Spirit in Action

Practical Idealist & Advocacy for Africa

Focusing on the African countries of Burundi & Somalia, Alissa Wilson is AFSC's Public Education & Advocacy Coordinator for Africa. She has served in Americorps, was an election observer in Nigeria, and is co-author of Practical Idealists: Changing the World and Getting Paid.

Featured Music:
Sweet Mother - Prince Nico Mbarga

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 08 Nov 2015
Audio Format:: other

[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sync deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along Today's Spirit in Action takes us to an encounter with Africa. My guest, Alyssa Wilson, is public education and advocacy coordinator for Africa As staff of the American Friends Service Committee, AFSC. Alyssa has advocacy experience in Nigeria, Somalia, Burundi, South Sudan, and other spots across the African continent, but she also has a passion for West African dance. So she's quite a treat. On top of that, she's written a book which may speak to your condition. Practical idealists, changing the world, and getting paid. About a month ago, I sat down with Alyssa Wilson on the campus of California University of Pennsylvania. Alyssa, I'm so happy to have you here today for Spirit in Action. Thank you. I'm very glad to be here. I'm excited. I understand that you just flew in a couple days ago and it wasn't from this time zone. Where were you? I was in Istanbul, Turkey for the wedding of a friend who I worked with in South Sudan. And what kind of wedding would this be? I think it was actually a wedding that could have taken place in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The people getting married were both raised for the most part in the United States, but one of them has a family member who is Turkish. And so they wanted to make sure that that side of the family got to celebrate with them in the special occasion. And already you've mentioned being in Sudan. Most people haven't made it there yet from the U.S. You didn't exactly originate overseas, did you? How do you end up in the Sudan? What's a nice girl from Massachusetts ending up in Sudan? So I'm originally from New York City. After lots of different adventures and going to graduate school to study conflict resolution and political developments, I had made some connections with the person who was the regional director at the National Democratic Institute for the region that includes Sudan. He mentioned that there were some positions opening up, and I remember I was walking from dance class to my bus stop, and I was talking to him on the cell phone, and I said, "What positions? I want to go work." And at the time it was southern Sudan. It was a couple years before the referendum for independence. Within that bus ride home, I had sort of convinced him that he needed to look at my resume and we needed to have more discussions about this. And I think about six months a year from that date, I was on a plane to go to Juba. And I got there about six months before the referendum for independence. I was tasked with running a community organizing program. South Sudan, at the time southern Sudan, has ten states, and the program was running each of the states with a colleague who was South Sudanese, kind of taking the lead of what was happening in the program. And I was the person who brought the tools and kind of helped them to troubleshoot as they developed the programming that was right for their own state. And your age at the time? - 32? - So you had a few years. - I had a few years. - Experiencing. - Yeah. In some cases, I think that a person who's in the early 20s is ideally suited because they have no idea how impossible the task is. No, no. I am a big believer that people who go overseas to work should be coming with skills that they can really share. I think it's really easy to leave college and think, I want to go overseas and do this work. And indeed, that was me, you know, at 21. But I think the fact that I had done work in the United States, and some work also in Nigeria before I got to South Sudan, was really important. It was the toughest job I've ever had, and it needed every single skill that I had gathered for those 10 years to have a success. And I think that when we have lots of people who haven't had very much job experience before they go and work with communities that really could use these skills, it can be very difficult for both the people who are going to do the work and the people who are engaging with those staff members. - I'm going to tell you a little bit about my experience with Africa. I lived two years, I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo, West Africa. So I was one of those young people. I was 23 at the time that I went. In my training program, though, and this is a group of people who were training Vermont, going to a lot of different countries in Africa, most of us, 22, 23, 24, 25, there was one man who was 61, and there was one man who was 75 who was going. And so he had the technical experience for, I know exactly what you mean. I was going to teach physics and chemistry in math in, at least, a high school situation. It just so happens that because I was both a speech communications major and a computer science and physics and math major, I was kind of more qualified than most people of my age. And so at one point, there was a traveler I met, a woman who was from