended into civil unrest and riots, largely as a consequence of the fracture of the then single largest political party along ethnic lines.



In their conclusion the Cultural Poverty Reduction, project leaders wish to reiterate that the cultural policy research paper was designed and built in accordance with the 7 Tasks of the SEED–SCALE research method; the full research paper was submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed academic journal; other visual materials are also available on the first author’s website: www.socio–historicalethnomusicology–GUYANA.com. The project leaders wish to thank Future Generations Global Network for its support to help realize this project; additionally, project implementers are pleased to facilitate greater awareness of Future Generations University and its work worldwide.

 

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Rohan Sagar read for his Master’s Degree at Future Generations University, in his thesis he argued for a multicultural approach to music education in Guyana where he resides. Rohan is also an ethnomusicologist presently conducting investigations in the traditional musics of Guyana amongst the Native American, African and East Indian populations. His most recent project was research assistant to the Evolutionary Psychology project with Harvard University.

 

 

 

Suzanne Munro is a graduate from the University of Guyana, where she studied Environmental Studies. Further development of her education took place in the obtaining of a Masters Degree in Community Change and Conservation through the Future Generations Graduate School. Ms. Munro has worked at Conservation International (CI) for over 10 years, where she focuses on grants management, community development, and conservation. Currently, she is with the Government of Guyana as a Procurement Specialist working under the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF). When not at work, she is active in a small group of women that focuses on early exposure and availability to reading in young children.

How Do Communities Experience Peace in Their Daily Lives? Future Generations Researchers in Eight Countries Went to Find Out!
November 22, 2021

Summary

To help people monitor accurately whether their communities are safer (more peaceful) over time or not, this post summarizes the initial experience with a method that Future Generations is testing. If Everyday Peace Indicators (EPIs) prove to be relevant and reliable, then we plan to continue to refine the methodology and utilize it in other sectors, such as conservation and health. The EPIs that are identified span across many aspects of life and may include indicators such as the number of religious and cultural events and rituals that are performed or the number of people who are actively working (men and/or women) in a community.
This map shows the eight countries where research into Everday Peace
Indicators was conducted.

Background

In January 2017, researchers in eight countries (Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Guyana, Nepal, Nigeria, Somaliland, South Sudan, and Uganda) set out to understand how urban and rural communities as well as local peacebuilding experts experience and determine that they can measure peace in their everyday lives.

Typically, methods used to study peace yield complex, scholarly results that are not directly relevant, useful, or sometimes even intended for communities to understand. Through development of ‘indicators of peace,’ this project, through local participation and local ownership, seeks to produce sensitive local understanding of interventions in peacebuilding and conflict transformation. The assertion is that communities are best placed to measure and interpret their own peace. The research methodology builds on prior and ongoing research on Everyday Peace Indicators (EPIs) at the United States Institute for Peace (USIP).

As lead researchers on prior EPI work—Pamina Firchow and Roger Mac Ginty—describe this approach as:[i]

[Developing indicators of peace] is participatory action research that seeks to find out people’s perceptions of their own conflict rather than impose narratives on them. The research asks local people, through focus groups, to develop their own set of indicators.…
Future Generations is also particularly interested in this methodology due to our history of peacebuilding research and our peacebuilding concentration within our Master of Arts degree program. There is in-house research and academic work that the university wants to build on. Development of indicators for peace is consistent with the community change ideals that the graduate school has been teaching. Moreover, development of indicators of peace is in line with what is taught and practiced in SEED-SCALE. The university is keen to pursue a research agenda in developing indicators of peace, an effort that will be augmented by the partnership it has begun to develop with USIP.

 

Methods

This study included focus group discussions in at least two sites in each country. The sites were selected to represent urban and rural contexts within the country and were selected based on communities where our research team had connections and was able to establish and build on trusting relationships in order to undertake this participatory research. A total of 20 sites are represented in the study findings including four sites in Guyana and four sites in Afghanistan and two in each of the other countries.

At each site, focus groups were held separately with men, women, boys and girls—expect in Nepal where the men and women were divided into two groups each based on caste and youth were merged into one group for each site in order to be responsive to social norms and ensure an in-depth, productive dialogue. The purpose of these focus groups was to hold an open brainstorming discussion with each of these demographic groups in each community about how they experience peace—first very broadly and then progressively honing in on tangible and then countable things from their everyday lives that could indicate whether their community was becoming more or less peaceful over time. A total of 80 focus groups were held across the 20 sites.

After the initial focus groups were completed, the researcher(s) at least site compiled all of the discussions into one long list of potential KIs for peace in that community. Then, representatives from each of the initial focus groups were brought together to discuss, refine, and then vote using a multi-voting process on a focused list of about 10 countable indicators that best reflected peace in their communities.

In parallel with the focus groups, a series of key informant interviews with local peacebuilding experts were conducted in each country. Respondents included university faculty, government officials, law enforcement officials, nonprofit organization leaders, United Nations representatives, youth and youth advocates, and others. Between four and seven interviews were conducted with a variety of different respondents in each country for a total of 35 interviews. The results from the interviews and focus groups were compared and contrasted for each site and often showed similar alignment on the priority issues, but different understanding of each one.


