Peace as Global language Seminar
Peace can get its root and become possible when there is food on the table. As the great Musician Bob Marley one time said “A hungry man is an angry man”
The requirement of basic need is paramount of the security of live and livelihood and also offers the opportunity for physical, mental, social and spiritual health. If freedom and justice is lacking, peace will not prevail.
In Asian Rural Institute, we as the rural leaders, we have special opportunity to be an instrument of peace in working in the rural areas where poverty rites are high and people always lack self-confidence. In learning to work with soil, producing food and also working to create a healthy environment and peaceful world where .ARI is training as to work together for sustainable and abundant life from the earth.
We have come together from rural communities, farmer’s cooperatives, and NGOs which support the needs of the rural people. We train to be expert in community building and through these communities we will provide a foundation for peace building and cooperation on the grass root level where people can develop their potentials.
As rural leaders from various developing countries, our most challenging is how to create a sustainable and peaceful community. We faced with poverty, hunger and lack of social assess. When communities are powerless and young people are denied adequate work and income they are likely to be lured by power drunk politicians into rebel groups. Most of the youth are trying to resist, but still they can be victims of unsafe village life and that is why there a lot of violence and wars in most of the developing countries.
Asian Rural Institute has been working since 36 years ago to create a peaceful and just world, focusing on rural leaders and teaching sustainable local life. Asian Rural Institute believe that these rural leaders can lead the people to create stability by using local available resources to provide adequate food and energy to meet the needs of the people because any community that comes together to provided adequate food security reduces conflict.
My work after my graduation-2001
After graduating from Asian Rural Institute Rural Leaders Training Program and Negro's Program in 2001/2002, I returned to my work as a pastor for Saviour Baptist Church and also work as a project/administrative Coordinator for All Africa Baptist Fellowship till date.
I continued ministering to my rural congregations which most of them were farmers and implementing community projects. I am currently working with young Adults and single mothers to teach them income generating skills such as snail rearing, grass cutter (a bush animal) rearing, poultry and also encourage them to involve in aquaculture.
I also started a small demonstration farm, where I teach low cost sustainable methods of raising crops, vegetables and livestock. The farm has grow to included 2 pig pens, one grass cutter and snail pen, one pen for chicken and rabbits and variety of fresh vegetables.
Moreover, I started a new project-“Community Livelihood Project” with the help of a Baptist Missionary. Within the Community Livelihood Project, we designed a training program to deal with poverty. And we name the program WALC.
Program Name:
WALC: We Advance Local Capacity – a learning partnership between the Saviour Baptist Church, Ghana Baptist Convention, Community Transformation and Development Network, and International Ministries. The CTDNET was an NGO which I formed purposely for the transformation of the farm communities and also have a networking among the farmers.
Vision and Mission Statement:
“You have to learn to WALC before you can run.”
WALC believes that the foundation for poverty alleviation and positive global interaction begins when local communities are able to meet their holistic needs and are secure in their identities. We understand that poverty is the inability to meet holistic (emotional, intellectual, spiritual, physical, and social) needs and that poverty is caused by the lack of acceptance and identification by oneself and others. In other words, poverty is caused when persons and communities are marginalized. WALC believes that every community posses the assets needed to bring about sustainable development. Communities need to be empowered to discover their assets and to act on their assets.
Community development and Transformation Network.
I was reading Bible one day and I reached a statement in the New Testament which Jesus quoted from the Book of Isaiah chapter 61.
And Jesus said this to the people around him “The Lord’s Spirit has come to me, because He has chosen me to tell the good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to announce freedom for prisoners, to give sight to the blind, to free everyone who suffers and to say, “This is the year the Lord has chosen”- Luke 4:18-19. I used this passage as the manifesto of CTDNET.
Foundation of Poverty Alleviation (FPA)
Poverty means illiteracy, inadequate medical care, diseases, lack of adequate food, and brain damage. We may not know how many children are suffering form irreversible brain damage due to insufficient protein during their childhood. According to UNICEF report in 1994 190 million children were malnourished and they are under five years and these kids majority are from the developing countries.
We can lay a proper foundation for poverty alleviation and also create positive global interaction when local communities in the developing countries are able to meet their holistic needs and are secured in their identities. Poverty is the inability to meet holistic needs for example, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, physical, and social. Poverty has been a major problem for us in these countries because of the lack of self acceptance, identification and dignity.
Poverty is still there because of the richness of the rich, indifferences, oppressive and exploitative activities of the rich, personal, institutional or international level. Development should not reduce to an abstract entities the primary goal of development should be seen that individuals are acquiring the balance of human dignity and identity.
In other words, poverty is caused when persons and communities are marginalized. I believe that every community posses the assets needed to bring about sustainable development. Communities need to be empowered to discover their assets and to act on their assets. Therefore, we can have peace in the world if the rich would stop exploitation and rather support the poor in a way that they can do away with negative self-image by helping them to recognize them potential, identity and dignity. When a nation lost her identity and dignity, the desire result is wars, conflicts, hunger and poverty and peace cannot be spoken within as a global language.
Building Social Structure (BSS)
I came to know that a social structure that built on the ideas of only scientific method to reach the truth and values will eventually end with self-destruct. To reduce poverty in my country what I am doing is by empowering my people to realize their hidden assets and the importance of using their natural phenomena to search truth and their social values. When Japan went to learn technology from America and Britain, they came back to use their own culture without the culture of the West to develop their nation. They maintained their identity. When a nation lost it’s identify, poverty will prevailed
The problems of the developing countries are that some of us who happen to have the opportunity to come and study in the 1st world country normally refused to go back and help the development of their nations. And even when they go back instead of applying the learning knowledge to use their culture and empower the local people to dig out the assets within them for development, they often try to use the West influence to bring development which is sometime impossible to bring the desire result.
But don’t you agree with me that if we can first examine the needs of the billions people who live on one dollar a day and put ourselves in their shoes we can then we come out with and effective Action plans to help eradicate poverty and help bring Peace to our planet?
Thank You.
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