Denmark, and she wondered if she could come to my village and watch me teach. And she watched afterwards, she told me, I was so relieved to see that they have an excellent teacher here because I had heard that Peace Corps teachers were lousy. So I have a feeling that maybe there's some truth to what you say. So what was your experience initially with Africa? I went to Nigeria in 2002, I worked for the Center for Democracy and Development, which is a Nigerian organization, which I think was kind of interesting because a lot of times when Americans or people from the United States go overseas, they're working for organizations that are headquartered in the United States or Europe. There are certain power dynamics often in those organizations. And so I got to work for a Nigerian organization where I was the only non-Nigerian person there. And I focused on children and armed conflict research because at the time, conflict was happening in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the neighborhood that they were trying to look at. I had gotten the internship through the supervisor from my internship at the United Nations at the Undersecretary General for Children and Armed Conflict. I just asked her, do you think it's possible for one of the organizations that you work with to take me as a volunteer? And she said, first of all, you never ask to not be paid. And second of all, let me see what I can do. And she was able to connect me with this organization. You never ask to not be paid. This is going to be important because of your book, practical idealist, changing the world and giving paid. Say more about that. What does that mean? Well, it means that if you approach an organization, even if you're asking for a small stipend or something to help support you, that's what you asked for. You don't just say, could I volunteer and give away all my money? Especially if you're, I don't know, maybe from a family that doesn't have a lot of money, which was my situation, I definitely wasn't coming with any kind of parental support. So I got room and board and $100 a month for six months, and for me, that was perfect. So it's not like you need to ask for lots of money, but ask what someone can do in exchange for your assistance and see what happens. And if they can't do anything, then they tell you, you know, I can't afford to help you out in this way, but I'd love to have you volunteer. And then maybe you still volunteer, but you don't come to someone saying... It's not your first offer. Right. It's not your first offer. And if you live in Nigeria, you have to learn how to bargain in any case. Right. Exactly. Because at the market, if you can't bargain, you're going to give away all your money. Right. Well, I don't. So you spent this time in Nigeria. What was your experience there? Part of me isn't even sure how to answer that question because it was just amazing. It was eye-opening. It was my first time in Africa. It was my first time really being very much on my own. People took care of me. Like, I found that out. People were very caring, but it was a completely new context. And I learned a lot about how to listen because when you come to a context that you are unfamiliar with, that's really your best strategy. I learned a lot about the history and culture of Nigeria. I got invited to baby naming ceremonies and weddings. I got to do my first election observation mission, which was interesting because I've done that subsequently in Nigeria, but with an international organization. So it was really great to see how a national organization would organize itself and the work that it was doing in communities. I am so grateful to the woman, Fumi Uldone-Shakin, who helped me get this position because I think it's really what kind of got me into grad school and got me thinking about power dynamics and international development work, which is, I think, something that often when people start, it's not what they're thinking about. I mean, they're thinking about how do I get this job and, you know, how do I do a good job at this job, which is super important. But the power dynamic part, I think, is also important to think about when you're choosing an organization to work for. What do you mean by that power dynamics? Who is in charge? Who gets to set the program priorities? And who, meaning, is it people who are from that country? Or is it people who are at a headquarters in the United States? Who gets to implement programming? And when programming, you know, is maybe having trouble, who gets to decide what happens? All of those decisions are really important and may or may not get made by someone who has a real deep knowledge of what's happening in that place. There's something about your situation that's different than mine. First of all, I grew up small town, Wisconsin. My skin is very pale, very prone to sunburn. Yours is less so than your African American. But I did get burnt in Nigeria. You did? My first experience with sunburn. I didn't know what it was. I was sweating, and I put my hand up to my forehead. And I was like, well, okay, so there is sweat, but I don't understand why my skin feels like fire. And it took me a minute. I actually had to Google a little bit to figure out that this was a sunburn. I didn't even know it was possible when I got my first big sunburn. After 10 hours in the sun one day, it was a little bit incautious on my part. My students freaked when they