Finding “The Power of One” in the Voices of Many

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

This week, Knowledge and Innovation officers of the Peace it Together network Mehmet Erdoğan and Ellada Evangelou offer some thoughts regarding the idea behind the title of the conference, “The Power of 1.”

Conflict is messy, loud and chaotic. Passions and vices run high, people are afraid, shouts, cries and screams are the predominant sounds. There is nothing organised or individualised about it. The polyphony, or rather the cacophony, of conflict is disarming. The possibility for an individual to exist in a heated situation and maintain themselves in the context of reason and sobriety is slim.

As the urgency of the conflict dies out, the most somber of minds come out, slowly peeking from their doorways as if after a tornado, to see whose spirit has remained standing.  They peek to see who can pick up their scattered ideas, their crumbled enthusiasm and their battered voice in order to start rebuilding. They witness those who increase their reluctant pace with time, recollecting Eleanor Roosevelt’s words, that standing as an individual is not only a right, but an obligation.

The margin of potential for one voice, one singular energy to penetrate, or even infiltrate into conflict and the post-conflict period has become the reasoning behind the Inter-regional conference to be held in Nicosia in October 9-11^th, 2012, entitled The Power of One.

The host city itself has been the site of both deafening noise and crippling silence during the last decades. Its inhabitants have (been) moved around, its houses pierced with bullets and its quarters parted with barbed wire. The old city does look like a tornado-hit site in many of its corners.  It has been master-planned, macro-examined and micro-analyzed. But it hasn’t been abandoned. A handful of dedicated, committed individuals and organizations work together every day in order to ensure the city lives on.

The Power of One is demonstrated in many local stories, should one look even slightly beneath the surface. Take for example the story of the three young photographers who decided to live the city. They went around, saw, heard and smelled it. They took pictures of what they saw. Without concern for funding or access to a physical location, they began, slowly, to upload these pictures, one by one, on social media. Documenting, from the perspective of a regular person, the abandoned, the heartbreaking, the personal, the absurd. Then this went viral. Now there’s an exhibition of their work in one of the neighborhoods they happened to photograph.  And people are coming in groups to watch it, and a conversation has started. Each new spectator, each perspective reinvents the city and negotiates the telling of history of the city offered by the images. Curating a shared narrative, a shared history. The city is coming to life through the empowered gaze of three young people.

How do you talk about that? The fearlessness? The disregard for the lack of precedence? The unapologetic magnitude of honesty?

This is not a unique occurrence. Young people all over the world are using the freedom and convenience offered by technology and social media to speak up. With a specific pillar dedicated to community voice and representation, the Power of One 2012 is setting up a framework specifically fitting for such stories, and many more like them from Europe and the Middle East.

Click here for the Old Nicosia Revealed Facebook Group.

Click here for the Power of One conference website.

GUEST POST: celebrating a year of cooperation

The Buffer Zone’s cool factor went up several notches last Sunday, when Home for Cooperation (H4C) threw its ‘first birthday’ bash. After all, who doesn’t like a good party?

Silly question!

For those who couldn’t be there in person, Leslie Frost, a friend of the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR) – and Peace Exchange’s guest blogger this week – is here to give us all the details. Read on!

****

A street party can’t change the world. But at H4C’s celebration of its first anniversary on May 6, there was a greater sense of possibility and genuine commitment to peace and goodwill across the Buffer Zone than overtly displayed in years of political negotiations.

And I’m here to report it was a rockin’ good time.

The genius of H4C is that it brings together many disparate groups, working toward common causes, and centred on values of knowledge, peace and tolerance.

Organisations like AHDR – the driving force behind H4C’s creation – co-exist with Peace Players, ENGAGE, Hands Across the Divide, Interpeace and Future Together, along with other civil society organisations, citizen groups and individuals who host their activities there.

(Not to mention, H4C recently opened a highly popular café where people gather daily for lunches, meetings, or simply a good chat over coffee and muffins.)

On Sunday, H4C’s resident NGOs had a joint display set up to inform revelers about the work of each organisation. On the less serious side, there were also games and activities for kids and adults alike.

For example…

Bike for Cooperation sent out more than 40 people in bright-yellow safety vests with orange balloons tied to their bikes, to ride around and through the old city of Nicosia.

There was also a flash mob, and street ‘artivists’ organised a Word Carrier activity, collecting opinions on what cooperation means.

Children sang “Happy Birthday” in Greek, Turkish and English; we took part in laughter yoga and danced in the street. And there was enough barbecued souvla for all – a minor miracle when the crowds come in numbers far larger than expected – more than 500 in all!

And for those who were volunteers, the event was particularly memorable.

“This for me was the peace activity of all times and I now believe in a positive change even more,” said Tevfik Ioannis Aytekin.

“I am grateful to the AHDR for giving me the opportunity to supervise the painting activity, through which three fantastic murals were prepared by motivated and  talented kids working on the idea of cooperation,” added counterpart Iacovos Psaltis.

As both event and symbol, the day was amazing.

You can’t solve the Cyprus problem with a street party, but Cypriots from all over, and guests to this beautiful island like me, came together Sunday, May 6 to support a vision of building something better.

If to imagine a better future seems like a utopian dream, that dream has a tangible home that is one year old now.

