Foundations 4 The Nurturing Hope Materials

The Nurturing Hope Materials

The Nurturing Hope Materials Cover Three Inter-Connected Themes

• Understanding Relationship Dynamics
• Some Dynamics of Conflict-Affected Societies
• Some Dynamics for Hope

Understanding Relationship Dynamics

Open and trusting relationships are more likely to propel us to embrace and deal with all that life brings! Our resilience and mental well- being are nurtured in such healthy relationships. In conflict-affected societies many of us make choices that often narrow our opportunities and our potential to live well with different others. By exercising choice we shape, rather than are shaped by, the forces surrounding us. We gain the freedom to hope that change can occur and that we can be an agent of that change. These materials invite us to examine:

• how relationships characterised by trust and freedom can nurture possibilities, creativity and imagination as opposed to relationships characterised by rivalry nurturing distrust, fear and antagonism.

• the consequences of how relational voids—relationships where there is no fellow feeling, sentiment or respect—multiply distance, separation and, eventually can, feed outrage and hatred. The materials assert that we grow most completely as human beings when we are in open and trusting relationships with those different to us. Ideally the hope is to see others around us not as strangers but as different and equal citizens. This is the potential gift when we live in societies characterised by the primacy of citizenship, not the primacy of opposed communal identities.

Some Dynamics of Conflict-Affected Societies

Conflict-affected societies challenge what it means to be both equal and different citizens. Histories of distrust, fear, and even mutual antagonism increasingly drive people apart and towards those they perceive as being like them. Disparate identities solidify around what are often opposing cultural, religious or political characteristics. Unease develops and increases with the emergence of group identities as primary points of reference. Unacknowledged legacies of hurt influence the spaces in which people can openly meet and live together, and may even determine if they are eventually addressed at all. The assumptions that people in more secure societies live by fall away, such as agreed legal and policing systems and the equal rights of citizens. Numerous civil society initiatives have shown that, even in such societies, it is still possible to build more open processes and structures between people that nurture hopeiv. Many of the dynamics that feed distrust in conflict-affected societies are most destructive when they remain unacknowledged and hidden. If we are to nurture hope, it is important that the dynamics that reinforce distrust are named. When named, they lose some of their power to skew our perspectives. Conflict-affected societies or areas of protracted conflict are often dominated by demanding emotional and cultural climates fostered and maintained by the competing identities. Such climates hinder the establishment of trust by limiting or restricting the choices that people can make. Closed and partisan identities often seem easier and more secure to a wavering citizen in such a cultural climate. People more often than not become removed from the choices and actions that build trust and foster openness. Nurturing Hope seeks to empower us, as individual citizens, to name some of the old cultural dynamics that hinder understanding and that need to be dissolved.

Some Dynamics for Hope

Societal cultures that nurture trust building and embed individual citizenship are grounded in positive relationships.

In conflict-affected societies, it is important for citizens to become aware of the organisational and societal dynamics that support an open and relational way of living together. Nurturing Hope highlights central dynamics that, if repeatedly used, support and sustain people living together in this way. In these more trusting relationships we experience openness and surprises that can dissolve memories of hurt. They enable us to share the experiences and hold memories of celebrations and forgiveness needed to resolve past hurt. In such ways we overcome impasses and dogged refusals to negotiate. The space created when we choose to be part of more open and trusting relationships is the space in which hope can be nurtured. Organisational cultures in which people together, treat one another well and stay focused on their civic or public good purpose, nurture hope. There is growing evidence that well governed organisations and institutions that citizens trust, are also instruments of hope in society! (V. Braithwaite, 2004)