Seeking Peace from Somalia to Dharamshala
Meeting for the first time in Dharamshala, India over the course of seven days in October, I had the opportunity to meet Goldin Institute team member Jimmie Briggs with whom I shared the unique opportunity to not only be in intimate dialogue with Tibetan spiritual leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate the Dalai Lama, but be in community with nearly two dozen global youth peacemakers from around the world. The program which brought them together was the United States Institute of Peace’s (USIP) “Generation Change” initiative.
I was selected to participate as a grassroots youth leader based on my organizing work in Puntland, Somalia; while Jimmie attended as a mentor based on his past with the organization on the issue of child soldiers and SGBV (sexual and gender-based violence) against women and girls. In total, I was joined by 26 youth leaders from 14 countries spanning the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South America.
Through a competitive call for online application to a youth exchange program for young peacebuilders from around conflict zones of the world, I was able to secure a position. I had high expectations for my trip to Dharamshala! I was very excited to meet with inspiring and courageous youth leaders from across the world to learn from them and see and hear their experiences in bringing peace and change within their communities.
Goldin Institute’s Jimmie Briggs was one of half a dozen mentors present throughout the trip, including accompanying the youth leader cohort to meet with the Dalai Lama, as well as participate in group exercises and workshops. As Jimmie told me:
[quote]In fact, I met His Holiness a number of years ago at a peace conference in Derry, Northern Ireland, but this was my first opportunity to actually sit and have a true conversation. It was definitely a memorable visit. -- Jimmie Briggs, Goldin Institute Director of Community Learning [/quote]
My trip to Dharamsala was another step taking me forward toward a bright future in my career and life. I hoped to meet with thought leaders who were source of wisdom and experts in building sustainable peace for communities and I did. To listen to their powerful, personal and professional experiences -- as well as the choices they have made -- met, exceeded and surpassed my expectations.
[quote]The Dalai Lama said to me that ‘Humans are social animals and everyone needs a community survive.’ This statement taught me the importance of building strong connections between active citizens of my community to unite their efforts and avoid conflict of interest between them. [/quote]
I was able to participate in this unique opportunity as the Chairperson of the Somali branch of the African Youth and Child Network for Human Rights (REJADH), but also as a participant in the inaugural class of GATHER Fellows. It was a whirlwind trip, as I graduated as a GATHER Fellow exactly two weeks after returning home from India. Without question, my experience with the Dalai Lama and fellow youth peacemakers in USIP’s Generation Change improves the project I developed through GATHER and deepens my commitment to work for peace.
This reaffirmed my strong believe towards the old saying “Your network is your net-worth.”
You can learn more about the project I am working on and get involved by visiting my Indiegogo campaign!
Gather Workshop: Build Your Leadership Skills
Grassroots leaders are invited to join us for a skill building workshop:
February 20th, 2019
2:30 - 4:00 PM
1543 West Division Street
2nd Floor
Chicago, IL 60610
This workshop will feature an opportunity to learn:
- How to identify and map assets that your community already has
- How to frame questions in ways that motivate action for the common good
- How to understand and mitigate the effects of group power imbalances
- How to create your own community of practice using the Gather Platform
GATHER is a mobile application for online learning that hosts curriculum built specifically for grassroots leadership development connecting leaders like you! This online platform offers unique capacities to learn and work together to develop the skills and tools needed to change your communities.
Click here to RSVP and save your space at the workshop.
If you have questions, please contact the workshop coordinator, Burrell Poe at burrell@goldininstitute.org or at 312-951-1691.
Nothing For Us Without Us
On the 3rd of October, 2018, we at Youth Leaders for Reconciliation and Development (YOLRED) hosted our community visioning summit, an important part of the Gather curriculum, which was attended by 56 community members from various categories including youths, older people, and local leaders.
During the sessions, participants were formed into four groups by Diana Opira Alaroker, a YOLRED staff member and also a Gather Fellow who served as facilitator, to give possibilities to everyone to discuss the community assets they have. The leaders from these groups later made a presentation based on their identified community assets and Diana presented a summary as well as shared with them the asset map.
I then took the participants through what adaptive challenges are, asked how do we as a community respond to such challenges as well as the opportunities and the vision for the future. Collectively, the participants identified land conflicts, alcoholism, their voices not being heard, stigmatization, and segregation of the former child soldiers and their children, laziness and corruption among others as being adaptive challenges. They noted, however, that taking a joint leadership and responsibility by every member of the community might provide answers to such challenges.
Looking into the opportunities and the vision for the future, the participants considered greatly exploiting and putting land into use as one of their most valuable assets and noted that this also will provide opportunities to employ the unemployed youth. Similarly, they also viewed the Village Saving and Loan Associations (VSLA) scheme as one way of improving their social cohesion and avoiding segregation since it brings people together and requires them to work together. This will improve their household income as well and put them in position to manage their basic needs and attain financial independence.
