income producing initiatives
some funding needed (the Laceweb currently has no funding)
Laceweb Funding and Evaluation Protocols
Some local groups may have funding, or know of some sources who
may be approached for funding. Guidelines for funding Laceweb
involvement are as set out in the document, 'Self-Help Action
Supporting Survivors of Torture and Trauma on Bougainville - Small
Generalisable Actions', under the subheading, Laceweb Funding and Evaluation Protocols.
SELF HELP
This is not about 'token self help' under distant direction and
control. The processes being outlined in the Plan place the shape and
roll-out of unfunded outcomes completely in the hands of the local
people. Uncompromising funding may be used that also place the shape
and roll-out of funded outcomes in the hands of the local people.
Typically, four kinds of outcomes may emerge:
The first set of outcomes
- A range of behavior changes, capacities and well-being
actions These may help re/build relationships and dissolve fear,
distrust and conflict between members of their own communities and
between the focal people's neighbours and oppressors. This action in
turn may support the locals' viability and sustainability as
individuals, a people, a culture, a way of life - in their place.
The second set of possible outcomes
- Local self help well-being actions and initiatives (requiring no expensive 'service delivery by bureaucrat backed experts')
Note:
Action may be voluntary and happen as people go about their daily lives.
These actions and initiatives may require little set-up funding or on-going funding.
Possible examples (although local issues, needs and aspirations may be very different):
- supporting survivors of torture and trauma
- normalizing war zone mentality
- renouncing payback
- reducing rascal behavior, crime and civil unrest
- extending mutual respect
- becoming more sane
- reducing/stopping domestic violence
- sustaining a healthy life style (healthy eating habits, exercise etc.)
- softening drug abuse
- providing community-based family and individual well-being support
- mediation therapy
- community building - trust, respect, cooperation, sharing and the like
The third set of possible deliverables
- actions/initiatives which require set-up funding and which are non-income producing.
Note:
Some of these actions/initiatives may require on-going funding that may be picked up by funding sources.
The outcomes could be 'well-formed proposals for approval by funding sources'.
Possible examples:
- Food, clothing and shelter
- Well-being enhancing housing and villages
- Habitat improvement (paths, bridges, etc.)
- Roads and tracks
- Establishing sustainable gardens
- Pure water storage and delivery
- Schools
- Children's educational resources
- Water craft
The fourth set of possible outcomes
- Income producing economic initiatives requiring funding support during set up, as well as on-going funding support till viable.
The outcomes may be 'well-formed 'economic proposals' for approval by funding sources'.
Possible examples:
- cash cropping
- fisheries
- livestock husbandry
- tourism and eco-tourism
DEFINING THE TERMS USED
Region means the SE Asia Oceania Australasia region
The Grassroots Well-being Action being described differs
in many respects from traditional Non Government Organizations (NGO)
and Community Based Organizations (CBO), both voluntary and non
voluntary who almost invariably provide services. These differences are
outlined throughout this document.
The term 'Action' is used to mean 'self-help' and 'community help and support' using Cultural healing for nurturing well-being (refer, Cultural Healing Action.
This 'Action' could be a Self Help micro-model for an
alternative or complement to well-being Service Delivery, not only for
places in the Region like Bougainville and East Timor, but also for
wider indigenous and disadvantaged small minority contexts.
With 'Action Research', Community members act,
evaluate, modify, discard and validate social and economic Action.
'Research' always follows Action - hence the term 'Action research'.
Aspects of Action deemed to be very good and effective are upheld and
sustained - become policy if you like. 'Ideas in action' evolves 'best
practice' which is continually up for review.
If a 'situated anomaly' or 'local rupture' occurs that
alters outcomes for the better or worse, change is introduced as
appropriate. Over time, this consensually derived and intersubjectively
validated 'best practice' becomes future community policy and part of
the 'common stock of knowledge'. That is, 'policy' is 'that which
works'.
Before 'best practice' is adopted as 'policy', it has
been tested and validated as lived community life. It has consensual
community acceptance and has already worked as a micro-model. It
follows that 'community evolved policy' always works.
'Cultural Action' evolved among the indigenous people
of the Pacific. All aspects of a people's culture - their storytelling,
music, drama, art, drumming, song, sculpture, - their way of life - may
be used to explore together ways of enriching their Well-being.