saw my skin, all turned red, and then peeled off. Like, is this guy a snake or something? The cultural learning went both ways in this case. So what was your experience as an American woman in Nigeria? I had enough other friends who were black or Peace Corps volunteers who had very diverse experiences. It depended on the setting. I think that on the street, people weren't quite sure what to do with me because they knew I wasn't from Nigeria, but they weren't quite sure where I was from. No one ever really guessed the United States, but they just knew I was from somewhere else. And so sometimes we'd have this kind of dialogue back. Where are you from? Where do you think I'm from? No, I'm not really sure. Maybe Liberia? No, maybe South Africa? No. Listen to the sound of my voice. Where do I sound like I'm from? And so then after a while, we'd get to the United States. I think one of my colleagues at the end of my time in Nigeria sort of admitted to me that when she heard that there was someone coming who was from New York, that she was a little bit concerned that I was going to be really brash and just kind of try to boss everybody around, but that she was happy with who I turned out to be because that wasn't my personality. So I think there were different levels of reaction to me. And the same thing happened in South Sudan where people would not quite be sure where I was from. And I got to the point where I would actually tell people, close your eyes and then just listen to the sound of my voice. Now where do you think I'm from? And then they would really, they'd get it. They would say, Obama is our president. Of course we have black people. But yeah, yeah. And in Togo, the word for those of us from elsewhere is yo-vo, where I lived. What's it in Nigeria where you were? What state were you in? I was in Lagos. You know, I can't actually remember what the word for white people is. But somebody did one say to me, but you're a white person. And then we had to have a talk about American history. Like a very serious talk. And this has happened to be multiple times in Africa. My mom is a historian and she, one of her focus is African American history. And so we talk about the transatlantic slave trade and, you know, what it meant to be a slave. And we talk about, you know, sort of the emancipation proclamation and then what it meant to live in Jim Crow and desegregation. And I ask people, well, have you ever heard of Martin Luther King? And people say, yes. Yes. Martin Luther King Jr. Yes. Rosa Parks. And I say, so why do you think they existed? Like, why do you think they were doing that work? So I talk to people about what it meant to go through this journey to freedom and what it's meant after in the last hundred or so years to be an African American person and kind of the struggles and the movements that have taken place. By the time I'm done, we're good. It's like, oh, wow. Okay. Right. I hadn't put that together that way. But I think it's really important because now people look at the television and they see, you know, images of African American people. And it doesn't help you contextualize historically what you're looking at. Well, I want to continue with your journey because what's important to me and I think to you is changing the world. So I read on a site somewhere. Your mission was to help people solve their conflicts in nonviolent ways that build up on commonalities instead of eliminating them. That's it tufts that I read that. So you may have a new purpose today, but at one point you told them that. So both of us are, we're working to make a difference in the world. You started out your internship in Nigeria. Where did you go from there? There I went to graduate school, but I should say that that wasn't the start. The start was in AmeriCorps. I graduated from college and I wanted to do international affairs, but I ended up going deeper into the country. So I was an AmeriCorps member in Indianapolis, Indiana at the Peace Learning Center. I taught conflict resolution in the public school system to K through 12 students. I was part of a training team and we went out into schools and taught students how to become peer mediators and then helped to kind of support the programming as it was running. And that was an amazing experience. I feel like I've taken a lot from that experience, really just in terms of being able to put together a training and facilitation and working in teams of people. And that was actually my first experience with friends communities, was living in Indianapolis. A stone's throw away from the North Medical Circle of Friends meeting. I happened to find my way to a great couple who only charged me $100 a month for rent, which you can afford as an AmeriCorps member. Almost. And they were just wonderful and kind of brought me in as part of their family because I didn't know anybody really in Indiana. I'd met some people through a college friend of mine. So those were the two folks, the two groups of folks I knew. I knew the meeting folks and I knew these people who were friends of friends. And I'd gotten there through, my mom is a singer and storyteller and does conflict resolution and community development. And at the time she had just moved to California, but she was trying to help me figure out where do you find a place to stay in Indianapolis. So we contacted the people we knew who we thought knew the greatest number of people. And that