I just arrived in Sierra Leone with my colleagues Charles Gibbs and Joni Celiz; we are readying to receive 50 of the most inspiring peace and development leaders, from all around the world, for a week-long immersion into the heart of the work and legacy of Fambul Tok and the inside-out approach we have been pioneering-in-practice together for the last 17 years.
The week in Sierra Leone is the centerpiece of our year-long learning-and-practice journey together, Constellating Peace from the Inside Out 2.0. The Government of Sierra Leone is hosting us, and the vice president and minister of local government, among others, will share their observations with our teams.
Teams of visionary leaders from Nepal, Kenya, Somalia, Colombia, Chicago, the Gambia, and across the US are coming to learn and share together, and after 6 months of gathering virtually, it’s a joy to anticipate being together in person. They are among the most inspiring leaders I have ever had the privilege of working with.
It feels especially poignant that these leaders are travelling so far to witness Fambul Tok’s work firsthand—because going to and walking with communities is Fambul Tok’s number one value. All of us associated with the program know the extraordinary commitment it takes to go to communities to listen and learn—to walk with them to find their own answers, instead of bringing answers and solutions from outside, even if that seems faster in the short term.
As this gathering begins, our world is at the edge of transformational change. Old, outworn ideas and ways of working are disintegrating, while the new, life-giving ways of working and organizing are not yet realized. We are living them into being right now. The people in this cohort have been at the leading edges of that transformation for many years.
This gathering, and the work that flows from it, will help us live into the systems we want with more intention and in community.
The learning focus of our week will be the lived experience and embodied wisdom of the people who are coming, who are also learning about and from Fambul Tok and the Wan Fambul National Framework. The team from Nepal has spent well over a decade growing a national movement dedicated to transforming conflict around climate and natural resources, and it feels like a special gift to have another program that has emerged and worked holistically, in culturally grounded ways, and built to national institutionalization over the long term—truly from the inside out.
The team from East Africa, anchored by Tecla Wanjala, the former acting chair of Kenya’s Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, is bringing senior government and interreligious leaders together with experienced community healers, with a vision of building an inside-out peace framework to guide and support work across the region.
And the team from Chicago is bringing together one of the city’s deputy mayors, funders of the work, community healers and activists, and seasoned “connectors”—the collaborative force that is designing a holistic, collaborative framework for interrupting gun violence in their city.
And those are just some of the extraordinary groups, the extraordinary animating visions, all coming together this week.
We are excited to be together in ways that also invite not only what we know and can share, but what we don’t know. What we wonder about. What we yearn for. Our curiosity, our questions, our not-knowing and our in-process-ness—in short, our whole selves—offer the yeast for the transformation we envision from our time together, and beyond.
This journey to Sierra Leone is more than a trip to learn with and from others. It is also a journey to the heart’s deepest yearnings of the good that could be possible.
There will be plenty more sharing to come: I’ll be writing on the website throughout the week, so be sure to check back here regularly, and we’ll have sharings from the team in Sierra Leone, and even a poem or two.
In the meantime – we remain full of excitement for the learning to come!
In anticipation,
Libby