Typically, people gain new competencies in the process of refining
their Well-being together.
'Enablers' are people who have experienced others
engaging in this Action many times. Enablers, as the name suggests,
support locals in getting the process started. Enablers offer lots of
possibilities that may be taken up by the locals if they want to do so.
It is the locals who do the 'Self Help', not the visiting enablers. The
locals decide what happens, not the enablers. Everything is in the
locals' hands. Enablers may take 'catalyst' and 'enabler' roles and act
as 'resource' people. They do not act as expert 'decision makers' and
'power brokers'.
The term 'Grassroots' is used in the sense of 'the
common folk'. Often the people involved have never engaged in
socio-cultural Action before - have never been on a 'committee',
exercised any problem solving effectiveness or dreamed that they could
have an effect.
'Mediation therapy' involves the use of cultural and
intercultural healing ways. It involves being together in ways that
heal communities - socio-therapy. It involves using mediation process
which heal people and relationships. The processes set up contexts rich
with possibilities. People rebuild relationships and co-heal well-being
as they acknowledge differences, explore their shared and differing
meaning and accept, respect, celebrate, and resolve those differences.
The term 'Well-being' is used in the widest possible
sense and covers the nurturing healing aspects of human living. This
includes physical, socio-emotional, mental, mindbody, spiritual,
relational, family, communal,
cultural, environmental, intercultural, habitat and economic.
'Nurturing Cultural Action' implies 'healing' in its widest sense. It
includes health, education, and economic development.
Healing gatherings are gatherings of locals with or without Laceweb enablers during which healing ways and Action are shared.
A SUMMARISING OF SUGGESTIONS
It is suggested that self-help Well-being Action may be explored
as one possible process for rebuilding local Well-being in the Region.
The Action may be 'local people' centred rather than having distant outside experts deciding action.
'What works' may be consensually validated by locals. In this, process research may follow Action based on local knowing.
If desired by the local people, they may have support from Laceweb enablers in evolving Well-being 'deliverables'.
Enablers may also help set up 'Well-being' as a frame of reference for action.
Enablers may support local people in creating both structured
and unstructured contexts and experiences - healing gatherings. These
may occur during arranged and spontaneous gatherings and events, and as
villagers go about their daily lives.
There may be a dynamic open Well-being agenda. In keeping with
the 'villager centered' approach, agendas may emerge from, and change
according to unfolding local operative needs and aspirations.
Open Agenda based Action may have three concurrent themes:
- Generating and nurturing Well-being
- Preventing impediments to Well-being
- Curing those affected by impediments
Action may focus on:
- Increasing Well-being,
- Sustaining prevention, and
- Decreasing the need to cure.
The process typically commences with establishing relationships and
storytelling within a 'Well-being frame' (for example, 'What is missing
in our Well-being?' 'What would enrich it?'). This may lead into an
eclectic process called Cultural Action which includes storytelling,
brainstorming, small group discussion, model building, drama, role-play
and the like.
In addition to their existing abilities, Villagers may develop
specific competences and behavior shifts that they require to effect
change. Typically, this happens as a by-product of the processes they
use to identify and evolve Well-being Action and initiative
development.
The process may have locals reflecting on their own needs and
have this running in tandem with low-risk self-help change processes.
This, in turn may have the advantage of profoundly absorbing the local
people in their own healing process. Villagers may begin receiving the
benefit of these deliverables immediately.
The deliverables mentioned above may 'cascade' out of the above process.
HOW THE SUGGESTED PROCESS MAY WORK
The following section is suggestive:
- As an example, energy is evolving for intercultural healing
gatherings in the Atherton Tablelands with the following participants:
Bougainvillians, East Timorese, West Papuans and Hmong people from
Laos. Laceweb enablers are available to support this gathering - refer
the Micro-Proposal.
- Ideas are emerging for experienced sociotherapists and
psychotherapists from within the Laceweb to carry out an enabling role
in supporting the evolving of a self-help trauma support network in the
region. The document Self-Help Action Supporting Survivors of Torture
and Trauma on Bougainville - Small Generalisable Actions contains a
list of healing themes, processes and skills that may be explored.
