towards peaceful societies

[Lucia Nass]

Based on an interview with a local governance advisor in Kathmandu, Nepal

What was most interesting about what I heard in this interview?

We have peace in nepal now, and a new constitution that has the most far reaching form of local autonomy and respect for diversity in Asia. Now how do we redefine 'peace'? He always gets bogged down into these kind of discussions. Wants to come together with other professonals to volontarily contribute experience for change and hope in society.

He has recently observed that there is so much joy in rural communities, for instance at a village wedding, looking at the crowd, people are so happy and laughing, not just the kids, everyone is having a great time. It can't compare to the luxurious, expensive, almost boring city weddings - these are not satisfying. How do we get back to that joyful way of living - that community spirit? Western influences are so great, even his two children now living in Australia have developed these ego centred ifestyles, they are more on their own than they are together.

What are the challenges this person currently faces?
How to get others exited to join, volontarilly in nation building. Most of the local NGOs no longer work for their own cause, the work, and run the agendas of donor projects.

Where do they see emerging possibilities in their work?
There is a lot of money for 'capacity building' of local governments. Can we influence how this money gets spend? Can we offer, with a group of like minded change facilitators, a course - like the leadership development and professional develpment programs we used to run together in the past. Helping people to come back to themselves first, and than gradually build new, more supportive social structures.

We could draft our proposal, and start with the people and programs we know. We can offer to accompany your teams for at least one year on this change journey - working towards transformational change, peaceful societies that live in harony with each other and with nature.

What did I learn about how to create generative conversations?

If you focus on the heart - you connect differently with people.

Given this experience, what ideas or practices could I now implement in my own context?
It brought back the leadership development programs I used to be involved with. How such a long term process, moving from self, to team, to organisation, to society - is still very relevant. Especially if we can combine it with insights from 'creating the future we want'. This 'old' practice that I loved can give a good structure to facilitating large scale change.