was Pete and Toshi Seger because she had been doing some performing with Pete for the years prior to that. They contacted Peter Blood who did rise up singing and Peter reached out to Ron and Jane Haldeman at North Motor Circle of Friends. And they said after meeting one day, does anyone want to rent a room to this woman who's coming to do AmeriCorps? She needs a cheap room. So if you have space in your house, you'd really appreciate it. And then I ended up with this couple and was there doing AmeriCorps and then the next summer was an intern at the UN. Then came back to Indiana to do a fellowship at the Center on Philanthropy and got to write about natural resource extraction conflicts and kind of learn how academic stuff works. But also do this fellowship. It doesn't exist anymore, but the fellows are still like a really tight knit group because it was amazing. And it was really a program that respected you as a young person who could think for yourself and do research. The person who started it was named Robert Payton. And he just really wanted young people to understand their potential and that they could be leaders in social change work. And it didn't have to be that social change work happened through working for a nonprofit, but you could be a business person and still change your community. And so it went from there to Nigeria. But had a period of unemployment for a few months where I was trying to get a job as a program assistant in New York City and I thought that's what you do. You're a couple years out of college, you go become a program assistant, then you go to grad school, then you become a program officer and that's how you do it and I couldn't get hired to save my life. And a lot of people like to gloss over that part of their history, but I feel like it happens to everybody. So for the sake of people who are trying to be at that point in their life right now, you should just say it. And even though my mom said that I was eminently trainable, I wasn't finding anything. And I finally had to ask myself what I actually wanted to do. And I decided I was like, I want to go to West Africa and study dance and do something with conflict resolution. And so the dance part didn't quite happen, but the conflict resolution part happened. And then I went to the Fletcher School for a couple of years, for two years. There's one thing you mentioned a little bit back about your AmeriCorps experience. Before we started the interview, you asked me a list if Noah Baker Merrill is still here. And I interviewed him about Quaker Voluntary Service. And one of the things that I wanted to check with you, compared with what he said, he's a board member of Quaker Voluntary Service. And one of the reasons he says he's doing that work is because he had the AmeriCorps experience, which was very good in its own right. But it was missing a piece. And he figures with Quaker Voluntary Service, it's like AmeriCorps wrestling with important things in the world. But in addition, it's got this core and sense to it that many people need and would benefit from. Now, you had your AmeriCorps experience. If you could edit it back in history, was there a piece missing? Or was it just full 100% just as it was? I think for me it was what I was looking for. I think I also had, I was on one of the smaller teams. And so we really got a chance to talk to one another about how we were doing what brought us to this work and how we stayed kind of energized. And I think that was kind of unusual because often in AmeriCorps you're in like a really big group. And I know even in that organization, like we were kind of set aside in that we had a special function in terms of training these young people. And so I think part of it was probably just who I ended up being with and the ways that they were working because I remember the head of the training crew. So her mom was a psychologist and it was just really important to her that we had a safe space to develop as young people. So I would imagine though that not everybody had that kind of person as the head of their team. And so AmeriCorps doesn't necessarily include that automatically and that there would be opportunities to help create new programming that did include that automatically. There's something you said earlier in the interview Alyssa that I want to juxtapose with what you said. You said when we have someone going like you did and doing your internship over in Nigeria that we shouldn't be sending the young folks, right? The 22-year-olds, 23-year-olds, like happened with me in the Peace Corps, that at 32 you were at the necessary point you needed to be at to be able to do your work in Nigeria. Should we be sending volunteers to be AmeriCorps at 22-23-24? Doesn't that really demand the experience of a 32-year-old? That's a great question and I should say maybe that it's not necessarily about being young but about the skills that you have to bring to the situation that you are going to be in. So in a sense, yes, I think if people have the skills that are needed for the job that is at hand, it doesn't matter what age they are. Often, age can correlate with experience but that's not necessarily the case. So, you know, if there's a young person who's going to South Sudan who is trained in XYZ skill that they need to be doing in South Sudan, I'm cool with that. And I think the same is true for working in local communities. I think -- and this wasn't the