- Local nurturers may experience and adapt these to suit local healing ways and sensibilities. A workshop series has been prepared as a framework for sharing the above healing ways.
- Action building support for torture and trauma
survivors may potentially be fully integrated with and complement the
other community Well-being Action being suggested in this document.
- The Laceweb arranged United Nations funding for the
Small Island, Coastal and Estuarine People Gathering in NE Australia in
1994. Refer Report to the UN.
- Grassroots Well-being Action people attended from
across the remote regions of Northern Australia and the SE Asia Pacific
region. Plans are evolving for similar healing gatherings.
- A ground-swell of people is cooperating in taking their
own responsibility to resolve an extensive range of cultural Well-being
issues. In the past, these Well-being issues have fallen to governments
to resolve because no other entity had the capacity to have an impact.
- While socio-emotional and trauma support may be high
or a first priority, the Well-being Action extends possibilities for
rebuilding economic Well-being through income generating Action.
- Enablers from within the Laceweb may be a source of
influence, confluence and understanding. Enablers may support locals
linking up contexts, issues and peoples' energies in sustaining local
and laterally linked networks of Action.
If Grassroots community nurturing Action continues its exponential
growth, the potential to lower the present cost involved in service
delivery is immense. The role of governments, for large sections of the
Well-being agenda, has scope to change from 'deliver of services' to
that of 'facilitator of local Cultural nurturing Action' - refer Government and the Facilitation of Grassroots Action.
THE ROLE OF ENABLERS
Given that the local people take up any of the suggestions in
this document, the Action may be supported by Laceweb enablers.
Enablers are skilled at identifying 'natural nurturers' - well-being
types who are already 'self starters'. Finding the local self starters
is a crucial step for enablers. Together with active locals, enablers
may create opportunities for the locals to do something for themselves
and others. Some locals may desire to become enablers and hence spread
the process more widely.
One aspect of the enabling role is being a catalyst -
supporting getting things started. Enabling is both transparent and
virtually invisible once the process is under way. Ideally, the
enabling may continue as a 'safety net' and 'catalyst' until Action is
soundly established. In the current context it may last beyond two to
three years.
The process is also centred around the notion of 'context'.
Enablers are skilled in assisting the villagers set up specific
contexts. These contexts may have a Well-being 'frame'. Contexts may be
constituted so they are rich with possibilities - possibilities for
drawing upon the wisdom of the locals - the local knowings of what
works - for reflecting, enriching, being curious, creating, exploring,
rehearsing, learning and trying new ways.
The Enablers are highly refined 'process' observers (how
things happen) and are skilled in passing on this ability to others.
Initially, one of the enablers' roles may be the recording of the
process and the unfolding outcomes so rumours of what works may be
spread in the network. The word 'rumours' is used in the sense of
'check this out for yourselves and see if it works for you.'
This is done in ways that do not interrupt or limit the
process. Increasingly, all involved may become the custodians of the
'knowledge of the unfolding way'. Participants may take on 'process
observing' and 'enabling' roles.
INVOLVING THE COMMUNITY
Whole communities may become involved. At times groups of
different size may form and reform and share their outcomes with other
sub-groups, or the whole village, or groups of villages. Local
self-help Actions may meet, complement and facilitate other local
Grassroots Actions in other villages and regions.
People may act together to support each other at appropriate
times. Action may start with only a few people involved. At times many
people may come together for specific events, healing gatherings,
celebrations and healing actions. It may be possible for hundreds,
sometimes thousands to be involved - collective healing action. As
well, throughout every day, Grassroots people may be involved in
myriads of significant, trivial Well-being acts.
In many cases it is the women who may take the initiative. It
may revolve around both cultural healing and intercultural
reconciliation. Mediation therapy skills may emerge out of group
process.
Action may expand links among individuals and families and
turn strangers into friends. It may build communing villages. It may
permeate through everyday life. It may 'village' the village.
WHOLISTIC AND INTEGRATED
Local Healing Action may simultaneously address everything
undermining Well-being. It may be both pervasively holistic, and
detailed in its holism. Actions may have integrity built in. This
contrasts with the typical structure of government agencies which
devides the world and the wellbeing agenda into departments, sectors
and programs, with little or no cooperation between the parts.