On speaking to 56 participants of the summit, the Hon. Susan Lapat, a community representative to the office of the Mayor, asked the participants to put into practice what they have learned, adding that this is an eye opener programming to the community that keeps the brain thinking. For long, people have had assets in their community unexploited and hence remained in their current situation. Consequently, she asked the members of the community to now start exploiting and putting into use the assets they have, including engaging the leaders, the Gather Fellows’ teams and other stakeholders in order to realize a joint community leadership towards achieving the change we want in our community. In the same way, the Chairman of Local Council 1 also asked the participants to embrace love and trust for one another so that they can realize the dreams of their shared aspirations as a community.
At the end, everyone was able to realize that “There is nothing for us without us.”
Geoffrey Omony serves as Executive Director of Youth Leaders for Restoration and Development (YOLRED), the first organization in Uganda designed and run by former child soldiers.
Going Big in South Africa
What a year! What a week! Two years ago, I set out on a crazy journey of helping African youths discover their light – their creative talents – and supporting them to shine this light by transforming their creative talents into solutions to critical challenges facing their communities. I founded an organization called Global Leading Light Initiatives, a grassroots initiative with a global focus in mind aimed at enhancing the capacities of youths to be real assets, and not liabilities, to their communities.
Two years on, with no funding, GLLI has been able to generate community impact which most million-Rand-funded organizations only dream of achieving. This achievement has been thanks to tens of passionate local and international volunteers who have been attracted by our work to give their time and other resources.
The Gather Course has made me understand how many assets I have and how I have been under-utilizing them. And so I decided to go big.
At the end of September, in collaboration with the Association of Universities in South Africa, our organization brought the 2018 National Entrepreneurship Week to our community. GLLI hosted the first Student Entrepreneurship Roadshow at Walter Sisulu University, featuring 3 of South Africa's hottest celebrities and officials from the Association of Universities of South Africa, headed by their CEO, Dr. Norah Clark.
Through this event, hundreds of emerging entrepreneurs from Walter Sisulu University and 6 high schools were inspired to create solutions to critical challenges. Students were offered great sponsorship opportunities to become innovative.
In mid-October, we finally we held our Community Visioning Summit! It was a wonderful day, with a total of 69 participants – 41 students, including 15 from Walter Sisulu University and 26 from 5 high schools in Mthatha as well as 28 adults, 1 official from the Department of Social Development, 8 teachers, 3 university lecturers, 4 social workers and 12 community members.
The youths taught us many things on that day and based on what we are seeing in our community, we can "Build prosperity on resources in which poor people are rich" i.e. their talents, skills, knowledge and culture.
The day after our Community Visioning Summit, I was invited by the department of education to make a presentation at a district teachers' workshop. A majority of high schools in Mthatha district were represented by a teacher at the workshop. I gave an overview of the Community Visioning Summit and shared the experiences with them. Most of the teachers were disappointed they couldn't make it.
I made a presentation about Iziko, our community and school-based parenting program aimed at building healthy child-adult relationships to support young people achieving their full potential.
It was a great honor. Many teachers want to join the "Iziko." They also want our student-entrepreneurship program in their schools.
Dieudonne Anumbosi Allo from the Eastern Cape in South Africa is the Founder and CEO of the Global Leading Light Initiatives, a registered non-profit organization formed in 2014 on a strong conviction that collective prosperity can be achieved in Africa and globally through coordinated grassroots initiatives aimed at creating nurturing and enabling environments for children and youths.
Welcome Jassi, Burrell, Abby, Oz and Delasha
Since last spring, the Goldin Institute has gratefully welcomed four new staff members and a research fellow to the organization’s community. All bring a rich diversity of experience working in development and aid work, as well as innovative storytelling and reconciliation.
Jassi Sandhar
A second year PhD student in International Human Rights Law at the University of Bristol, Jassi Sandhar spent nearly two months this summer working with our global partners in Uganda, YOLRED. With academic and field experience in child combatants and war-affected youth. Jassi worked closely with YOLRED program director Geoffrey Omony to capture the oral narratives of Northern Ugandan children impacted by the LRA war, and its legacies including housing instability, joblessness, hunger and insecurity. Additionally, she worked with Geoffrey, and GI staffer Jimmie Briggs to prepare and submit badly needed requests for operational funding to foundations and entities based in the United Kingdom. Though her tenure in the region ends in August, we’re excited to continue the working relationship with her as she completes her thesis on human rights, experiences, and legal protections offered to girl soldiers during and post-conflict.
Burrell Poe
A familiar face within the Goldin Institute constellation of stars, Burrell Poe joins the organization as a Curriculum Associate for Gather. The native of Chicago’s West Side community served in the United States Army for three years, returning in 2011 to undertake the ambitious charge of addressing city violence through what he’s coined as the “Compassion Project.” As he’s observed often at Institute events, and in-house meetings, “Statistically, I was safer on the battlefield in the Army than I was returning to my hometown. I wanted to change that narrative.”
