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Section 3

Level III: GAINING WISDOM & CAPABILITY.

Once you have prepared yourself for what you will experience in a country, it is important to know how to Mobilize for Action. All the great ideas and the best intensions will be for naught unless you can catalyze the local community into action. Here are two basic handbooks that may assist you.

Print out the Handbook for Mobilizers. (it’s only 27 pages, but its advice is right on target for your task)

Discuss each chapter in your group, and determine how to put your Plan of Action in place when you arrive on site, incorporating the knowledge and understandings from the previous steps. You may choose to print out the supplemental handouts and appendices, they have proven to be filled with deep wisdom, both in contents and meanings. Its contents are:
  • 1. Getting Prepared
    • 1.1. Know Your Goals
    • 1.2. Know Your Target Community
    • 1.3. Know the Skills You Need
    • 1.4. Know the Basic Concepts:
    • 1.5. Outside Resources
  • 2. Getting Started
    • 2.1. The Mobilization Cycle
    • 2.2. Clearing the Pathway
    • 2.3. Awareness Raising
    • 2.4. Unity Organizing
    • 2.5. Public Dialogue
    • 2.6. Challenging the Community
    • 2.7. Community Chooses Its Action
    • 2.8. Organizing for Strength
  • 3. Organizing the Community
    • 3.1. Action Training
    • 3.2. Forming the Executive
    • 3.3. Assessing Conditions
    • 3.4. Preparing a Community Action Plan
    • 3.5. Project Design, Proposals, Outside Resources
    • 3.6. Monitoring Arrangements
    • 3.7. Organizing for Action
  • 4. Into Action
    • 4.1. Implementing the Community Plan
    • 4.2. Monitoring
    • 4.3. Community Generated Needs
    • 4.4. Needed Skills
    • 4.5. Communication
    • 4.6. Celebrations
    • 5. Sustaining the Intervention
    • 5.1. The Development Mobilization Cycle
    • 5.2. Community Leadership & Mobilization
    • 5.3. Lessons Learned & Possibilities

The Mobilizer’s handbook is a result of years of learnings and best practices in developing countries. Real wisdom & capability is a life-long quest – something you will continually aspire to, but never fully achieve.

After you and your team digest the best practices for getting action, you should then tackle the issue of uniting the forces of a community behind the new effort.

The underpinning of all change is shifting relationships. You will shift relationships most effectively by:

      • Building Effective Teams, (your small group, using God’s guidance and the tools in this kit, will naturally come together in a team), and
      • Creating Strong Alliances (your small group will need to multiply its impact many-fold with other local Churches, people, and peace-directed organizations)

Teamwork will display synergy, cooperation, coordination, and effective utilization of resources. Alliances are the most important leverage point in large systems change because they cause synergies to occur that will enable you to impact God’s people despite the lack of many resources. You are closest to God’s divinity when you embrace love and co-create with others. That love is expressed in your relationship and your ability to co-create is displayed through mutual innovation. The synergies that evolve from small group teams and large systems alliances are a concrete manifestation of God’s divine work and His desire for you to engage in Unity and Synergy. 

Many difficulties occur in countries experiencing problems because of dysfunctional relationships between people and organizations. It will be your purpose to unite around a common vision. (We will be preparing a short Partnering & Alliance Handbook to supplement the Handbook for Mobilizers.

Always be on the lookout for potential alliances. Examples may be between Local spiritual leaders, Organized religious Institutions, Churches, or with Peace Corps members, or with large Non-Governmental Institutions (NGOs) such as the Red Cross or United Nations, or local Community Based Organizations (CBOs), etc. Remember an alliance need not be with any big or powerful institution, in fact the best alliance may be with local people or persons, who believe that you care, and that your heart and soul are there for them. They could just turn out to be your most powerful alliance. God does work in mysterious ways. Follow your heart and get creative in God’s name. Thy will be done.

  • Remember the guidance from Ecclesiastes 4:9:

      • Two are better off than one, because together they can work more effectively.
      If one of them falls down, the other can help him up ….
      Two people can resist attack that would defeat one person alone.
      A rope made of three cords is hard to break      .

 

This is the end of Module One.
The next section contains Module Two
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