As a U.S. private foundation, Winds of Peace has been providing development assistance in Nicaragua for more than 30 years. Most of that time and effort has been rendered on the “inside,” hand-in-hand with the members of the cooperatives and associations and networks with who we have partnered.
It has been very personal work. We can describe the organizations. We can remember where they are and the circumstances in which their people live. We can name names. That accompaniment is a condition of our work, being “on the ground” where there is little access, few outsider visits and sparse resources. It’s being with partners on the inside, helping to find a small opening where opportunity might be waiting on the other side. It’s still our model, still the way that we will continue to work in Nicaragua. But we also have added a component to such work, this time from the “outside.”
The Nobel Peace Prize Forum is an event which Winds of Peace has sponsored for many years. The Forum exists as the only sanctioned event under the Nobel Peace Prize name outside of the award selection itself. Annually, it has brought together past peace laureates, activists, scholars and those working in their own ways and in their own niches for peace and justice, “on the inside,” where life is actually lived. This year’s Forum will be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota during September 13-16. It will feature many stories of peace-building and human development. And it will include work underwritten by Winds of Peace.
In what is billed as a “high-level dialogue” session, major research and “inside” work on cooperatives will be presented by Foundation colleague Rene Mendoza. Rene is recognized as a development innovator and engages in “participatory action research” to facilitate actions by cooperative members themselves. Specifically, Rene will highlight the efforts and conclusions from cooperatives in various countries. And he’ll emphasize the importance and stabilizing impact of cooperatives in societies emerging from periods of conflict, and how their financial impacts serve as an essential ingredient for both economic and social well-being. He has also assembled a panel of six cooperative members from Central and South America to join in the conversation and share their experiences of cooperative life and meaning. Yet, that’s not the full extent of the session.
The rest of the invited audience will be comprised of individuals from cooperative-supporting organizations, entities which have in some way positioned themselves as partners with the small cooperatives, whether in the roles of funders, marketers, associations, Fair Trade and Organic certifiers, buyers, roasters or retailers. They are (hopefully) big names. The presentations are designed to invite dialogue with this invited audience about where the entire process chain is working well, where it isn’t, and how collectively all actors might make it more valuable to the essential focus: the producer and his/her family.
As a result of the discourse, the participants will be encouraged to arrive at an objective or change that might be affected during the ensuing 12 months, a plan of action which will be shared with the at-large Forum attendees. In 2018, some of those discourse participants will then return to the Forum for a report-out on success, and whether the conclusions and actions identified in 2017 really made an impact. It’s a very action and accountability effort, unlike many conference end results, and one that Forum organizers (and sponsors, like WPF) hope can bring real impact to cooperatives as major peace components. It’s “outside work,” changing the focus temporarily to the ambient world surrounding places like rural Nicaragua. Consider this blog entry as an invitation to experience at least this part of the Forum in the Fall.
Why? Because sometimes circumstances don’t allow us to achieve our needs fully by ourselves. There is not one among us who has reached full potential and well-being on our own. Sometimes, we require the intervention of “outside work….”
