Vienna - a brief look back - a performance of a lifetime

Valerie and I just took a walk through the park in Vienna with the boys of Ato Pereferico, led by DJ Big. A final goodbye for this trip.  It is hard to explain all the emotions I feel.  We had just spent the previous hour with Marnie Gustavson, from Kabul (mostly) and Seattle (just some of the time), a most wonderful soul who runs an organization that cares for orphans and handicapped persons, reprising our few days of getting to know each other and setting forth our plans for future work in Kabul.

So I'm traveling back in time to the ballroom at the Hotel Intercontinental last night.  I walked into a long and very narrow room with a stage set up at one end and  fancily dressed tables for the 300 people about to come over from the World Justice Forum.  It was 6.30pm and Ato Pereferico were doing their sound check.  A handful of Forum staff people were present and the band had invited their local contact, Lea, who could translate for them.  So hip hop is not what I'm used to and the sound levels were going to blow out the room!! That's what I thought! We needed a plan:  how would we get the message across that these young teenagers coming from the favelas of Brazil were here to tell the World Justice Forum that they understand that they have the power to change their view of law.  We couldn't let the power of their message be overwhelmed by a speaker system turned on high.  And, since they would sing in portuguese, we needed to figure out a way to translate.

Lea became our onstage translator, a last minute role she gladly assumed (phew!) and we split the performance up into two parts - a more acrobatic first fifteen minutes to warm up the crowd at the beginning of dinner and then a second set with singing right after dessert.  These boys do physical stunts, spins, handstands, twists, that require chiropractic intervention or a stretcher, depending upon your age.  And, to my joy and amazement, the WJF folks at the party, were standing and cheering them on as they walked in and took their seats.  The narrowness of the room made it hard for people to see the stage, so many just walked toward the front and the sides, so powerful was the performance. 

When they came back a second time, Lea translated several songs.  Imagine if you spent your life being the hunted.  What if you felt that everyone who looks at you thinks you've done something wrong.  Their songs describe their lives and their aspirations.  These kids live in the favela, one of the poorest places in Recife, and two of the boys (their names are Dete, Jonas, Okado) will go back home to no running water.  There are days they have little to eat.  And, here we are, shepherding them to a gala affair in one of the most spectacular cities in the world.  What a culture shock - the hotels, passports, the clothes they bought, the nightclub they visited and performed at later in the evening, the walks in the park.  They were big enough to handle it all.

Their message got across.  People talked about the performance all today at the Forum. Marnie, Valerie and I were all in the last session of the World Justice Forum today, when one of final presenters from Palestine got up to speak.  These last words from the regional representatives were commitments by the assembly of future work to promote the rule of law from this forum to the next.  She said that their group had met this morning and had been inspired by the performance of Ato Pereferico.  She said that they would go home and reach out to their youngsters to put together a play to demonstrate their hopes and aspirations about the rule of law.  

To say the least, that made me smile.  And, as Marnie, Valerie and I talked about the past 3 days and our plans for work in Afghanistan together, we too were inspired by Ato Pereferico.  These kids have come far, and they have grown through a positive interaction with law - and, they both understand and respect it. We are fortunate to have been a part of their life lesson, and, just as pleased to learn from them how to take something that seems so negative upon first view, and turn it around.

A brief history of PeaceTones - Vienna and World Justice Forum II

On the plane to Vienna.  It’s been a long time between the starting point of Internet Bar, 2005 and now.  It’s a perfect storm, so they say.  The 7 billion people of the world could not be more disparate in terms of their economic situations – and I’m headed to the World Justice Forum to say that we have an approach.  PeaceTones!  Reaching out to the frontier of the internet, to the 6 billion people who are not online and say – have at it!  We are going to bring you everything you need to build online businesses, let you set the your own rules for business, link us all together in online marketplaces, and then see how we can get the money flowing. 

