Transnational Gathering of Nonviolence Trainers In the last week in July I attended a Transnational Gathering of Nonviolence Trainers in the small town of Handel in Holland. About fifty people from twenty-eight countries met to discuss their experiences of teaching nonviolence cross-culturally. It was my first experience of such an international exchange and it was an intense time of sharing, of networking, of learning and a time to place my work in a broader context. Its important to explain my own context because that influenced greatly what I heard, learned and took away from the conference. My own teaching within the field of nonviolence has centred mainly around nonviolent action. I have given talks and taught brief workshops in Japan but my main experience has come from my direct involvement with the rainforest campaign here in Melbourne. I had been thinking a lot about emotional blocks to activism and more generally about the part 'enfeeling (opposed to envisioning) the future' has to play in creating nonviolent movements for social change. I was interested in content for workshops (i.e. what do people think is important to include in workshops) and I was interested in where people are at in developing and teaching strategy. As well as that, there was international networking which was in fact one of the stated goals of the conference. As it turned out the gathering didn't exactly give clear answers to all these issues and I didn't expect it to. But some impressions were struck and themes did emerge. Amongst us were about twenty people from 'the South', (India, Latin America, Thailand, South Africa, Palestine, Sri Lanka) and thirty including twelve North Americans from the North. We had a range of experience from people who had never actually taught nonviolence to the forty years experience of Narayan Desai from the Institute for Total Revolution in India. Amongst us were Americans who had taught in Burma and Sri Lanka, a Dutch woman, Magda van der Ende who had taught Cambodian monks in Switzerland, and South Americans who work with indigenous people in Ecuador and Brazil. We were many and diverse and it was exciting to consider that each person represented a perhaps vast network of people working for change. Early on, as we struggled to find a process that suited our range of interests and experiences we watched three groups do their usual, yet abbreviated workshop procedures. These sessions were good in giving me a reference point for the processes we use in Australia and for seeing new processes at work. Fernando Aliarga from Chile began with a description of his seven session workshop on nonviolent action. In Chile, where people were the subject of severe oppression, Fernando laid the focus of his workshop on helping people focus on and express their fear through the safety of group work. They explore their fears and ways of overcoming that fear through physical awareness and through exploring the strength and support of group. Only toward the end of the sessions are people liberated enough from their fear to be able to move into action. The last session thus is an action, often very simple, well prepared and carried out and then evaluated by the group. Even as we focused on the process of Fernando's workshop, we became aware of how important content issues are and how intertwined process and content can be. Fernando's work I found very inspiring as it was a way of helping people devise an action that is in direct relationship to their emotional state and not just through an intellectual process. Another learning from these 'exhibitions' was the importance of starting from people's experience. Indeed not only from memorised experience but also from experience created within the workshop environment. "Experience is a great equaliser" said Richard Steele, a South African, who works as a full time field worker for the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. Those of us from the over-intellectualized west need to remember that people will always have different capacities to conceptualize and explain generally. Speaking from our own experience is possible for all of us. It is important for us to affirm people's experience - the reality that they live in. As we got into the week it became clear that not only did people have different interests but we also had varying ideas on what 'training' actually was. Was training something that happened in a workshop in a week or even a weekend or was it something that takes ten months or ten years? Is nonviolence something external and logical to be learnt or is it, as the Latin Americans suggested, more about organising people's experience? Is it preparing for an event or a campaign or is it preparing one's life? There were certainly cultural differences in the responses to these questions (which were never actually put like that in a formal way) and the cultures were generally divided North-South. Again - no conclusions, but a commitment by those from the South to begin exploring from their perspectives the differences between definitions and meanings of nonviolence and training. And thus the issue of 'people's experience' transformed a little and became a theme for the gathering. Those issues concerning 'less industrialised countries' (at the gathering these were grouped under the label 'countries of the south' so I will continue with that term), became increasingly relevant as the week wore on. There was some (justified I think) resentment at the North American domination of the event. Where I had previously experienced gender issues there was now the comparable problem of culture domination, North-South and furthermore English speakers domination. It was repeatedly requested that we speak slowly and clearly and there was some discussion of the difficulties for non-native speakers who had to listen hard to interpret unusual accents and then translate in their heads while the English speakers had their hands up and were responding already to what had been said. We became aware of the need for silence and reflection. Another