Community Mobilization for Campaigns: Lessons and Principles

I dedicate this article to all the HEROES who made the maiden Share-Your-Lunch event a huge success on September 10, 2011. You are appreciated; this is just an indication of what we are capable of doing if we deliberately plan towards change. You are the HEROES of this generation.

Since my teenage years as an activist, I have been part of several campaigns, some successful and others not. I remember being an active member of campaigns in my local community and my University as an undergraduate, as well as sharing with other vibrant young people ideas and views about campaigns both in Ghana and the UK. I really enjoyed my time with the Student World Assembly’s 2007 Campaign against Human (Child) Trafficking, Youth Crime Watch of America’s ‘Youth against Crime, Drugs and Violence’ and the UK Youth Parliament (UKYP) Climate Revolution, during which I met most of the passionate and inspiring young activists on this planet.

I have spent most part of my life looking for opportunities to be part and/or lead a progressive youth movement towards change and to learn from what is working somewhere. While my dream seems to be approaching each passing moment, I have taken some time to learn, and still learning from other people, especially young people across the globe who are making change happen in real small ways and gradually building robust movements to cause a revolution.

I have never learnt so much from other young people as I have done in this past year; I have come closer to believe and understand in some ways, about how to approach change and organize and mobilize movements for action towards change which I would  want to share with you. I’m sharing what I have learnt from all of you reading this piece, especially the fabulous community of Share-Your-Lunch whom I call our Generation’s Heroes. I have 5 main lessons/principles to share about how we can mobilize for successful campaigns and would be glad if you tell me what you think:

1. Communicate well in advance

Communication is very important in mobilizing for campaigns, especially if it’s a community campaign, and the first challenge would be to break the language barrier if there is one. The next step is working on your 2Ts (Team and Target). Your team should grasp why you are running the campaign and what really the issue on the ground is that needs urgent attention. Orientations and training for volunteers from time to time well in advance would really help and making information available to them is key. Communicating with your target overtime can be an overwhelming task. Engage other people who can communicate better with your target than yourself and use basic illustrations to explain complex scenarios. It is important to work on your team from time to time before launching your campaign than doing everything possible to make the message sink down using a single event. It might not work.

2. Define clearly your ‘Young People’ and ‘Youth

 There are different international definitions of who a youth is. From the African Union, Commonwealth of Nations, to the United Nations, various age categories have been defined as youth. Though these definitions are internationally recognized models, for a campaign, it is important to define your own ‘youth’ to get the results and success required.  The age factor is equally important for campaigns. Young people will come for an event or sign up for a campaign when they know they would meet other young people just like them. What I have learnt from community organization and mobilization in Ghana is that it is less challenging to mobilize 13-25yrs for campaigns because these group of young people have less domestic and social responsibilities. Above this age group, it is possible to have a large number of people missing campaign events because they have to go to work on weekends, attend funerals, outdoorings, weddings and equally important assignments which they wouldn't sacrifice for a campaign due to their social relevance. 

3. Shift focus from policy makers to policy affected

I have seen events starting late because dignitaries (e.g. opinion leaders and government officials) have not arrived. This might leave a bad taste for your target group. They sometimes may feel you are either taking them for granted or think they are less important since the policy maker would as usual make promises and fail again. If you want your campaign to yield lifetime results, you must be bold and willing to dispense with titles like ‘Chairman’, ‘Special Guest of Honor’, etc, for some events. Concentrate on packaging your campaign to be attractive for the participation of people affected by policies or a social or environmental problem.

4. Engage and build your community

This I think is the most important principle and I have heard activists across the globe stress on this, whether they are friends from LEEDS TIDAL or Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC).  People make up a community and communities make movements. The latter is about mobilizing masses for campaigns and to be able to do that you need to make people feel part of most of the steps you take. Democracy is important here. It is important to find innovative ways to build and sustain people’s interest in a social issue and create platforms for information and knowledge sharing. You can also think about building the capacity of your community for action. In all, your community should feel like they are citizens or natives of the campaign and not just supporters of a cause or online members or petition signers doing you a favor.