Enrolling in a social entrepreneurship course at the “Social Academy,” Burrell met and studied with Sara Shairer who shared a vision of elevating and spreading the message of global compassion. Later receiving certification from Stanford University, he went on to work with the Institute for Nonviolence in Chicago, where he led circles, workshops and classes with the greater community on the uses of compassion as a force or transformative healing and change. “Statistics have shown that a small fraction of the Chicago population is responsible for violence,” he says, “and that is the population I work with. When compassion is enacted through personal behavior, it changes how we interact with others. A compassionate community will thrive, and I believe that we can use compassion to rebuild a thriving Chicago.”
Abby Goldberg
Alongside Jimmie Briggs in our New York- based team -- through whom she was introduced to the Goldin Institute -- Abby Goldberg carries nearly 20 years of domestic and global experience working in the areas of gender rights, media advocacy, and non-profit development. The San Francisco native is the Senior Advisor for Gather, and a recognized expert in digital advocacy and social media campaigning.
The majority of her career has been leading the transformational growth and development of three very distinct, non-profit organizations including the Global Justice Center, Digital Democracy, and the New Media Advocacy Project. Over the course of her professional journey, Abby has learned and mastered the use of technology and digital video to promote tactical change in policy and law based, producing more than two dozen video shorts. Her most recent digital campaign, “We Have Rights: Immigrant Empowerment Campaign,” consisted of a coalition of over 200 organizations responding to the increase of arrests and deportations of immigrants in the U.S.
An ongoing project in development, “Intercambio,” is a series by and for Cubans and Americans to foster greater connection and cultural respect between the two.
Delasha Long
Newsletter readers will remember hearing about Delasha Long as part of the team that presented Gather at the Conference on Community Writing last year. Delasha is a Web Content Specialist with a background in content strategy, production, design, and management. She got her start in literary publishing, and hopes to use her talents in both print and digital media. Through a partnership with DePaul University, Delasha provides content strategy and research for the Gather Platform, currently assisting with the UX design, technical support, social media, and technical writing. A Graduate Assistant with the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse at DePaul, she works as the standing Journal Manager and upcoming Assistant Production and Design Manager for the Community Literacy Journal.
Oz Ozburn
Oz Ozburn brings her planning and design skills to support all aspects of the work of the Goldin Institute. As an architect, Oz is experienced in deep listening and research to uncover opportunities to solve tough challenges through thoughtful design and skillful implementation. Interested in how design innovation can tackle rural economic development, Oz founded Design Ecology to pursue a different type of project design that strives to find holistic solutions to issues involving urbanism, physical place-making, and gaps in rural fabric caused by social inequalities. Prior to joining the Goldin Institute, Oz was Project Architect for Studio Gang, leading project that focused on creating social change while fostering environmental stewardship. Oz graduated with her Bachelors of Science from the University of Virginia and a Masters of Architecture from Yale University, where she was awarded a travel grant, allowing her to research firsthand the architectural consequences of urban warfare and publish a study on the cultural forms of post-traumatic reconstruction in Nicosia and Beirut.
Looking Ahead
With the recent, successful launch of the Gather platform in the pilot phase, we are excited to have extended our capacity, and depth of talents, with the arrival of these three dynamic people, and expect greater impact and recognition for the work of the organization and the global partners whom it serves.
Global Associate Helps Craft Bangsamoro Organic Law
Dear Friends:
Warm greetings from Manila!
I am thrilled to announce that on July 26, President Rodrigo Duterte signed the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL).
The BOL will address Muslim Filipinos’ decades-long struggle for self-determination, and is the result of a long peace-building process in which we are very proud to have played a role. The Goldin Institute Philippines has worked hard for a number of years to establish trust between former combatants by working directly with communities in our home province of Manguindanao, a section of the island of Mindanao that has a mixed population including Muslims and Christians, and a long history of violent insurgency. Now that the BOL has been signed into law, it will hopefully be ratified in a plebiscite, and then the rebel groups will participate in more work on peacebuilding and conflict transformation to improve their quality of life and become productive members of their communities.
I have been honored to play a personal role in the peace process for more than a year as a commissioner of the Bangsamoro Transition Commission. Being one of the Christian members of this 21-member panel was a great challenge but it also has been deeply rewarding. I was selected for this role because of my advocacy for people at the grassroots as a Goldin Institute Global Associate and because my colleagues and contacts at Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) nominated me for this position.