With a dream, and a space for dreaming, and the committed work that makes even such dreams possible, who knows what can be achieved?

I believe in the power of those who have a dream today. Happy birthday, Home for Cooperation. Many happy returns.

****

Thanks, Leslie! You can check out lots more photos from the event here.

And if you’ve liked what you’ve read, please show some love and share it on Facebook and Twitter 🙂

That’s all for this time. See you in the next post!

A Greek language version of this post can be found here, and a Turkish version here.

GUEST POST: Nicosia – a hub of CSO innovation?

All kinds of shoes have trod the streets of Nicosia over the decades. Peaceful, hostile, curious, transitory, permanent, reconciliatory… And throughout its checkered history, the city has brought together innovators of all kinds.

In its most recent decades, such innovators have been drawn from civil society.

Peace Exchange hosts UNDP-ACT’s Christopher Louise this week, who offers a suggestion on why Cyprus is perfectly positioned to leverage civil society peace efforts for the benefit of the wider region.

****

Civil society in Cyprus has been able to change the dynamics of the island’s conflict and the relationship between the two communities in the last few decades.

The Peace it Together network, supported by UNDP-ACT, has amassed a wealth of resources regarding the role of civil society in peacebuilding and reconciliation.

The future role of Cypriot civil society in pushing for peace on the island will depend on the ability to sustain a pluralistic political narrative and press for progress in both national and international fora.

A chance for this will come this month (May  15, 2012), when representatives of civil society organisations, supported by UNDP, will speak at the British Parliament in a public debate.

Considering the United Kingdom’s central role in efforts to resolve the Cyprus conflict, this will be a prime opportunity to elevate the critical role of civil society in peacemaking to the international level.

Later this year (October 9-11, 2012), civil society leaders from Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Arab states will meet at an inter-regional conference in the UN Buffer Zone in Nicosia to exchange experiences and ideas on how civil society can contribute to post-conflict and other complex transitions.

But why a Cyprus summit, and why now?

Put simply, UNDP’s local civil society partners want to tap the island’s potential as a cultural and geographical crossroads between Europe and the Arab world.

Meanwhile, Cyprus continues to play host to one of UNDP’s most concentrated and long-serving civil society-strengthening programmes, resonating with the current priorities for the role of civil society in the two regions:

So, where can we find the civil society innovators to make contributions to the inter-regional conference? What can Cypriot civil society learn from other countries in the two regions? How can inter-regional efforts bolster and support local efforts?

The Peace it Together Network welcomes all ideas!

****

Peace Exchange thanks Christopher, and will of course update you on all related developments as they arise.

Until next time, stay tuned, and… see you in the next post!

A Greek language version of this post may be read here, and a Turkish language version here.

Coming together for One Day on Earth

A little over a hundred years ago, with the beginnings of what we would know today as cinema, few would have dared imagine that they would be able to view moving images on a screen as a kind of staple of daily life, let alone record their own lives and share it with people worldwide.

The advent of TV, mainstream news and the internet changed all that, and now, with the proliferation of cheap digital cameras, free editing tools and the vast outreach of online communities, we can effortlessly create content that, to varying degrees, is available – in real time – to all.

Given this amazing potential for capturing and sharing, a grassroots project like One Day on Earth – in which, on October 10, 2010, over 19,000 volunteer filmmakers from across the globe shot more than 3,000 hours of footage from their daily lives to combine into a feature-length documentary – may have seemed an inevitability.

Yet, in the words of the event’s creator, Kyle Ruddick, this first movie to feature footage from every country in the world on the same day: “it was a really challenging task to do” and represented a huge undertaking.

Given that the film highlights priority UNDP issues, such as women’s empowerment and sustainable development, and that filming took place in over 95 UNDP Country Offices, it is unsurprising that UNDP was one of the project’s partners in October 2010.

More specifically, 120 HD video cameras were donated to UNDP by the One day on Earth team and were sent to colleagues in UNDPs Country Offices all over the world, to film UNDP’s work on 10/10/10.

In the case of Cyprus, and as part of its mandate to be involved in grassroots collaborative media initiatives, Peace it Together together partner CCMC also submitted material for the film, shot at the old Nicosia airport.

The footage featured Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot youth sharing their views and experiences at the airport, which was abandoned after 1974.

So, when do audiences get to see the fruit of this burst of creative collaboration? The answer is, sooner than you think!

One Day on Earth has its world premier on Earth Day, April 22, 2012 and will be shown in over 160 countries around the world, including Cyprus.

CCMC, in partnership with Peace it Together partner Youth Power, will screen the documentary twice this Sunday, at 8pm at the CCMC Community Space in Nicosia’s buffer zone (with Greek subtitles), and in the CCMC Community Space hosted by the Environmental Society of Lefke (with Turkish subtitles), in parallel with screenings around the world at the same time.

More information on the screenings can be found here.

And for filmmakers who might have an interest in being part of this year’s recordings on December 12, 2012, as well as educators of kids aged four to 18, a wealth of resources as well as a community platform can be found on the One Day on Earth website.

Peace Exchange leaves you with a video of Ruddick’s Ted TV talk on the making of One Day on Earth, a project that harnessed the power of that most abundant resource we all share: our stories.

That’s all for this time. See you in the next post!

You can read a Greek version of this post here, and a Turkish version here.