5. Assignment and Space (Assign and give space)

It is quite normal to feel nervous about campaigns, especially at the beginning, but one thing you really have to consider is giving your team members space after you have assigned and communicated their roles and responsibilities to them well in advance and they understand the issues on the ground. It is important to give people the space to be creative and innovative about their own tasks. It breathes life into the campaign.

I am happy to share my views with you. I am really looking forward to seeing robust youth movements making huge strides in Ghana towards achieving a revolution and it can only happen when we think and plan strategically, employing all creativity and innovation to bear.

If You Want to Change the World, Ask a 10yr old British Girl and an 11yr old Ghanaian Boy

I dedicate this note to my little sweetie pie, Emma Kenyon, my superhero and inspirational icon for August 2011.

I call this our generation the unpredictable blackberry-totting, and a fad-craze one that has mutated the mobile phone youth culture. The day this generation was birthed; self centeredness was transported onto this planet in an UFO, for we are unreasonably capable of attacking our own neighbours just because there are riots. Our sense of belonging and responsibility can sometimes go on holidays in Malta to ride camels, or maybe to a Caribbean beach resort indulging in sun tanning.

Our fun-loving ladies adore their hair gels and the well groomed guys are gym-frequenters with well erected muscles ever ready for any hedonic expedition. And if you care to know, our life culture can sometimes be as inspiring and predictable as it’s brash and crass.

But let’s just say that there is an emerging action oriented and energetic generation which has taken their destiny into their own hands, found inspiration in an extraordinary creed to change their world and are whispering aloud to us to get out of their way if we think it’s not possible and better make an all day good impression of ourselves like a cow in a china shop.

Believe it or not, the kids are on fire and their conviction is as real as a NATO bomb raid in Tripoli. One of my principles as a community organizer is to share and spread inspirations and so if I know a 10yr old Jamaican-English girl and have read about an 11yr old Ghanaian boy throwing the kitchen sink to raise funds to support their fellow drought victims in Somalia, I wouldn’t just admit, “that is inspiring”, but would as well pick a quill, dip it into ink, and tattoo a gymnastic graffiti for the entire world to read. They are my heroes, they are my real child celebrities and yes, they are salvation to the horn of Africa.

Emma Kenyon, 10, my pretty and adorable family and church friend is a Ranger; she leads the way- Emma spent her school holidays making bookmarks to sell for the Somalia Drought Appeal. She’s realized £50 so far by selling 40 bookmarks out of the 250 she has produced so far. Emma’s marketing strategy is simple and precise- she sells her crafts after church service when the congregation has just been fired up by sermon to show love and compassion. What a creativity, what an innovation, and yes, it is coming from a 10yr old.

Andrew Adansi-Boamah, 11, Ghana- Now this boy blows my mind apart with an RPG. I first heard of him when I had been invited by a local radio station in Accra, Ghana called Radio Gold to grant an interview about our Share-Your-Lunch social media initiative. Andrew had granted an interview on the same program the day before. The host of the Morning Show gave me a play back of his interview, and inspired and shocked to the core, my words were remanded in custody by the throat.

During his eight-week school holiday, Andrew made a pledge to raise 20 million Ghanaian cedis ($13 million) for the children in Somalia by walking office to office collecting donations in Ghana's capital, Accra. Since August 1, when he started the fundraising, he has collected about $6,500 in pledges for the fund he started after consulting with UNICEF and the U.N.'s World Food Program.

According to Andrew, he was inspired by images of skeletal babies and stick-thin children he saw on television, which led him to name his campaign ‘Save Somali Children from Hunger’. After the interview, he put the icing on the cake, "This is a moment that mankind can touch lives," he said. "There is no point for others to have so much to eat while others have nothing to eat. It is not right."