session highlight was a small group discussion on training nonviolent attitudes and lifestyles. This was facilitated by Narayan who shared with us his own wisdom. What are the attitudes we change? How do we change? And what are the tools of change? These are questions we all need to ponder more carefully in order to foster our nonviolent societies. We talked here of dealing with anger and hatred and despair and using action and spiritual practice as tools for replenishing ourselves. And Narayan talked of recognising the built in prejudices and assumptions that come from our own cultures. He saw the 'how' as living together and enjoying together, and the 'tools', among others, sharing together, ("sharing multiplies the joy and divides the sorrow") working together, sharing responsibility, praying together, affirming ourselves, silence, vows and fasting. Another theme for me was the subject of whether it is appropriate to teach outside your own culture. In my affinity group we discussed that it is pretty audacious to go into another culture to talk about nonviolence. How can we avoid that sort of damaging self-righteousness? First we thought that all we could really do, was to plant a seed. But then I thought about all those places where nonviolence happens naturally, organically without study or analysis (without anybody reading Gene Sharp!) and I thought perhaps that to some extent we water seeds that are already in the ground of that culture. But that metaphor didn't quite sit comfortably either. Then I realised that all we do is sow our own seed, the seed of our own experience and if we work genuinely, honestly and from the heart, we can never be manipulating. There were other interesting sessions too, though some I think would have fit better into a gathering focused more generally on nonviolence training. George Lakey presented a workshop on his five stage strategy model the discussion around which centred on the general usefulness of models. Pat Patfoort from Belgium presented her ideas on teaching conflict resolution using zig zag diagrams representing the escalation of hierarchical conflict patterns. And Peter Woodrow from the USA outlined some new trends in the conflict resolution business. Each day we met in affinity groups the composition of which had been randomly selected on the first day. These groups were especially valuable giving continuity and allowing relationships to develop more deeply. It was rewarding time spent evaluating the process, discussing issues that interested us, reflecting on our feelings and/or just lying in the beautiful garden in the sun. For me some of the most useful learning came from time spent on the Agenda Committee where the diversity of participant's backgrounds gave rise to difficulties in ordering the process. Throughout the gathering this committee struggled with obtaining a process that satisfied people's expectations and needs. By about the third or fourth day it was clear that the gathering wasn't quite what people had wanted and the Process and Vibes Committee was filtering back the disgrunts. As the membership of these coordinating groups was supposed to be being rotated, this seemed a good time for a change. People from the early Agenda Committee were anyway exhausted and very pleased about fresh input. Through a spectacularly organic process, willing members of the Vibes Committee (of which I was one) became new members of the Agenda Committee. This process clearly pointed out for me the close connection there can be between content and process and I thought it was a very sensible structuring of the organisation. Thus I joined the fascinating and challenging process of working with people from other cultures to set agendas for a group of people from a range of cultures with different expectations and needs. We felt it was necessary to include more reflection on issues that had already come up (including what was referred to as the circle 'vs' linear approach to teaching) and to try and build some sort of consensus. We felt a sense of disparity because people had almost always been focusing on different subjects with different processes. The last day was devoted to networking and we split into South and North groups to explore our differing needs. In confusion I joined the South group and we each outlined our resources and needs. Places of intense struggle such as Sri Lanka and Palestine are in desperate need of resources including any information about nonviolent struggle. They don't have so many trainers but large populations of people who want to learn. Something that came out strongly was the need of those from the South to visit others struggling in the South, to bypass the North. Out of this came the establishment of a working group to organise a Trainers Gathering for trainers from the South to be held in Vedchhi India in the last week of February 1993. Ricardo Wangen of Brazil will also organise a networking list of trainers of the South. From the whole group came decisions for an international calender of nonviolence training workshops and a World List of people who are willing to teach nonviolence cross-culturally. The compiler of this list will be Jorgen Johannsen of Scandinavia. The week was a wonderful time of networking and sharing. In a way it was the informal times and the discussions and meetings over meals that were of greatest value. (Some people had several meals booked up in advance!) The intensity of the cultural sharing as we sang and danced and played together was unforgettable. Even though we encountered some conflict, there was never division and I am indebted to the people there for deepening my experience and knowledge of nonviolence and clarifying a spiritual dimension that I had never noticed before. I would like to thank those people and also those who helped me get there. People wanting to be included on the international or South list of trainers who are willing to teach cross-culturally or who have workshops to be included in the calender please write to me at 4 Linda St, Coburg 3058. Margaret Pestorius