Grassroots Peace Building in Nepal

Santoshi Wagle, a 2022 Goldin Global Fellow and non-violent communication (NVC) trainer for NVC Practise Group in Nepal, shares her experience and reflections leading an event for International Peace Day 2022 in her own country, Nepal. Santoshi unpacks her challenges, the lessons she learned, and the profound impact she is making by using the skills she gained through her Goldin Fellowship and the GATHER platform.

During International Peace Day, students, youths, and community groups came together to celebrate: “The participants explored the existing conflicts and causes of violence, the role of peacebuilder, qualities of peacebuilder peace-building process, emotional awareness, emotional regulation, and conflict transformation,” Santoshi explains. Coming together was necessary for the community to address common issues and find practical solutions and action plans for sustainable peace and social change. "With the growing conflict among humans at internal and external levels, the event turned out to be a self-reflective program.” she adds. 

Training Women and Children on Peace Building

These community initiatives come with challenges and hardships too. Santoshi particularly emphasized the challenge of bringing a group of women together in Nepal: "Despite their interests and will, it was challenging for women to find the time for this activity because of their responsibility to care for their children and daily work.” Nevertheless, in collaboration and coordination with her local partners, namely NVC Practice Group Nepal, Radha Krishna Aama Samuha (women group), and Srijana Secondary School, a coalition was able to cover travel expenses and create some allowances for women participants: “We also managed a caregiver to care for children during the event, so we could include the mothers having small children.”

In hindsight, she also reflects on the importance of the event's timing and the arrangements of essential expenses for participants and programming. For this, Santoshi emphasizes the pivotal role of safe circles: "Those safe circles are where we can discuss and empower the groups to discuss widely in the community event, so every voice can be expressed and fully heard.” Safe circles allowed for both personal and programmatic need to be addressed by the community as a whole, rather than becoming the burden of one person.

She also acknowledges how this one-time event turned out very challenging to balance the power and openness among the participants: “Regular meetings and follow-up events are important for sustainability, awareness, and empowerment for promoting peace and social justice.”

Connecting Nepal with an International Community

Santoshi connects the successful completion of this event with the skills she learned during the GATHER course while being a Goldin Global Fellow: “The creative insights that I learned during the course, in identifying community assets, community visioning summit, the idea of technical challenges and adaptive challenges, the importance of bringing the community together into the discussion for the collective issues and developing shared agreement and follow up were constructive in successful implementation and create wider impact in the community." “Gratitude to the Goldin family for the profound wisdom that I received during and after the fellowship”, she adds.

She and her team organize regular meetings, community events, and international day celebrations to strengthen grassroots communities and promote sustainable social change. This year, she is conducting workshops on nonviolent communication for teachers and women groups, continuing with women groups conducting safe listening circles and awareness programs against the dowry system and caste discrimination as a follow-up to last year's activities: “I invite the wider community to join this program and synergize to create a wider impact. Let's join hands to have peace and harmony in this land.”

Conclusively, she invites volunteers to join the programs in schools and communities, organized with her partner organizations The School of Nonviolence and Srijana Secondary Schools: “We offer an opportunity to learn, share and play with the wider community.”


Our 2022 Global Fellow graduates are stronger together

By Yusuph Masanja, Co-Facilitator of the Global Alumni Network

The 2022 Goldin Global Fellows from diverse backgrounds, representing 13 different countries

Since the inaugural cohort of the Goldin Global Fellows in 2018, the Goldin Institute has evolved the GATHER curriculum to remove barriers to access for grassroots leaders and to augment the pedagogy to work for the realities of our Fellows across the globe. One such development was the ability for Fellows to access the curriculum not only on iPads but on any internet-enabled device or smart phone which is most convenient for them. This change removes a significant barrier for Fellows who reside in remote places and lack reliable access to electricity, wifi and the latest gadget or repair services.

As a Facilitator of the program, our intentionality in removing barriers is why I am such an advocate of the GATHER approach. It is how our network of Alumni has grown to 150 Fellows from diverse backgrounds, including those leaders who are often left out of conferences or trainings, who now hail from over 40 countries. And we are confidently making space for more grassroots leaders to join us. The Community of Practice that Fellows continue to build, one cohort at a time, is proof that building change from the assets we have is a path to meaningful and inclusive progress.