I’m currently talking to people who might know Andrew so I can book an appointment just for an autograph. But as for Emma, very soon, and maybe one chilly winter evening in Christmas, after eating Jamaican food together, I would swallow her up in a bear hug.

Gideon Marcel (2011)- Community Organiser, Writer, Poet

Why a Coconut Seller is my Inspirational Icon for the Month of July 2011

A celebrity shot with The HERO

“I'm supposed to be the soldier who never blows his composure, Even though I hold the weight of the whole world on my shoulders, I ain't never supposed to show it, my crew ain't supposed to know it..” – Eminem (Like Toy Soldiers)

Growing up from a somehow difficult background, I’ve learnt that I don’t really have to look far for inspiration, for it stares at me through everyday familiar lenses, while I on the other hand would be gazing through telescopes for extraterrestrial motivation. Through various ordinary encounters breath by breath, we bump into inspiration, only to ignore it because it is not dressed like Stevie Wonder with 22 Grammy Awards.

Right from home in Ghana to the UK, through Ontario Canada to India and Australia, I have encountered simple everyday people whose experiences have shaped my life to understand that inspiration can be derived from several modest forms, and not only through an extraordinarily touching Hellen Keller-Annie Sullivan story.

On Sunday 10th June, 2011, my encounter with a humble 43yr old coconut seller is to change my life for the years to come as I have become more humbler and renewed my convictions that we are just mere reflection of one another and that what binds us together is far more greater than what pulls us apart.

It was a soggy and damp morning, and I found myself in the heart of a local community called Darkuman where we are setting up social action initiatives for the ‘Zongo’ community. After 3hrs of putting our new, incredibly petite local office in shape, we paced slowly through the mushy red top soil that exposed the unreasonably asphalt-starved, semi-faceless road in the neighborhood. The anemic road, hungering for the visitation of a generous coal-tar would channel the message through an uncomfortable friction it spat beneath the soles of our unyielding shoes.

From a distance, I saw an unassuming gentleman carrying a heavy load of coconuts for sale, the astonishment of the enormous load on his puny head was as real as the coconut-thirst hormone that was triggered down my moisture inviting throat. I made fun of him in a local language, “Boss, please don’t kill yourself because of money”. Wearing a shirt twice his size, his slender chin spoke a broad smile as he replied, “I hear you”. As our lips greeted the tiny opening of the coconut and the entire nudity of our tongue swam in the pool of the coconut juice, my colleague community organizer started an interview, of which I would later take the baton.

Our guest was Kofi Obeng, 43yr old gentleman who lives in Adeiso, a small community along Nsawam in the Eastern Region of Accra. (Nsawam is about 1 and 1/2hrs from Accra, Ghana’s capital city). He is married with 3 children aged 18, 17 and 12. The Kate Middleton of his life is a low income bread baker with an experience of 20 years romance with the oven.

Kofi has been selling coconuts for more than a decade and half or so, traveling from his village to Accra with large quantities of the commodity. In the capital city, he sleeps under a kiosk with his loads of coconut as a treasured roommate. Together with his goods, they are exposed to the elements at night and being each other’s keeper, they obviously live by a slogan, “each for one another, God for us all”.

Now this is what set me on fire- the couple’s first 2 children are enrolled in good enough Senior High Schools in the Eastern Region of Ghana, the third is in a Junior High School. Out of his coconut which he sells by carrying something like 30kg load equivalence, and walking several miles through different localities within the city, he has been able to pay his wards’ tuition, sustenance and hostel accommodation fees, while the wife’s meager income from the bread business is used for the house.

Kofi is very thrifty, tactful with finances and wouldn’t need to save at Halifax to control his spending, for he has made a pledge to educate his children to the highest level to be competitive at every aspect of life and that simple creed supports his spine firmly to bear that unimaginably heavy load. The coconut is paying more than $3,000 per annum only as educational costs for the 3 children. Kofi’s dream is to save enough money to purchase a taxi, learn how to drive and drive the cab himself since the 2 children are getting close to entering University and the coconut business wouldn’t be enough to sustain them.

