Community organizing within my slum of Phothong has been my primary focus for the past 6 months or so. Things have been happening so quickly, I’ve been on such a steep learning curve, that I’ve gotten way behind on sharing any of my stories or what I’ve learned. Now I’m wanting to do that, but I kind of don’t know where to start. I think this will likely be a series of posts, since I could honestly write a book about all that’s happened since August.
Maybe first a bit about why I’m so excited about community organizing in this context.
In September our team, along with other Servant Partners missionaries from other sites, were part of a great training on community organizing. The week was led by Rebecca Gifford, director of Millennium Tools . It totally changed the way I was thinking about organizing. I had originally thought of it simply as people in a community getting together to talk about their issues and work toward solutions together. That is part of it. But the more I’m learning, the more I see it as a type of leadership development, assumption-challenging, paradigm-shifting, empowering process. So much more than just cleaning up garbage or circulating a petition.
It’s been a slow process in Phothong. In later posts I’ll probably go into more of the specific stories and processes we’ve used. But suffice it to say, nobody who has lived for decades under a patron-client, “false generosity”, fatalistic world-view will quickly come to see themselves as capable of weilding community-transforming power.
So many of Phothong’s choices have been made for them. So many people and groups (ourselves included) have come in and offered services or money on their own agendas, using their own decision-making processes, making their own assumptions of the community’s needs, without recognizing the capabilities of these strong and creative (though broken like the rest of us) men and women in front of them.
Most of the residents of my slum have grown to prefer this. In many ways it is easier to wait with outstretched hands, even if that means losing the power to choose and to act which is so much a part of what it means to be human. It is also easier when the fear of disappointment, the memories of past failures and oppression loom large. Easier to not try anymore, easier to give up.
“Nobody wants to work together,” I would frequently hear. “Nobody wants to put in any effort or come to anything unless they get some kind of handout.”
But the people saying that did want to do something. And I heard that repeatedly. So clearly not everyone wanted to sit around waiting. But because they felt like the only ones, they assumed it was pointless to try to work toward any kind of change.
As I have talked with people individually, shared some of those stories to others, and gathered these discontented women in my house to talk together, I’ve begun to slowly see this paradigm shift happen. We’re not there yet. And sometimes it feels like we’re going backwards. But people are beginning to work together. On the king’s birthday the entire community celebrated the holiday together for the first time, as a result of this dialoguing, reflecting and acting together that has begun. People are beginning to express creative ideas that had no outlet before. They are beginning to tell their stories, to see the value and potential of working together rather than waiting for outside help. It has been exciting.
The paradigm shift is also happening inside of me. The “iron rule” has become ingrained in me : “never do for others what they can do for themselves.” I am growing in my ability to recognize strength and capacity in the poorest of my neighbors, rather than just see their needs and problems. I’m seeing how my neighbors, working together, are so much better at bringing about change in their community than I could ever be. As I’m grasping these principles and watching them work, I think that wherever I live or work in the future I’ll be operating out of these concepts. In the future I hope to pursue my long-held goal of going to law school, and hope to use those skills in organizing and public policy advocacy Stateside.
There’s still a long way to go in Phothong. I’m praying that the trust I’ve gained in working with the community toward what they feel is important will open more doors to sharing the Gospel. I’m praying that ultimately the people will come to see their need for spiritual transformation as well, though like the Israelites of Nehemiah’s time, it will likely be working on rebuilding the “wall” that comes first. But I believe God desires holistic health for my community: hope rather than fatalism, unity rather than isolation, reconciliation to their Creator and empowerer. It’s been so much fun to partner with God in this work!