case with me and Indianapolis, but it was the case with a lot of other people. When you are working in your own community, the knowledge that you have about that community counts for a lot. And so, if you receive the skills that you need to be able to do job X, the knowledge that you're bringing with you to do that job counts for a lot. We'll get right back to that, Lissa, but first I want to mention to our listeners, this is Spirit in Action, which is Norton Spirit Radio Production on the web at northernspiritradio.org. On that site, you'll find more than nine years of our programs for free listing and download. You'll find links to the places where we're broadcast. You can connect to us also via iTunes and our own RSS feed. There's a number of different ways to connect. You also find links to our guests. For instance, with Alissa Wilson, you'll find a connection to the American Friends Service Committee site, which is AFSC.org, the site where she is public education advocacy coordinator for Africa. You'll also find a place to leave comments, and we love two-way communication. You're listening to us right now, but you have some really valuable things that we need to hear. Please share them when you visit our site. There's also a donate button. That's how we fund this enterprise. Please contribute when you visit. But even more so, I want to encourage you to support your local community radio station. They provide a slice of information and of music that you get nowhere else on the American landscape, so please support your local community radio station. Again, our guest is Alissa Wilson with AFSC, American Friends Service Committee. Alissa has a wide range of activities that she's done in Africa. She's grown her talents over the last 10-15 years in a way that is making an important difference in the world. She's also written a book, and we're going to get to that soon. It's called Practical Idealists Changing the World and Getting Paid, two things very dear to all of us who are on. This says, probably you listening, you're probably trying to change the world, and so we're following her path and gaining her insights and effort to spread the ability to change the world. You just talked to Alissa about young people in the neighborhood and having the talents, the skills to do your work. What made you have the skills? Was it graduate school that gave you the skills to be able to deal with Africa realistically? What was it that catapulted you to the point where I think you're actually making that difference in Africa and in U.S. connection to Africa? In terms of my work in South Sudan, it was every single job I'd ever had. I mean, sometimes I say that jokingly, but it's really true. Everything from my AmeriCorps experience facilitating workshops to, I worked for the American Friends Service Committee from 2008 to 2010, and part of that work included doing advocacy work, and the community organizing program that I ran in South Sudan had a large focus on advocacy work. Even the work that I had done on the Obama campaign in '08, I think, in terms of how to organize people and just keep track of your volunteers was in that job. So I often say that my work in South Sudan took every single skill and tool from my toolbox, but I'd like to say that even though things in South Sudan have gotten incredibly difficult in the last six months, a few of my colleagues contacted me and said that even though our office was closing down, they are going to try to carry on that work on their own, which was really like the best sort of review of the job I did that I could have ever received. So I'm really excited because they're amazing community organizers and just amazing people, and it meant that we did something together that can endure. After getting there and thinking, "Oh my goodness, what have I gotten myself into?" I developed a curriculum that essentially went through the steps of kind of a community organizing program in terms of identifying a problem or an issue in the community, doing community-based research, doing outreach to different offices in the government, like identifying who had the power to change what you needed to change. A lot of the work actually was sort of inspired by the Midwest Academy program. We have an AFSC office in Chicago that while we were doing work together from that '08 to 2010 period, brought the Midwest Academy strategy chart into kind of our community of work, and I just found it really useful. So I brought that and kind of deconstructed part of it to share with folks. Essentially, I trained my South Sudanese colleagues who were the heads of the work in the states, the different states in South Sudan, and they identified organizations to work with, brought them together to identify what they wanted to work on. And the thing that I always thought was really noteworthy, but also a little bit scary, was that sometimes we got feedback from the organizations that this was the first time they'd ever been brought together to talk about figuring out an issue that they wanted to work on. Usually, folks brought them together to say, "All right, this is not folks, let me be more specific." Like, international development organizations would bring together South Sudanese organizations and say, "I work on water or I work on education. This is what we can do. How could there be an interface between what you do and what we would like to accomplish?" I mean, we