After listening with attention and he accepted our invitation for a celebrity shot, I smiled at the camera while my whole face froze. I helped him carry the unfriendly load with every inch of my weary muscles and as he walked away in baggy trousers with slippers that had outlived its life span, I told myself- there goes my inspirational icon for the month of July, he is my hero.  

Obama and an Osama: An Action Movie Starring the Healthy ‘B’ and an Ugly ‘S’?

…..and Bin Laden was buried at sea at 0600 GMT……

Somewhere in the summer of 2008, I was posted to the Volta Region of Ghana for my national service. I particularly chose the region because of my yearning to experience the culture in the area, having had a taste of life in 7 out of the 10 regions of Ghana at that time, mostly as a result of my passion and work as a community organizer which made me travel a lot. I was scheduled to assume my new role in the Volta Regional Hospital in September, but my inability to find accommodation early enough delayed it to early November. When I did find a single room with an insect-stricken and mice infested straw roofing to rent, I would constantly ask myself if I indeed wanted to do service there.

I had slept in a hotel for 2 days, chasing my landlord to hand over my room keys to no avail. The man, pleasingly thin and appearing to be in his late sixties, and now deceased, had been drunk all the time I had visited him and could hardly communicate. A tenant had advised me to come very early in the morning if I wanted to get the best out of him and above all if I was serious about taking my keys.

I got to his compound around 5:30am the following day and suddenly I was greeted with jubilation that had nothing to do with me. I stood aloof as I watched my landlord’s wife waving her fade away multi-colored cloth as if she was possessed, and yelling, “Obema! Obema! Obema!” Yes, Barack Obama had just made his powerful, well- articulated and immaculate unrehearsed election victory speech, and my to-be neighbors had gone haywire in the compound. My short and frustrating experience with the man robbed me from sharing in the excitement, though I would quiz myself why the old woman would say “Obema”, instead of ‘Obama’, at least that was something to smile about.

The election of Barack Hussein Obama II to the White House was always going to be a difficult one, even to the seat as the Senator of Illinois earlier on, and if Rush Limbaugh, the American radio talk show host with a strong Republican family history, during an on-air show, would say “Osama Obama” to ridicule him to listeners, then you’ve got to understand why and how his first name alone was his titanic nemesis, an albatross that could be capitalized upon by opponents to run negative ads to lose him some votes.

I could imagine several Americans wondering if there was a link between the names, ‘Obama’ and ‘Osama’. There sure should be a nexus, far from an alphabetical ludo game of sheepishly exchanging a healthy ‘B’ with an ugly ‘O’, but here we had the world’s most powerful man pitched in a mortal combat against the world’s most wanted man. And what made the portrait giddy enough to paint? The two names graphically appeared to be comrades rather than enemies, a real funny kink.

Osama Bin Laden was a pain in the neck. Can you imagine a guy who appears on TV and promises, yes makes a promise to kill people, and has a rich and enhanced CV to support his vows? The White House had to consider this option – what do we do with such a gladiator if he is captured? Do you trial and jail him till the coming of Christ, or you put a bullet behind his eyes and bury him at sea? They chose the latter comfortably, to hell with everyone. Please, SEALS Team Six were given specific orders.

Although Islamic traditional procedures and laws of burial permit burial at sea under some special conditions and circumstances, but definitely not in this case, CBS News claims that White House contacted Saudi Arabia and negotiated the burial on Arabia soil but the Saudi government refused the offer, and having limited time to negotiate with any other person, coupled with the fact that it doesn’t want Bin Laden’s grave to be a terrorist shrine, it was a mere act of ocean charity to offer the sharks and aquatic lives in the Arabian sea a rare ‘celebrity’ meal.

What the ordinary global citizen has failed to understand is that politics is full of conspiracies á la carte, to “maximize opportunities and minimize accountability”. Yes, Bin Laden was unarmed when he was shot but there was always going to be a legal justification porridge for global consumption, so heck yeah, White House says he was a military target and as such shooting and killing him was an act of national self defense. They are simply telling us to take it or leave it. Period!

