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John Katunga - Scaling Up
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Introduction:
John Katunga of Nairobi Peace Initiative (NPI) describes the challenges of scaling up in village dialogue from individuals to the community level.
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dialogue, peacebuilding
This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
Scaling Up
John Katunga
Nairobi Peace Initiative (NPI). Also serves on the advisory board of Partners for Democratic Change
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It's very difficult and maybe that is one of the challenges, but as we say
and only if you are Christian, if you read the bible they know the metaphor that
is used, that if somebody was just sowing the grains and you are going to a
?feeling? in sowing grains. Some of the grain went just outside, it didn't fall
in the field, others went to the rocks, and others went to really fertile
ground. The grains that went to the rocks were eaten, and they died
because they didn't find the ground, they rotted, and they were finally eaten by
insects. Those that went to the fertile ground grew and became plants that made
more grains. It's the same metaphor that we use. We start with a large group of
people, with the expectation that a few of them will change in the process,
those few will be like the fertilizer that will pick up the process, and we are
very, very sure that that happens because it has happened in the past. It has
happened to us ourselves, it can also happen to other people, so we strongly
believe in people's ability to change.
Those people who will be changed will be
the ones who are now starting what I call the structures. You see them very
passionate and working on the issues and if you are very successful, it might be
somebody very highly positioned and you find huge amount of decision making
powers and they make a difference globally, but that is not always the case. It
is a slow process, but as slow as it is, it is transformative. There are those
few people who will be working on a daily basis on those issues and people start
seeing the value of the daring of such a new found ideology, or philosophy of
peace. By the time you see a structure image, you know already that that
structure has a vision and is working now on a larger scale. You need
individuals' transformation for communities to transform because communities are
built by individuals; that's how you make the linkage, but it's not
mathematical, or mechanical, it's that person and that person. Sometimes very
unexpected persons will bring about peace through changes. Sometimes the most
radical are the less vocal, and sometimes it's both. It depends on
circumstances, situations, and context, but there is that aspect of the work
that is unpredictable.
We go with that metaphor, I will do the best that I can,
I will deliver the best that I can, I am sure that somebody who listens to me if
all hearted may be touched, and thus changed. The process of change can bring
about the overall change of society, so that's how we work, but through
intermittent levels. For example, if you are working with members of parliament,
a few of them may change, but you also work with communities, where the members
of the communities are coming from. If that person, who changed at the community
level, meets the member of the parliament at the high level, the meeting point
is fantastic, because there is a complete harmony of understanding and the
ablufication of the results.
In the intermediary level, you also have people who
you train and give them the spirit, impact the spirit in that dialogue, so they
can pick up the spirit and integrate the spirit downwards and upwards and create
this holistic change, for example the result of elections in Kenya. People can
argue but it's the the tremendous work of the civil society at all levels, and
nobody can pinpoint and say it is my work that created this, but everybody can
be the father of the peace and success of elections. Everybody can say, yes, I
did it. Humanitarian organizations, peace organizations, churches. Everybody
worked together, it was a holistic endeavor that we have integrated all levels
from community to middle class to leadership top level.
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