This year we saw our third cohort of Fellows embark on the Global Fellows Program. The 2022 Goldin Global Fellows are 14 bold and wise grassroots leaders from across the globe, including Cote d'Ivoire, North Macedonia, the USA, Ghana, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Nepal, Pakistan, Malawi, Bangladesh, Albania, Sierra Leone, and Kenya. Amidst our diversity, we are united by the desire to learn, reflect and implement proven ideas for community-driven social change in our respective countries.

At the graduation ceremony on 4th November, the 2022 Fellows demonstrated their achievements and shared their aspirations. The ceremony began with a message to all Fellows from the Founder and Board Chair of the institute, Diane Goldin who warmly welcomed the new Fellows to the network:

I could not be more honored to have the opportunity to know so many talented leaders and know the innovative results. My congratulations for all your work in achieving your goals and for being a part of our global family. You are appreciated and loved.” - Diane Goldin

At the graduation, Fellows shared moving testimonies of how their five months through the program transformed their worldviews, their grassroots activism, and brought new friends into their lives. As a Facilitator, this feedback is so rewarding, which keeps me motivated to expand the opportunity for even more community leaders around the world. Here are a few quotes from some Fellows captured from the graduation ceremony:

"The process of assets mapping where we identified people, institutions, connections -- and all things which give us life in our communities -- helped us to see the abundance of resources that can be tapped to make progress." - Abdul Rahman Kowa from Sierra Leone.

Examples of asset maps by Fellows in Malawi, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, and Cote d'Ivoire

Florence Adhiambo from Kenya shared a great insight from what she learned during the program:

"The GATHER curriculum reminded me that leadership is not a position, but rather a commitment to building partnerships and trust with our fellow community members where everyone is aware that everyone has something to contribute."

Examples of Community Visioning Summits which were held in Nepal, North Macedonia, and Zimbabwe.

A key element of the curriculum on the GATHER Platform is the hosting of Community Visioning Summits; these allowed Fellows to share assets they have identified with broader community members, and to use appreciative inquiry to discover aspirations and shared priorities with the community. Central to the GATHER curriculum is the capacity for grassroots leaders to involve the voices of those most often left out in regular community processes and actively remove barriers to full participation. 

In addition to sharing what they learned, Fellows shared key aspirations and next steps for how to collaborate with neighbors and global peers. In one example, Global Fellow Klementina Dobrevska from North Macedonia shared her next steps for addressing the issue of bullying and violence in schools:

Students who have disabilities are faced with a lot of pressure and bullying. Now we are working to promote children’s rights. So far, we have 500 students on board and in our second Community Visioning Summit we managed to leverage a new tool for youth participation which will allow us to get students’ opinions across the country.

As a final step in the Program, all Fellows partnered with their community members to develop a vision and outline next steps they will take to bring these aspirations to their respective countries. We will be sharing Fellows progress with you in the second edition of this article so that you can better understand and support their efforts. We believe everyone can make a difference no matter how small!

In addition to Fellows sharing their wisdom during the ceremony, they also performed poems, and songs, and led a candlelight ceremony. You can watch the entire recording of the graduation ceremony here.

Before closing, our Executive Director Travis Rejman, virtually presented the Graduation Certificates to each Fellow recognizing their successful completion of the GATHER curriculum and invited them to the Global Alumni Network. Staff members shared their messages of congratulations for the Fellows and Travis Rejman closed the ceremony with the following remarks:  

“It’s been an honor to learn together with you over these past 20 weeks. Over the last 20 years, we have been inspiring, connecting, and equipping grassroots leaders around the world so that they can learn from each other and work together to tackle really tough issues that all of our communities are facing. This celebration is a perfect example of what this work looks like in the real world. Thank you all for your dedication and hard work. We are very proud to stand with you and celebrate your accomplishments. We are very excited to welcome you into our global family.” — Travis Rejman.