 

There are a number of people who have told me it isn’t going to get done.  Maybe that’s because I’m a dreamer, and the hard work of measuring is not in my province.   Well, that isn’t totally fair.  I have many people around me who are demanding metrics.  How many people will we reach?  How are we touching them?  Are we getting them the technology, the training, the online markets that they need to really make sales? 

 

There is definitely a generational difference in attitude.  Younger folks, my students especially, have a great inspiration to make a difference.  My generation (I’m 57, almost 58) is far less tolerant of my bright eyed enthusiasm.  It is fair to say that I have been less than successful raising all the money we need to make these dreams a reality.  Social entrepreneurship is tough work, and more groups are supporting it, including corporations who see future markets for their products being developed.  All I can say is that we are in a bad place in the world as it relates to poverty, health, and the environment.  So new ways of thinking, funding, and dreaming in particular, are the order of the day.

 

I remember back to 2005, when my friend, Rachel Barbour, asked me what I wanted out of  this idea of bringing justice over the internet to places that didn’t have internet access, were beset by war, devastation and poverty.  My answer didn’t make the grade – a common theme for me  (to my  credit, I listen and then work to change myself)– and, she said that we would travel to Harrisonburg, Virginia, and meet some of her friends at Eastern Mennonite University.  That led me to an encounter with several wonderful teachers/mentors, including Lisa Schirch, Anne Nyambura and my classmates in a course on Women, Trauma and Peacebuilding at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute.  So, it is fair to say that I brought my e-commerce act to EMU and though I had a lot of listeners, there were many skeptics in my midst.  One story encapsulates it all for me.

 

I was at EMU for a week in May, 2005, and Anne Nyambura from Kenya, blessed me with her enthusiasm and willingness to connect me with as many of the people she could find from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe as she could find – at lunches, dinners, and side meetings, I talked about bringing e-commerce as a tool for poverty alleviation.  My last night in Harrisonburg, we had a pot luck dinner.  Lisa Schirch, Anne, a couple of women from Kenya, and a Pakistani woman working for a German NGO,  sat down next to me, and I started to talk.  Immediately, the woman from Pakistan stopped me and said that by now, my story was well known.  She had a couple of questions she thought I should answer.  Was I assuming that I could arrive in a country like Pakistan, recently devastated by earthquakes, show up in a village filled with illiterate woman, no electricity anywhere, and then get online businesses started?   I felt very small at that moment.  I really didn’t know what to say.  And, I didn’t say anything.

 

I don’t know the name of the woman from Kenya who was sitting next to me.  All I know is that she stood up, put her arm around me, and said, “We need people like him to dream. If nobody dreams, we are never going to get out of the mess we are in.  We’ll start somewhere.  In Kenya, we’ll start in Nairobi.  We have internet access there.  We’ll get to the villages eventually.  But we have to start.”  From that moment on, I was on my way.  Yes, I’m a dreamer.  But I have purpose, and perseverance.  And with the possibility of an internet renaissance at hand, I committed to developing a plan for InternetBAr to come up with a project to bring online business opportunities to  Kenya, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Afghanistan, the W. Bank, N. Ireland, Brazil  and eventually 1000 villages everywhere in the world.  PeaceTones was born.

 

It took some time to develop.  And now, I am in Vienna at the World Justice Forum II. Our first albums are for sale on Amazon and iTunes.  From Sierra Leone and Recife, Brazil. And, our kids from Recife arrive today to perform tomorrow at the WJF gala dinner! 

 

Dreaming is good.  It leads to concrete action.  It’s a place to begin.  Thank goodness for all the people who care enough about these issues that they put up with my dreaming and help me bring my dreams to reality.  Affecting a few kids lives is a beginning,   We need a replicable plan so that we can bring our dream to 1000 villages.  A dream.  There you have it!

Vienna

I leave in a couple of hours for Vienna and the World Justice Forum. It has been quite a year assembling teams, meeting wonderful people in many places, and now, we get a chance to ask the world to join in the effort to link disadvantaged people anywhere to the online markets.