Bopp and Ahai stressed the appropriateness of evolving a shift
towards wholistic and integrated approaches in Bougainville governance,
'This integative approach will require an integrated management and
implementation structure that contributes to a gradual change in the
cooperative culture of government' (Bopp & Ahai).
What works in one village may, subject to local openness, be
taken to and shared with other villages. Whole villages may join in
Action with other villages. Action may be focused on all the
inter-related issues involved -simultaneously working on impediments
to, for example, economic, socio-emotional and habitat Well-being.
Because of the multifaceted nature of nurturing Action, it
tends to have simultaneous multiple positive consequences. For example,
a range of psycho-social and emotional issues may be resolving during
the process of exploring economic opportunities.
The process allows for the integrating of initiatives in ways
that minimizes funding requirements and maximizes overall
effectiveness. Because of this, the timing and specifics of the cascade
of initiatives and change is a function of local needs and aspirations.
VILLAGE BASED EVALUATING PROCESSES
Villagers may carry out evaluation processes at the local
village level. This may proceed in tandem with Action Programs. Actions
that 'work' may be passed on to other locals, consensually validated
and adopted as policy at the local level.
Action and evaluation may combine the structured and the
general, the formal and the informal. Action may creatively and
positively use the community grapevines for passing on what works. It
may have self-sustaining energy. Both specific and general programs may
evolve out of Action. In all of this, Action may be generative. It may
be a dynamic, expanding process that continually subjects its own
Action to review.
Another important feature is that it typically starts with
Action based on consensually valid local knowledge. It typically
commences with self-starters. In the early stages these self starters
may often be identified and energized by visiting enablers.
Laceweb experience is that identifying the local natural
nurturers who are self starters is the single most potent contributor
to local self help action getting under way.
Increasingly these local self starters may start doing
Well-being Action themselves and demonstrating to others that things
can be done. They may get others involved who follow and extend their
example. Older locals tend to identify Self Help Action as like the old
traditional ways.
In contrast to the typical Western processes, with 'Local
Grassroots nurturing Action', local people are very familiar with local
issues and may immediately get on with the job in hand. Action people
are not dependent
on constantly seeking anyone's permission or approval, especially the
approval of experts.
Typically, in Western processes, nothing can start until lots
of research takes place. In the processes being described in this
document, action gets under way directly. Things may be in no way
certain. People may have little or no idea how things will unfold. This
tentativeness is in marked contrast with mainstreams preoccupation with
'certainty' so controllers can predict and control.
With self help Action, a key feature is that the starting point
is 'local wisdom guiding both Action and evaluating'. Action,
evaluating and research proceed in tandem. It is a wholistic process,
not a step by step process as in Western ways.
Local needs are resolved by Grassroots people for and on their
own behalf. They discuss the communal lived life experience of their
Action, especially their successes. They drop or modify what they do
not want and keep exploring and testing as fits the need. In this way,
rigorous evaluating is built into the unfolding Action. Local
Well-being criteria are benchmarks for this evaluating. Evaluating is
thus culturally appropriate to local context. What emerges are 'Actions
that work'.
Different communities may vary markedly as to what constitutes
their Well-being culture. Action is about the local community exploring
and making consensual decisions about what they need and want for their
own Well-being; taking the necessary steps themselves to attain their
Well-being and deciding themselves when they have not got it. Only they
know this. The local wisdom is with the local people. Typically, so are
most of the skills. Increasingly the people involved are saying, 'We do
not want outsiders trying to provide our Well-being, or deciding our
Well-being for us'.
CONCLUDING
Around the world there seems to be a consensus between
governments of all persuasions about the value of reducing the size of
government expenditure and of getting better value for the public
dollar. Nurturing Cultural Action for Well-being may be a vehicle which
could contribute to both these aims. National, provincial and local
governments as well as Global and Regional funding bodies may be well
placed to support Grassroots Action. There is also substantial scope
for multinational and transnational companies to play a non
compromising philanthropic role.
Complimentary briefing papers:
Links:
Laceweb Home Page
Laceweb - Self-Help Action Supporting Survivors of Torture and Trauma in Se Asia, Oceania and Australasia
- Small Generalisable Actions
Short Version of Previous Page.
Trauma Healing Workshop Manual
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