were focused on advocacy, but we were saying anything that you want to work on. Like, if you can identify what that is, we will support you in doing advocacy on that subject. That was, I think, kind of something that I was a little bit taken aback by, but I think that it was really great because it meant that the organizations that we worked with had a lot of buy-in in terms of the program. So they prepare these programs, how were they disseminated to the various states in southern Sudan? So what I did was I had a training in Juba and a training in WOW, and these are two cities in South Sudan that are kind of hubs in their regions. And we would bring people together, who were my colleagues at NDI, to train them on the nuts and bolts skills of community organizing. Then they would go back to their states and work with the organizations that were there in terms of what it was that they were working on. I want to point out that it wasn't, I think sometimes when people think about community organizing, it can get into thinking of as a confrontational type of work. But this was really trying to see where communities could understand what they needed and then, in a way, work with the very young governments of South Sudan to see where progress was possible. And to help them understand what was needed because in a lot of times, these were people who had never been in the government before. It was a very new even door that there would be a government in South Sudan, right? And so to work with those folks and let them know, okay, this is what's needed in this part of this town. This is what we found in this part of this town. If you could mobilize resources in this place, the community could support that and it would leverage what each of us has and it would be even better than if one of us did something by ourselves. Like in WARAP, let's say, the organizations that were working with the community organizing program decided we want to work on water because there are a lot of people here. There's not enough water infrastructure and water is important because it deals with health, water deals with education, right? If kids are sick, they can't go to school or if girls have to travel a long way to get the water, they can't go to school. And so everyone decided that's what they wanted to work on. Also, at this time, people were coming down from the north because it was around the time that the independence had happened and people thought, you know, I need to return to my home. And there were even more people and even less water for them to have. They did their research and the research was so good that the government was like, hey, next time you go out and do your research, can we come to? And as a person from the United States, my thought was, is the government trying to monitor how you do your research? And then in the discussion, they were like, no, it was a new skill for them. And so they wanted to see how it happened. And so kind of everybody benefited from that process, which was really awesome. And so WARA got together, the community organizing folks with the Ministry of Infrastructure, and they said, all right, we understand now where water needs to happen in these parts of the city. We might not have all the resources we need to make that happen, but we know who does. We know that, I think it was UNICEF maybe in this example, UNICEF has pledged that they are going to help with water infrastructure. So I think there's a minister had the forethought to just bring everybody together, bring the community together, bring the ministry together and bring the international donor community together and say, hey, this is exactly what our community has asked for. Can you help make that happen? And they did. It took months to make that process happen, but it was something that was really from the community. It wasn't an outsider coming in and saying, okay, water point here, water point here, water point here, now we're done. It was something where this community could take this skill later and apply it to anything else that they needed to do. That's kind of how it worked. And if I can provide some counterpoint for my own experience in Togo, I spoke with a French volunteer and there had been some, they were going to be bringing in water, you know, dig well that was going to serve the community. The way it worked though, when the money came in, it was going through the chief who was leading it. The people weren't really bought into this yet. It wasn't community owned as in the situation you're talking about, Alyssa. And so the chief said, oh good, I've got some money. I'll buy myself a refrigerator and a generator. And he had a nice little setup for himself, but it was very frustrating then to watch good resources not go where they needed to go. So I understand the difference. And I think a lot of people in the United States maybe don't understand the counterpoint of how it looks in Africa. Did you see things play out not in the beneficial way that you were organizing? Did you learn from other situations where it had failed or where it had gone awry to know to do it better? Or did you just learn that in graduate school? I didn't. I mean, when I came in, I think a lot of the knowledge I had was from, well, partially from graduate school, but partially from US models of organizing. But for me, it was really trusting my South Sudanese colleagues. And they had a lot of experience. And