Burundi Diary # 5: How we help build a new kind of organization/movement - a mutual learning process

Bujumbura, Burundi
July 3, 2008

This is a continuation of the preceding posting about the Amahoro Youth Club


The Amahoro Youth Club – an experiment on civil society development

Amahoro means peace in the local language, Kirondi. So everything TFF does – through our trainers, project coordinator Ina Curic and myself - is related to peace, peace by peaceful means, conflict-resolution, reconciliation, forgiveness and co-existence with good balances in terms of ethnicity, gender, social and educational background, religion and political attitudes.

One thing is common: an idealistic commitment to serve all Burundians and peace in the future through the UN norm of peace by peaceful means coupled with a strong Gandhian inspiration.

The young women and men we work with here have never set up an NGO before together. This means that Ina and I need to meticulously discuss, train and build excellence on every bigger and smaller activity. It also means that the AYC can become a new type of organization if its members so want since there is no pre-established, traditionally hierarchical structures. We learned the lessons through our work in the old Amahoro Coalition that discontinued its activities in early 2007 for two overriding reasons: several of these 13 well-established NGOs and their leaders were more interested in what the Coalition could do for them than what their own organizations could do for the common higher goals and synergy of the Coalition. And money – rather than activities – seemed to take priority.

The AYC is a spin-off from this – they are young university students who were not only tired of having been victimized by political power games and genocide and elites who showed no genuine care for their future; they were also disappointed with the hierarchies of old-type NGOs here, many being de facto one-person run with little democracy and less transparency.

The AYC members want a more horizontal, or circular, Club based on personal responsibility and commitment, and they are finding that wanting this is not the same as having it already. It requires training, dialogue and much trial and error, not the least error – such as failing to honour appointments, not getting things done in time, not following-up on what the Administrative Team and the weekly meetings decide.

But their minds are set on developing a new type of NGO structure here, do things differently and abolish the pyramidal structures that are combinations of traditional Burundian decision-making structures, patriarchy and leftovers of colonialism – missionaries, companies, politics, divide-et-impera. Thus, the Club could potentially represent a small cultural revolution or innovation in local civil society.

They have chosen the Gandhian statement “We must be the change we want to see” as their own – we must work in ways that embody and express the overarching values of peace, reconciliation and professional conflict-resolution. Means and ends in harmony. And while we must acknowledge our own background and culture, we must also assimilate inspiration from organizations such as TFF and others who can inspire us to do things in new ways.

Through seminar and consultation the AYC and TFF has arrived as a series of building blocks that we work together on for as long time as it takes:

• defining the purpose of it all, the vision and the mission statement

• defining what type of organization (NGO) they want to have and be

• educating and training themselves through seminars and practise to develop that organization – little by little - and stand it on solid ground in day-to-day operations

• build an intellectual basis through study circle activity, TFF trainers and others so they know something about peace studies, non-violence, conflict-resolution, and cultural differences in these fields; one activity is to develop a small library in a society where it is hard to come by anything to read

• communicating with society in general, the region and worldwide, for instance through a blog, email services etc.

• develop an organizational culture based on values such as individual responsibility, punctuality, gender equality, democracy, transparency, etc. and, in general, be innovative and different from the rest

• implement sound financial management practises and develop a fund-raising strategy and decide about income-generating activities so that they can soon be self-reliant, politically independent and avoid any humiliating begging mentality

• work through a partnership with TFF and, as soon as possible, become self-reliant so TFF can leave them to themselves - a partnership that must be both respectful and mindful of differences on many variables

• the long-term purposes of the intellectual basis and other activities that they can practise what is learned within the AYC, teach it to others around the country, and argue politically and publicly for peace and social change in various events, meetings and actions in their society


Our common hope is to develop – slowly but surely – a national movement of peace-minded young people who will make an idealistic contribution to their country and its peace process, from the ground-up – a strong civil society force that has, up till now, not surfaced anywhere in Burundi. It is fair to say that by any standard, it is a top-down culture where most have been brought up to follow what leaders say and not question authorities.

So the AYC and TFF together are ploughing through a wealth of contradictions, innovations while seeking step-by-step to create unity and promote integrative, holistic thinking. TFF and our 22 dear young Burundian friends are in this experiment together and, while I write this, we know neither where it will take us or when it will – and we can still fail in building that Club of our dreams together.

It’s a huge, difficult learning process. But what we learn will never be useless, no matter whether applied in the Club we all dream about or in some other setting. So much can be said, if you don’t even try, you will never succeed.

More about the everyday nitty-gritty of all these goals and processes in the next blog posting.