GRASS ROOTS PEACEMAKERS

During the preparation of this book I have had many discussions on the problems of world peace with serious men and women, young and old. They are very concerned about the constant threat of wars, big and small, with barbaric carnage continuing to take its deadly toll. They are alarmed at the recurrent murders by terrorist groups, with no one safe any time, anywhere, and with no end in sight. Parents have a new fear after the terrorist killings and destruction of September 11, 2001, and feel helpless to do anything about it. Even where wars, killing, and destruction stop, the aftermath is often worse than conditions before the wars started. The legacy of war is still death and despair, broken homes, rampant crime and brutality, disease, starvation, and destruction of resources and the means to support a family. Many recent books and the electronic media have made people more knowledgeable about the desperate need of war-ravaged people for help to rebuild their lives. The individual has no power to bring wars to an end, but has the power to join with others to help the victims of wars, and to remove the causes of future wars, starting with saying—“I understand the threats to peace we are facing. I want to help.”

There are thousands of different ways to help, depending on one’s experience and capabilities. The start of individual peacemaking is to know about the need, and to care enough to do something about it. There are literally hundreds of sources of information about the need for more aid for the less developed world; the Internet, the library, magazines, media, local and visiting travellers and speakers, contacts with other peacemakers and peacemaking groups. There are many needs for aid to the poor in one’s home country. However, as this book is about world peace, the attention herein is on the overall world situation. Today the greatest need is in the less developed world, for whom the only access to substantive and timely help is from the more developed world.

There are many kinds of foreign aid for the purpose of assisting countries to stabilize their society and raise their standard of living. One separate category is industrial development aid, which is an important adjunct of social, humanitarian, and economic aid. Industrial development aid is usually initiated by government or business. Most other kinds of aid are initiated and implemented by government or by volunteer groups of civil society. This latter category of aid is the objective of this proposal, involving small peacemaking groups of volunteers to add to the work for world peace. This is the area that addresses the question of a concerned citizen—“I want to help, what can I do now?”

There are many ways for an individual who is concerned about the increasing threats of war and the failure of governments to find the road to peace, to become an activist volunteer peacemaker in an NGO or peace society that is already established. The other option is to have new peacemakers get together with a group of a few friends who want to bring new reinforcements into the work for peace. Over the past 140 years there have been many such beginnings of individuals discussing the problem with friends, leading to regular meetings of a small organized group of peacemakers. The next step is to search for the ways to give help. There is access to information about all active NGO’s and peacemaking societies available from governments, the UN, thousands of peacemaking organizations of civil society, and thousands of individuals experienced in a multitude of peacemaking projects. The main step is to contact the resources who are experienced in your field of interest, and start a dialogue that will help you decide on your specific program. Further contacts should be made with individuals and groups that have experience in your area of interest. In many cases new peacemakers make contact with the best available information at home, augmented by group members going out to a destitute country and making contact with the actual receivers of aid and the administrators of all the legalities and logistics involved. The start-up group could be open to the merit of an alliance with other groups which might be experienced in a common cause. There is an old saying in business—“You don’t know until you go”— that cannot be stressed too much in any endeavour to work with individuals and the overall society of a foreign country. Travel in foreign countries is usually very popular and enjoyable in this age of “one world,” and gives individuals the kind of background and experience that can not only be very rewarding personally, but also an essential part of one’s education and extended family of friends.

The search for information could start with government sources. Canadian government resources are an example: Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), which has a registry of large NGOs; Department of Foreign Affairs; Department of Finance; International Research Centre; Export Development Corporation— all have had many years of experience in providing foreign humanitarian and development aid to people in need of help. Miscellaneous agencies of the Canadian government, or supported by government, give foreign aid to over one hundred countries each year. The Canadian Council for International Co-operation is a coalition of over ninety large non-profit organizations.

There are over 80,000 registered charities, plus thousands of informal, non-profit organizations, in Canada—most of them giving foreign aid. Canada is only one of the many UN members funding international aid agencies and organizations. Over 185 NGOs, plus many non-governmental institutions, receive funding from CIDA and other government sources. All of these organizations have facilities to provide information to peacemaker groups.

The problem is not the lack of available information on the process and administration of providing and receiving foreign aid, but the amount of time and effort needed to search out the specific aid programs which have the greatest need of more support from grass roots volunteer groups. As most aid programs are always in great need,