How to get to successful “multi-culti” activities?

Honest goals

Through a series of articles I would like to elaborate the principles that need to be taken into consideration while working with the noble values of peace, especially in Macedonia and the region. This text is a result of my experience while working on the topics: peace, tolerance and non-violence. As a result of this, they probably have certain subjectivism since I am also part of the story and I am telling it as I see it.

 

What is multi-culti?
“Multi-culti” are all activities whose main objective is multiculturalism with all consequent noble values that result from it. It should be an educative concept that encourages and initiates interests in studying different cultural traditions, customs and values in one place, such as ours is. In order to avoid creation of cliches, the activities related to multiculturalism are often called “multi-culti” and “multivitamin”, even by the implementers of the activities themselves.

Most of the activities that tackle the issue of peace have multiculturalism in the focus. Other topics in the focus are certainly reconciliation, tolerance, non-violence, non-violent communication, perceptions, stereotypes, prejudices etc. Because of that, there is a need to talk and debate more about multiculturalism from a practical angle, analyzing the necessary elements during successful implementation of peace projects.

 

Trust in the promoted values
To be “an agent of changes” in the society you should not only have, or think that you have good knowledge and will to acquire materialistic gains. You will change the society when you become a part of the story that you want the whole world to hear. This is especially relevant for the agents of changes that work or would like to work in the fields that cover moral, ethic and customs’ values, regardless of they are old or new. When you work with noble values such as peace, humanity and multiculturalism, you undoubtedly need much more than motives for materialistic gains. You need to make self-assessment and self-evaluation. Firstly, can you make objective difference between the good and the bad (characteristic of intelligent Homo sapiens)? Secondly, are your persuasions, attitudes and values in conflict with the values that you are to promote? All in all, you will need to have honest intentions so that you could see the change where you want to. If the hidden goals do not surface at the very moment, be sure that you will feel them by the results that will eventually be shady, vague and artless. After all, what do we make projects for? Most probably, the reason for it is that we get personal satisfaction in the results.

You cannot promote values that you do not believe in as it will reflect in your results and they (the results) determine the faith of every single one of us. The better results we achieve in and for the society, the more successful we will be in the fields we work in, but we should certainly take into consideration continuity, as a small mistake can take us back to the beginning.

Such thinking might not correspond to the time of poverty in the area where each day we go through avoiding clashes of any type. But this would be just one more excuse of those who are not powerful, those who are passive viewers of the destruction of their world and the world of their grandchildren. Why? If we only move from the position of “I can not” to the position “I can”, we will be encouraged to change the world and everything that bothers us.

Our reality has made us cruel and adjustable creatures for which everything is of great excitement and interests for a short time but then quickly forgotten. It is always bad when something is changed, but it will certainly be accepted if it lasts more than three days and if it does not tackle our close circle of interests and human relations. The other way round, this could be one of the strategies that can be very well used by those working with promotion of new sensitive values, even to those working in the field of peace.

In our country, unfortunately, the civil society sector works with noble values of peace and multiculturalism of purely lucrative goals. Of course there are exceptions that can be noticed very easily due to their results or the ways and processes that contribute to such results.

 

I have already mentioned a few basic elements and principles that would contribute to your peace projects to be successful. The abovementioned principles are just part of the personal characteristics that a leader or a peace project activist should have. In the following texts I am going to talk more precisely about the additional elements necessary for successful projects in the field of peace, such as: equality, representation, neutrality, involvement, socialization, humor, authority etc.

 

Albert Hani, Conflict Management Trainer