really, I was bringing a set of tools that they could use. And they knew who to trust and how to talk to people and how to nuance arguments or introduction of the program into the community. And so I think that's why we were successful. At that point, you know, we didn't have a lot of examples of what hadn't worked because I was hired to start the community organizing program. So it was a very new journey that we were all on together. In the beginning, though, I was not liked because I asked people to do a lot of kind of assessment of the situations in their states. And it meant a lot of writing. While people didn't like that, I was asking them to do that. I think that preparation probably also helped us to make sure that whatever happened later was positive and successful. Another thing, I don't mean to touch any sense of spots if this is a problem, but you were a woman in a place where I doubt that women had a lot of leadership positions. But I don't know. I've never been to South Sudan. Most of my experience has been with West Africa. I've been asked this question before. I did not encounter many challenges as a woman in South Sudan in terms of being the head of this program. I think partially because, at least with my colleagues at NDI, I came with a set of skills. And the set of skills that I came with was more important than my gender. And I think that when I was introduced to community members, it was always with my NDI colleagues. I think they had done work in communities where people knew that if someone was coming with them and they thought this person had good skills, that they should just work with them and it would be okay. So there were definitely times when I felt like I was walking into a situation. This sounds going to sound strange, but mostly because I'm not that short, but in some communities in South Sudan, I'm a very short person. And I would walk into a room that was filled with older men who were quite a bit taller than I was, and I was the one who needed to make sure that I felt like I was coming in. Hello, how are you? I'm here to communicate with you the set of skills and we'll work together. I'm really excited to be here. So I don't know what people said sometimes when I wasn't there, but generally it was okay. So what did you achieve by that program? How do you think that that changed the course? And of course, it's not just you working. It's all the colleagues. It's the organization. There's so many people who made a difference to number one, having that transition happen in a way that was not immediately dire for the southern part of Sudan and also that there wasn't violence because there was the question of the north just coming in and suppressing the entire movement. So what did you achieve? In certain communities, the people who were engaging in the community organizing process were able to achieve the goals that they had set out to achieve, like in WARA, where they wanted to increase the water infrastructure, and they were able to do that. They were also some achievements, I believe in Jangalay, and in western Bargazal, where they were working on education and trying to make the education system more open so that parents could have a larger say. So I think on one level, a number of the programs achieved what they had set out to achieve, what the community had set out to achieve, one thing that I'm really interested in knowing is whether part of what we achieved was helping to support social capital between organizations and peoples in the communities that were working together. I'd really love to find out if some of those bonds helped to support people last winter when things started to fall apart. That's something that I've kind of taken it as a personal thing that I would like to just even to figure out how I get that information because I would hope that even though people were working on something kind of discreet at that moment, that the work they did together could build the capital to support them in times when things were violent or when the question looked a lot more like survival than being able to achieve, you know, something programmatically. Well, maybe that's a good point from which to jump to your current position. You work with the American Friends Service Committee, you do public education advocacy coordinator for Africa, several different countries there, Somalia and others, I believe. Talk about that and how that relates or builds on or connects with, maybe gives you at least some connection to people in South Sudan. So we don't work in South Sudan, so I don't get to connect with people in South Sudan for this part of the work, but I think that just in general, the understanding that I had of how to get work done in South Sudan does inform the work that I do now. We work in Burundi, Zimbabwe and Somalia, and are looking at expanding work in Kenya, and a lot of the work that I do relates to Burundi and Somalia. I think one of the reasons that I really enjoy working with AFSC, especially in terms of policy, is that we really respect our partners that we're working with, and we really take seriously the fact that the advocacy work we do should be grounded in lifting up their voices, so that if people from Burundi and Somalia can't be in Washington DC all the time, I'm there. And so I'm working with my colleagues who are in Burundi, or colleagues who are sort of working on our Somalia programming, and saying what's