We in the Goldin Institute Philippines created a coalition of members of civil society, non-governmental organizations, the military, armed guerillas and parents to support initiatives such as Access to Clean Water Project, through which we installed pumping units at over 100 schools to provide safe water to over 40,000 students. As in many places around the world, access to safe water is a major issue in our region, and it is all the more challenging to install these pumps in areas where military operations were ongoing as well as flooding and other natural disasters. Last year, four of our pumps were installed in a village with a mixed Christian and Muslim population during a time the whole region was under martial law as armed guerillas battled the Philippine Armed Forces.
The support of the Goldin Institute’s Board of Advisors has been essential to the Clean Water Project, as are grants from private philanthropies like the LUSH Foundation. We have been advocating for human rights for women and orphans in partnership with other stakeholders since 2012.
Now with the BOL, we are hopefully entering a new era of peace and productivity in our region. The challenge for us in the GI-Philippines is to expand our services and partnerships on the ground.
Please help us pray that the BOL will bring about just and lasting peace for our people - this is our dream.
Sending warm thoughts and regards to all.
Susana Anayatin, Global Associate
Meet the 2018 Goldin Global Fellows
The Goldin Institute is proud to introduce the inaugural class of Goldin Global Fellows. The 2018 cohort is comprised of 20 caring, capable, and impassioned individuals across 16 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North and South America who came together to learn and work collaboratively over 16 weeks as a community of practice.
2018 GOLDIN GLOBAL FELLOWS FELLOWS
To follow along the learning journey with the Gather Fellows, please sign up for our newsletter and follow up on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Gather Platform Launched
Speaking at a July 17 celebration for the launch of Gather, the Goldin Institute’s online fellowship for community leaders around the world, Raymond Richard, Executive Director of Brothers Standing Together, a not-for-profit organization based in Chicago, Illinois, USA, said that he had already received the IPad preloaded with the Gather software and was looking forward to signing in for the first time later that night. Even more than that, he had great ambitions for his collaboration with the other fellows.
[quote]“I look forward to (signing in) and sharing my experiences so we can come up with new and better solutions to problems of poverty, violence and homelessness. I’m excited.” -- Brother Raymond Richard, Gather Fellow[/quote]
The inaugural Gather Fellows includes 20 community leaders from 16 countries, from Cameroon to California, USA, including the manager of an orphanage in Kenya and a peace and reconciliation specialist in Colombia, a rape survivors’ advocate in Kentucky and a young lawyer in Puntland, an autonomous region of Somalia. Each participant has received a small stipend and an IPad loaded with communications software specially designed for Gather.
Over the next 16 weeks, the Gather fellows will proceed through an on-line curriculum of discussions, exercises and workshops all designed to help them learn from each other, build on their collective assets, and devise concepts for sustainable, community-driven social change. Divided into modules with associated exercises and regular virtual meetings, the Gather course and specially-designed software incorporate the accumulated wisdom of nearly two decades of successful international collaborations facilitated by the Goldin Institute.
At the celebration of Gather’s launch, held at the historic House of Glunz in the city’s Old Town neighborhood, the Goldin Institute’s Founder and Board Chairperson, Diane Goldin, accompanied by fellow Board Member Mimi Frankel, thanked the whole staff before praising the hard work, dedication and leadership of Executive Director Travis Rejman. Travis, for his part, reserved particular appreciation for the late nights invested by his curriculum writing and software development teams in creating a platform that is as innovative as it is intuitive. Gather is the culmination of the Goldin Institute’s efforts, Travis explained.
[quote]“How do you connect leaders from around the world? We’ve been working on that question since the day we started.”[/quote]
Raymond launched BST in 2009 to decrease neighborhood violence and contribute to a safe environment for children and families. A mentor, activist and public speaker today, Raymond struggled with criminal activity, substance abuse and homelessness for decades. He was incarcerated for various crimes six different times, and spent two years living on Lower Wacker Drive, a series of subterranean tunnels underneath the city’s Loop, the downtown business district. But after he was released from prison the final time, Raymond resolved to turn his life around. It wasn’t easy. In Chicago as throughout the United States, returning citizens – as Raymond describes those emerging from incarceration – face significant discrimination and legal restrictions to accessing jobs, housing and education. But Raymond studied hard and obtained his high school diploma, participated in public meetings such as community policing programs, and worked odd jobs. He simultaneously became a mentor to other returning citizens as well as at-risk young people, drawing on his past experiences to provide practical guidance and warn against the dangers of recidivist criminal activity.
As BST’s Executive Director, Raymond has participated in events and attended conferences across the country, all while working to build their capacity to receive contracts from government agencies and private companies to provide returning citizens with work experience and essential income.
His accomplishments and never-ending responsibilities notwithstanding, at Gather’s inaugural celebration, Raymond said he was looking forward most of all to learning from his peers in other countries, knowing that together, they can accomplish more than on their own.
“Everyone of us is better than any one of us,” he said. “I’m honored to be on the team, honored to be in the Gather program.”
How to survive the tough path of life
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Donate your woolens this winter
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