FOUNDATIONS FOR PEACE Berlin Symposium on Community Foundations

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FOUNDATIONS FOR PEACEBerlin Symposium on
Community Foundations

• Avila Kilmurray, Christine Delport, and Barry
  Knight
• 3 December 2004

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What is Foundations for Peace?

• Global network of community philanthropies
  working in divided societies
• Formed 2003
• Values started with commitment to peace
  building, social justice, human rights and
  inclusion
• Year later network has developed
• Still long way to go

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Charter

• A peer-led global network of independent,
  indigenous funders working to advance equality,
  diversity and inter-dependence in areas of
  entrenched and persistent communal conflict with
  a history of, or potential for, violence.
• Eight members

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Members

• Abram Fund Initiatives, Israel
• Balkan Trust for Children and Youth
• Community Foundation for Northern Ireland
• Dalit Foundation, India
• Greater Rustenburg Community Foundation, South
  Africa
• Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust, Sri Lanka
• Nirnaya, India
• Tewa, Nepal

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Origins

• Initiated by Community Foundation for Northern
  Ireland with funding from European Union
• Northern Ireland experience shows divided
  societies pose unique challenges

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Social justice and human rights

• Actions have to be rooted in social justice and
  human rights
• Social injustice often a cause of war
• Human rights often a casualty of war

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Vision

• Reconciliation through the healing of
  relationships
• Psalm 8510
• Truth and Mercy have met together. Justice and
  Peace have kissed.
• Ubuntu
• Coudman

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Theoretical background

• John Galtung three terms
• Peacekeeping
• Peacemaking
• Peacebuilding
• First two appropriate for elected
  politicians/UN
• Peacebuilding appropriate for a foundation
• Peacebuilding became welcome though challenging
  in mid 90s Northern Ireland
• Inspired by John Paul Lederachs approach to
  peacebuilding

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John Paul Lederach

• Peacebuilding is more than post-accord
  reconstruction. Here peacebuilding
  encompasses, the full array of processes,
  approaches and stages needed to transform
  conflict toward more sustainable, peaceful
  relationships. Thisinvolves a wide range of
  activities and functions that both precede and
  follow formal peace accords. Metaphorically,
  peace is seen not merely as a stage in time or a
  condition. It is a dynamic social construct.

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Levels of Peacebuilding/Peacemaking
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Five key insights about peacebuilding

• Need for shared aspiration for a pluralist open
  society where participatory governance and active
  citizenship
• Real gains less fear, more trust, more optimism,
  gains in self worth and social and economic
  improvement
• Need for the understanding of others situation
• Unrelated to any particular political system or
  agreement
• Long haul

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Approach by CFNI

• Not just money
• Use reserves of social capital (privileged
  stakeholder)
• Independence
• Work with grassroots leaders (community
  development skills)
• Mourn losses and reach out to reconciliation
• Giving voices to victims and political prisoners
• Create safe space

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Approaches (continued)

• Broker relations between grassroots and middle
  range leaders
• Keeping communication channels open
• Counter demonization
• Human rights
• Social justice
• Changing mindsets
• True reconciliation is to remember and change

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Why a New Network of Community Philanthropy?

• Special case of divided societies
• 111 wars 1989-2002 most civil wars
• Unique situation
• Dealing with tough issues
• Hurt, anger, pain, betrayal, revenge psychology
• Physical scars and hidden landmines
• Individuals in community foundations personally
  touched by the conflict (in some cases tragedy)

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Support

• Need peer group support from people in similar
  situation
• Learning from one anothers techniques
• Creating an international body of expertise
• Creating a new voice

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How does it work?

• Debt to WingsCF
• Face to face meetings
• Conference calls
• Intranet
• Working groups
• Commitment to writing up the initiative and
  publishing findings

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Some emerging findings

• Variation age, origins, history, geography,
  resources, scope, method of working
• Quandary about agreement/understanding of value
  based concepts
• Nevertheless much communality on 4 issues
• Distorted politics
• Operational implications of a divided society
• Ways of working and methods
• Measuring impact

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Distorted politics

• History is powerful
• Power relations are unequal
• Words are loaded
• Politics are partial
• Symbols have significance
• Discrimination the norm

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Operational implications

• Ethics (neutrality and passion)
• No rule book
• Much academic writing on peace building not
  practical
• Accountability is not straightforward

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Ways of working

• More political than usual
• Private space
• Difficult issues violence, victims, prisoners
• Trust is vital yet easily broken

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Impacts

• Monitoring and evaluation cannot tell full story
• Hard to measure efforts
• Often cant be claimed
• No good metrics
• We have to work on the metrics
• Adverse effect on the endowment because of
  controversy

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What are the benefits so far?

• Early days
• Reducing isolation
• Exchanging skills, knowledge and experience
• Adding a value to individual organizations
• Conflict individual/collective agenda
• Building a global practice
• Creating a voice

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Questions for the future

• How should the network develop?
• Should it stay small and rely on high quality
  relations? How does it avoid elitism?
• How should it relate to wider community
  foundation movement? (What give and get?)
• How does Foundations for Peace stay above
  politics?
• How can we ensure that the bulk of resources are
  used on front-line activity?
• How learning of the network trickle down to
  street level?
• How does a network stay dynamic?

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Truth and Mercy have met together. Justice and
Peace have kissed.