Selected Findings

The indicators identified in this research spanned many sectors and nearly every aspect of everyday life as well as the day-to-day experience of some of the large-scale conflicts that often claim center stage in the global media. While peace remains a complex, sometimes intangible, and multi-faceted concept, many of the indicators that were identified were actually related to the ability to do very basic activities necessary for daily life, and of relevance in pretty much every community around the world. Three common themes related to the findings across sites are summarized here.

Employment: Being able to access employment or a way to support and sustain a family was a frequently raised theme. This was important for men, women, and youth and valued at both the household level as well as in larger savings groups or cooperative efforts among community members. One report noted:
Coming together in the form of groups was rare. The groups would become victims of attack by warriors. With peace now, there are many social and economic groups coming up. For instance, there are village savings and loan associations. (Uganda)

Roads and other infrastructure: Access to communities by road as well as other infrastructure such as availability of electricity and internet services was a theme across many sites.

If [the] government is focusing on investment on infrastructure can be an indicator of peace. That means if the government assigns more budget on it… and less on military budget. (Ethiopia)
Infrastructure services…facilitate people’s activities for growth and development thereby contributing greatly towards their presence of peace. (Uganda)

 

Education: Access to schools, functional school systems, equal opportunity for boys and girls for education, educational attainment of youth, and expansion of fields of study and private school opportunities all featured prominently among identified indicators. One report described the linkage between education and other contributors to peace and conflict:
If the school at least works 4-8 hours a day based on the grades/classes children will be busy with learning and progressing, but if not, children will be at risk of pulling and children clashes which in most cases escalate to parents-to- parents fight. (South Sudan)
Traditional and culture: Often, conflict disrupts traditional practices and rhythms. A theme emerged through this research on the importance of communities being able to carry out traditional festivals, rites of passage, and religious celebrations. Some findings also noted that new cultural practices, such as creating new songs about violence and revenge, could be a sign of worsening conflict.
Cultural and religious sites are the binding factors of social cohesion, but after the 10 year long conflict people believes that people are falling apart and peace can be attained when you go to the temples and be part of the cultural events. (Nepal)

 

Discussion

The concept of peace has many different meanings. Even for a number of the researchers who implemented this study are already engaged in some kind of work related to conflict resolution, youth and women’s empowerment, anti-radicalization, and related efforts, they noted gaining additional understandings of what peace means to people in the communities where they work and to local experts around them. Throughout the process of conducting this research, many of the researchers commented on how they gained new, different, or more nuanced and in-depth understandings of peace from talking with communities and local experts. A number of new relationships, potentials for collaboration, and dialogues within communities were also sparked by this participatory inquiry.

One of the recurring challenges within this research study was that the identified indicators were so specific to the local context. In a number of countries, similar or identical indicators were proposed in the urban and rural sites, but their meaning was different or even opposite. An example of this is schools being open in Afghanistan—in urban areas, this was a sign of relative peace that children could attend school but in the rural area where this study was conducted, schools being open indicated that the territory was being occupied and the schools managed by the occupiers and was therefore not a sign of peace.

Next Steps

The research team is developing a full report and also a peer-reviewed journal article in the coming months. In addition, the Africa-based sites are planning to put together a regionally-focused policy brief targeting African decision-makers and something that can be distributed in paper format as well as electronically. Finally, each implementer of the methodology has identified key next steps to directly facilitate that the identified indicators get utilized. Some examples of the kinds of utilization that are planned include:

1. Building the most relevant and salient indicators into community workplans, projects and project evaluations, and organizational strategic plans

 

2. Advocacy with local leaders, including government officials, religious leaders, and law enforcement, for local peacebuilding priorities and ways to track progress on them

 

3. Training and awareness-raising among peace-related service providers (law enforcement and other social services) and communities at large about local understandings of peace and conflict and dialogue about how to address local issues

 

4. Seek additional resources—funding as well as mentorship, time and other resources—to enable communities to work to improve on the indicators that are the most important to them

 


[i]Mac Ginty, R. and Firchow, P. Everyday Peace Indicators: Capturing Local Voices Through Surveys. Shared Space: A Research Journal on Peace, Conflict, and Community Relations in Northern Ireland.
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Post by Dr. Meike Schleiff with input from the researcher team members*
Meike brings a background of community-based mentoring, teaching, and program implementation to Future Generations University. She has worked extensively with communities and young leaders in Haiti through GROW project, the non-profit that she co-founded with Haitian colleagues, and has also been engaged in community development planning, implementation, evaluation, and training in Guyana, Ugandan India, and the Appalachian region in the USA
*Vincent Abura, Chiranjibi Bhandari, Abdishakur Hassan-Kayd, Amanullah Hotak, Fisseha Getahun, Anthony Kadoma, Firew Kefyalew, Omer Marouf, Andualem Mitiku, Sushila Chattergee Nepali, Uchenna Onyeizu, and Rohan Sagar (Picutred as listed from left to right below:)