Second report from Balan, Haiti

Tomorrow, we will wrap up our 3rd recording session. Living in a community where electricity is intermittent, we are fortunate that we will have had 9 groups perform! On the legal front, we’ve met one lawyer who seems very qualifed. We have reviewed the contract with him and have discussed the points of concern which he raised about the definitions of gross and net proceeds, the ownership of intellectual property by the musicians, and the community project that they will support. We also discussed the percentage splits. At least at this point, it looks like half of the proceeds will go to fund the building of a health clinic in Balan. All they currently have is a dispensary, and it has lines every day – and, it is a challenging place for the caregivers and patients to say the least.

I’ve also gotten to know the English speakers from my hosts pretty well, Adolphe and Hudson. Both of them are very interested in their communities – they are church leaders as well as community leaders. The challenges they face because of the lack of a formal legal order in Haiti are ones they articulate plainly, accept with grace, and realize they can move past if they have the right plan. They seem to understand that they can use private international contracts as a vehicle to reach the international marketplace through e-commerce – which is our PeaceTones plan. Since English is not their native language, I ask them to repeat many of the things we talk about, to say it in as many different ways as they can, and I feel that they do understand.

One thing is certain for me – I’m uncomfortable working in a country where I can’t speak the language (I can get by in Spanish as a second language) and English isn’t spoken. This was not a problem in the West Bank, Israel and Afghanistan since English speakers were everywhere. But here in Balan, finding English speakers is a challenge. There are a few people who speak Spanish since they worked at one point in the Dominican Republic – and, I’ve had some wonderful conversations with them! Though I have learned a few words of creole, I feel separated from a lot that is going on. So many people have reached out to me in many ways, though, so I feel cared for!

Yesterday, we hiked up mountain to a local village so that RESPE:Balan could do their final health traning. The villagers are the same people who would be able to use a health clinic that PeaceTones may help build, we hope. In the meantime, we climbed for an hour and a half and got to a village where about 200 families live in an agricultural paradise with views of the sea and mountains that are a treat for this bedraggled traveler. We stuffed ourselves, about 30 trainees, 5 teachers, and the student team and me, into a small classroom. After about an hour of listening to training sessions in creole, I found the opportunity to escape the room at a break, and find a little kid to sit next to who was staring into the room. The school room, like every other building on the side of this mountain, are open structures, basically huts, some built with concrete, but mostly not. Everything is open to the elements. So looking into the school room just means looking into the windowless spaces which serve as the windows for the school. While the little boy and I played, one of the musicians we had recorded a couple of days earlier who lives here, and, who speaks Spanish (!!!) came and offered to show me around.

So we began walking, stopped at a small home to ask permission to walk across their property, and then the vistas opened up dramatically to mountains and the sea! I remember Vancouver having mountains which bumped up right against the ocean, and, this view was comparable or better. But my musician friend told me that it hadn’t rained in 3 months, the land here was dry, and people were suffering tremendously. Thinking about it, I realized that the markets they have are basically local markets – it is almost impossible to fly anything of significance off this island; so PeaceTones will offer this musician a chance to see a new vista for his family.

There is a lot to do in the couple of days remaining.
Second report from Balan, Haiti

Jeff

Haiti

Valerie and I have been in Haiti this week with one of her colleagues in RESPE, Ashley Allison.  They are working with the Haitian coalition and RESPE: BALAN to set up a local health clinic and do health trainings. We arrived on Sunday after a crazy flight on LYNX airlines from the hangar at Ft Lauderdale airport to Cap Haitian via the Grand Bahamas (an unscheduled fuel stop).  

