I enrolled in one of the newest MPI courses in 2022, the Theory and Practice of Peace Advocacy (PA) facilitated by Vanessa “Ned” Bible and Gabrielle “Gabs” Sagaral. Aside from enjoying the learning experience, I also met engaging and passionate peacebuilders from various cultural settings, who were very open to exchanging ideas and experiences, supplementing the practice dimension of the course.
I brought with me my limited peacebuilding experience and a lot of questions, but I came out with so many valuable insights. With this piece, I share my experience in the course through what I would refer to as three spheres of reflection and four power bits taken from my self-made “Advocacy Toolkit,” something each participant made as we progressed through the course.
Spheres of Reflection: Advocacy Starters
Advocacy, as it strives to lend a voice to others, promotes cooperation and empowers others. First, it requires a lot of consistent looking inward. An element of this reflection is finding a thread across three separate but interconnected spheres: “the self,” “the other,” and “the environment.”
As an advocate, one must do inner work to achieve some form of authenticity. This could be done by exploring one’s personal narratives by deep diving through feelings and confronting the needs that come with them. Looking into one’s own motivations, understanding one’s own pattern of behavior, and responding healthily to these needs can be tedious. It requires a lot of patience and honesty. After or simultaneously understanding and integrating with the self, it will be relatively easy to sustain anything to which one sets one’s mind.
This process of looking inward naturally flows out to the self’s surrounding sphere. Honest inner work expressed outwardly is empathy—the ability to connect with others with minimal or even without words. It facilitates the formation of trust and relationships—an important element in working with others. In essence, people cannot stand for a cause without sharing their inner work with others.
In addition to learning through the head and connecting through the heart, one must be able to sense energies through the gut. Some mistake it as instinct. The closest English term is intuition. The Aboriginal people of Australia call it dadirri—the act of actively establishing a connection with the earth. One could sit under a tree’s shade, walk through the woods, or climb a hill to hear the environment’s language in its stillness. By practicing dadirri, we appreciate that the environment is a repository of wisdom and that a single tree, for example, bears more than its physical fruit.
While it has been proven almost everywhere that mastering the art of listening to ourselves, to others, and to the earth’s whispers can heal human sufferings, it makes us ready and better Advocates.
Four Advocacy Power Bits
During the PA course, there were a lot of spaces for interactions: from individual to group activities ranging from dyads to plenary role plays and open discussions. I took with me four power bits that are very much applicable to and handy in my work from these interactions. These are: “work where partners are,” “strength in numbers,” “patience,” and “an element of fun.”
It started with a nagging question that everyone in the class could not just easily ignore: How do we engage communities and build networks in low-economy settings? It reminded me of the debate on whether to prioritize peace or development. How can we do peacebuilding work when the communities with which we work are hungry? Sounds easy: Provide for their economic needs while doing the work. However, we are always confronted by the reality that investments in the peacebuilding world are limited. A short answer would be to refer and connect them to the right organizations. A long answer might require several articles or a book to deconstruct!
What I know is that, in working with communities, we start where the partners are. Questions such as: “What is there?” “What are their needs and priorities?” “What have they been doing about it?” and “What resources are within reach?” will be indispensable in this process. Aside from the trust and relationship that may be built between the community and the peace workers, investing in such a process will ensure that the peace advocacy work will be grounded in the local realities. A sound analysis of the context will aid in identifying more responsive goals and strengths-based strategies to get where our partner communities would want to go.
Keeping the communities at the heart of the peacebuilding work acknowledges that there is power among the people. Peace advocacy can be done with the marginalized communities who have been systematically excluded, divided, and exploited in the pursuit of development. The question would be: “How?” I remember at the very beginning of the course, as part of the expectations, someone asked: “How can we do peace advocacy in highly-polarized settings?” The class realized that a five-day course on peace advocacy with a focus on environmental peacebuilding might not be the only avenue to fully respond to the question. What we got from ruminating on this question was that it is through realizing the power of the people that change can happen. One way to tap into this potential is to identify voices of power among the people and to accompany and nurture them. They can then be linked with other affected stakeholders—building solidarity—to show that needs and interests can overlap.
System change, broadly the goal of peacebuilding, is quite a huge undertaking. It is a slow process that requires a lot of effort, creativity, and waiting. As time progresses, so do the changes in context dynamics. Hence, from time to time, it helps to have new perspectives and ways of looking at things. It may take a lifetime or two or more to see an envisioned change; the change might take a new form entirely! The only solace is that actions are cumulative. Whether small or big, wherever our efforts may seem to go, know that seeds of change are planted.
At this point, you might feel that all the things we did were less than exciting. They were not! I understand that waiting for change to take effect can be a lonely task. So there has to be fun, a healthy kind of fun, a fun that reinvigorates. Trust me, it will sustain the energy! During the course, I remember the structured fun activities during individual and dyad activities, energizers, and group workshops, such as creative presentations and embodying role plays. There were also unstructured fun activities through selfies and group photos, group rehearsals and presentations, and small chitchats in the group chats and during coffee and juice breaks. The possibilities for various forms of fun, whether during any peace advocacy course or outside, are endless!
While we take care of the process of highlighting local resources and voices, PA as well reminds us of the importance of self-care through reality checks and loads of fun.
As the course came to a close, a childish thrill mixed with humor that we could go abroad (with Ned to Australia!) was repeatedly picked up. For the class-level closing ceremony at the end of the week, Saf, one of the participants, prepared two copies of artsy peace sign thumb-printed tokens for our facilitators: pink-donned for Gabs and the other patched with the colors of the Philippine flag for Ned.
It was not only the colored peace sign tokens of the PA class of 2022 that went to Australia; it was also memories, lessons, and new insights that went wherever each of the participants went and will go. While most of its parts stayed in Mindanao, with Zhar, Jen, Star, Saf, Ernesto, Ate Led, Ate Bai, and Allan, it went to Luzon with Leon, too. It flew abroad to Papua New Guinea with Ferdie and as far as Sierra Leone with Nike and Abdulai. Now, that’s a class turned into a small group of environmental peace advocates across four countries!
The same PA that gathered us for a week of learning, exchange, and fellowship blew us back wherever we are rooted, wherever our peace advocacy work is most needed, and will surely blow gently wherever those partly answered questions will find their complete answers.
Ambrosio G. Amper, Jr. is a Project Officer of forumZFD-Butuan Office. He took the MPI course Theory and Practice of Peace Advocacy from October 17-21, 2022 in Davao City, Philippines.