Nicoleta Chirita of Romania (newly elected to the ECON leadership team, and pictured above trying to convince Tara from Paris to attend the community meeting)) tells us, in the Money for Organizing session on Friday morning, that in Romanian they say money is the Devil's Eye - pronounced "ok-yool drahkyoolooey...and that's why they don't talk about it!
We struggled with the context in these countries - no real base of local foundations, little or no government funding except for projects, big international donors whose rules constrict or mis-fit the patient process of reaching out, building consensus, engaging leaders, developing plans, taking on the issues that people choose rather than the hot issue of the day...real organizing is tough to fund. Add to that distrust of everything, built up over decades of totalitarian rule...
So we struggled and found ways. Ismet and Jasmina are two young organizers from Bosnia. (He's the "guard standing behind the Lady Mayor in the role-play picture; she's the dark haired woman in the Circle of Power exercise.) They are getting great (and free!) help from Jesuit Volunteer Corps folks from Germany - they stay for a year, and by month three or four can handle the language well enough to really contribute. Peter, the teacher, writer and organizing leader from Germany (another new ECON leader) has an idea that the health conversion foundation model could be used in Germany - he says that when non-profit hospitals go to for-profit now they ask for subsidies from public sources - and that ain't right! Iryna and Olga from Ukraine point out that in the network of ECON there's lots of great success - folks who've gotten support from USAID, their local community foundations, Mott and Rockefeller and German Marshall Fund and others - maybe they could learn from each other how to tell the story of organizing more successfully. Could the network, and some of us who know and support their work, convene the funders who DO fund organizing here and together strategise how to organize more money for organizing? (Sound familiar?)
Folks were delighted to hear about the resources of the Alliance for Justice and the RECO website - Resources for Evaluating Community Organizing. They heard the story of NCRP's series of studies to document the effectiveness of advocacy and organizing, and they're thinking about documenting their own stories - organizing in Central and Eastern Europe works - and we can prove it! The structural obstacles are being addressed too - in Bosnia charitable gifts are taxed, creating a dis-incentive, so the NGO sector is trying to get this changed.
Ismet works with young people (he's pretty young, to me...). As we discussed the cultural taboos related to money in all these countries, I told the story of our daughter, Schuyler's high school project. In most familes and between young people and adults, it's really hard to talk about sex. The result (just like not talking about money in organizing) is that misinformation leads to bad choices and problems that could be avoided just get worse. Sky made a film called "Let's Talk About Sex" to help get the conversation started! Ismet is seriously considering a short video that shows folks whispering and gossiping and avoiding the ever-so-sensitive topic of money in their organization. Any investors out there?
The lesson here is that money is power...if you don't have your own, somebody else's is gonna get you! Raising money isn't what you do instead of organizing - raising money IS organizing. ECON is on the road to open, honest and constructive discussion and effective local and common action on money - and it's going to be very instructive!
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