The Tufts University students' work in Balan is an ongoing project (http://www.tuftsgloballeadership.org/news/2009-04-30-respe-history-and-timeline) that was jump started by the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts.  PeaceTones joined their work by asking to make Haiti a PeaceTones pilot and  by making a connection to the Christian Haitian Entrepreneurial Society (CHES) based in Boston which, in turn, made a local connection to nurses near Balan who have joined Ashley and Val on their trainings; for their part, the Tufts students introduced PeaceTones to community leaders from Balan several months ago,  who, in turn, arranged for us to meet and record musicians and meet with lawyers on our current trip.

As soon as we arrived, we met with a local attorney, Watson, who took a copy of the proposed IBO/artists contract and promised to read it and get back to me with comments by this evening.  We met with 9 musician groups shortly after that, and, they had many questions about PeaceTones.  Fortunately, Val had arranged to translate key portions of our brochure into creole, and our RESPE:Balan hosts served as leaders/translators for this first music community meeting in Balan.  Within two days, we had our first recordings.  Tomorrow, we are set for a second round of recordings.  We also visited with our CHES friends at a nearby university which was hosting a music camp, where we met an incredible young bass player, Wester Desamours.  We plan to record Wester tomorrow as well.

PeaceTones would like to see the health clinic become a beneficiary of our collaboration; but, of course, that is up to the community.  Val, Ashley and their team will train more than 100 people during the week they are here, covering sexual health and hypertension.  They have brought down an incredible horde of materials/dvds to share as well - and, lots of supplies.

An auspicious beginning...

Back in the USA

Jeff and I have returned to a beautiful, sunny Boston and are finally settling into our usual routines: frantically calling our contacts, cc'ing emails like crazy, and lugging around equipment. Aaah to be home. At least, our sleep schedules are normalizing- I can proudly say that I have stopped waking up at 4PM hungry for dinner.

As for our next feat, a trip to Balan, Haiti, we are focusing on the health aspect. The Tufts student group, RESPE: Ayiti (Research and Engagement Supporting Poverty Elimination) has established a partnership with the community and has shifted its focus to health over the past couple of years. This trip we will be focusing on preventative health trainings regarding hypertension, sexual health and hygiene. Jeff is steering PeaceTones towards Online Medical Records with Partners in Health, which would be a great connection to RESPE's work.

Jeff and I are trying to schedule a meeting with PIH this week, as well as, lock down possible legal and musical contacts in Balan. There is a music camp run out of a university in Cap Haitian that we are also planning to visit. We will let you know how things go when we are further along.

Women in Afghanistan

During the previous 36 hours of flying and waiting in various terminals leading up to our stay in Kabul, Jeff and I talked about promoting women's rights as the cornerstone of this PeaceTones project. Before landing in Afghanistan's bustling capital, Kabul, we outlined a make shift strategy: upon arrival dial as many numbers as possible, which has proved to be successful over the course of our stay

Within the first few minutes of our stay, we were introduced to Cynthia Ryan, Principal of the The Schooner Foundation (http://www.schoonercapital.com/) and on the Board of Directors for international non-governmental organization, Women for Women (www.womenforwomen.org). Lucky for us, she happened to be sleeping in a room down from us at TMF and over breakfast, casually invited us to her meetings at the Women for Women (WfW) chapter in Afghanistan.

During our visits, we spoke with the WfW staff and local participants about the challenges Afghan women face daily. Comfortable among other women, female participants spoke freely about family issues, lack of access to education, Afghanistan's poor economy, and limited job opportunities. We asked survey questions about internet and cellphone use and eventually hit the mark when asking if an all female internet cafe would be a comfortable environment for women to learn how to use use computers and use the internet.

Through meetings with the Ministry of Women's Affairs and USAID, Jeff and I followed up on the gender aspect of this project. With the help of locals, we are putting together a gathering for this Sunday between female lawyers, business women, law students, and parliament members in order to directly address the legal issues and business aspect of the PeaceTones calligraphy and music. Furthermore, Jeff will run an e-commerce training session with the group. Hopefully, the various individuals can connect to form a support network for PeaceTones in Afghanistan, as well as, come up with some answers on how promote the role of professional women within this society.