In the meantime, conspiracy theories about Bin Laden’s death are the choruses each day, especially without any photo evidence of the dead body, with many people believing that the US government has staged a Hollywood action film that could break several box office records and beat James Cameron’s Avatar as the highest grossing movie of all time, with President Obama as Bruce Willis, to revive Obama’s poll rating and secure a 2012 re-election. Though am looking forwarding to seeing this movie in the cinemas in 3D, I wouldn’t deny a corn or bubble of reality in this claim.

Happy in Ghana, Crazy in London

I dedicate this note to Divya Nawale, a friend in need and a friend indeed. I thank you for being there for me all these times. I’m telling this story because of you.

I love writing, but I would definitely choose watching a UEFA Champions League knockout match over staying late to finish a piece to be published by a local newspaper. As an erratic teenager, just when I had tied the knot with writing, and before I graduated from the Academy of puberty stricken den of ugly sporadic hissy fits, I used to say that my most fulfilling moment in writing would be to write or blog for the Wall Street Journal, or even the New York Times. But growing up, and after enrolling in the school of experiencing life in one’s early 20s, I realised that writing is more of fulfilment than prestige.

I write mainly to share, and in sharing begets reaching out with a positive vibe, sometimes trying hard to avoid mundane messages woollen from lullabies. I’m sharing this one with you because I feel it would make you smile, and if it doesn’t, I’m not sure you would frown either.

Somewhere July 2010, a street hawker made my day after a terrible time at work, the result of which I put a post on Facebook, only to be responded to by a close friend of mine who’s day had turned sour on another continent at the same time mine occurred.

It was evening rush hour, already intimidated by the disrespectful traffic jam; I strode from the bus with only one thing on my mind- the gracious dinner waiting to greet my weary lips. I wished I had wings to fly and devour the very life out of that arrogant food. As I walked past a swell of street hawkers, a stew of voice caught my attention which ushered me an eerie sense of déjà vu.

A hawker, appearing to be in his late twenties and selling children story and fiction materials on the defaced floor, was reciting some familiar stanzas of Chinua Achebe’s book- ‘Things Fall Apart’. Interestingly, those lines were the first page of the book that I had memorized several years ago.

Suddenly I was frozen in my track beside the young man. As he read and ended a line, I inadvertently took over, reciting two lines to his amazement. I paused, and he took over, and before we knew, we had recited the first page in turns. It was just beautiful. Onlookers ogled, and passersby were caught standing and enjoying the show. After the performance, I swallowed him in a bear hug, as his day- old sparse whiskers tingled my facial pores. I couldn’t hide my joy; I quickly shared it on facebook in a post – “Today, a street hawker made my day”. I was happy in Ghana.

In response to my post was a message by a very good friend of mine, living in London, who narrated her own version that streaked my story with an attitude of untimely irony. Now this was hers: As she was coming back from the temple in the evening, a man (maybe in his 20s) ran past her real fast that she jumped, as he nearly bumped into her. Behind her, a woman went running and yelling “Please stop, don’t do this to me”, bursting and crying. Her hand bag was history; she had been mugged around Tottenham Court Road Station.

At the sight of the wailing woman, my friend felt really helpless and vulnerable and admitted that she would have tripped the mugger over with her leg to stop him, if she knew why he was running. In effect, she was communicating to me "how ironic life can be, that someone’s best moment of life somewhere is the worst for another or maybe the person just sitting next to you on the bus who was having such a terrible day, while you are full of smiles".

She concluded her message, “sometimes I feel guilty to be happy, maybe that’s a sadistic way of looking at things but at least I am real. I am glad you had a happy moment there though. Your status made me smile”.

That night, I played back all the occurrences, trying to borrow her thoughts to connect to my own experience. Before sleep took over my irresponsibly drunken eyes, I sigh and thought- happy in Ghana, crazy in London.

GM (2011)