happening, what would be interesting or important, asking them what's happening, and what would be important for me to communicate to members of Congress, to people at USAID or the State Department, and then working with our colleagues at the Quaker United Nations Office to make sure that they also have good information to use in the meetings that they're having with people. Your title, Public Education and Advocacy Coordinator. Sure, let's advocate for all of Africa, and most people in the U.S. have very little idea how vast Africa is. You're really towards the eastern side there. Right, so yeah, I mean that's how we make sure that it's not like too much, because I'm a one woman office essentially. I focus on Burundi, especially on the reconciliation work that's happening there, and on the community healing work that's happening there, and I focus on Somalia, especially in terms of the ideas of mainstreaming peace building, and ensuring that there is some wonky words here, a legally permissive environment for peace building to happen, meaning that legislation that the U.S. government has enacted doesn't get in the way of peace building work. So those are two of my major focuses, and then there's other things that kind of can come up, like looking at what's happening with conventions that are going on, or if there's a UN meeting that's happening, and Somalia is going to be part of it, how do we make sure that partners that we have maybe have their voice represented. One thing that maybe is not completely intuitively obvious to our listeners is why is the American Friends Service Committee doing, it's not the African Friends Service Committee. Why is it the American Friends Service Committee wearing a butt over in Africa? So why is AFSC concerned about over there? What's that got to do with America? So we used to have on all our cards, Quaker Values in Action. This is the illicit interpretation of it, so I just want to put that out there. That as we walk in the world in trying to build peace in different communities, even though we are based in the United States, we understand that we are fellow travelers with others who are trying to build peace. In places where we could create something with partners that could really try to support what they're doing, we would like to be there. AFSC doesn't go into communities where they don't want us. We definitely have a policy of working in partnership with people who are already working to make things better in their own community. I mean, it sounds a little bit cliche, but no man or woman is an island, and that we are in this together. So I think to say we would only do work in the United States is not reflective of the way that one can see the world as interconnected. George Fox said, and of one of his sentences, "Walk cheerfully over the world answering that of God." No, it's not "walk cheerfully over your own country." Right, right. But I think that the sensibility that we work with really recognizes that I'm not the boss of you. I think I'm here to work with you and to recognize that of God and you. And that sensibility is so important because there are some organizations that are set up to really kind of give out pronouncements of how things will work. And although AFSC does have meetings on program and setting program priorities and things like that, the processes involve partners and really value partnership. I think because we don't have too much time left, I would like to mine a little bit more your background, the thing that got you to be the person who was concerned about this. I mean, I don't think it's just because you took a major at school that you said, "Okay, well then I have to create some work to justify what I studied." One of the things that you mentioned is about the work that your mother does, which I think includes conflict resolution type work. Does this flow down from your mother? Are there other particular influential sources in your life? What made you want to do this work in particular? I'm interested in something that might be called either religious or spiritual influences in your life as well as the others. So usually my go-to answer is my mom. I mean, when I was doing this fellowship at the Center on Philanthropy, they asked us for our philanthropic autobiography. Their definition of philanthropy was voluntary action for the public goods, so not just giving away money. I grew up in a house that was really dedicated to supporting communities in many different ways. Sometimes I joke with my mom that she created a monster. Like she wasn't quite sure. When I used to get out of the tub, she would say every single time, "Upstanding citizen." And I didn't actually understand what that meant until a lot later. I just thought that was like, "That's the get out of the tub prompt." And she is a very spiritual person. And the idea of that of God and everyone is very much at the core of how she works with people and talks to people. And I just don't know how you would have come out of my house without feeling like this was something you needed to work on. But I think there was also the flexibility to choose what you were interested in. And so although I kind of got the conflict resolution bug, the way that I wanted to express that was in terms of the international arena. And she supported me 100% in that desire. It's funny, when she came home with conflict resolution tools, she was doing eye messages. She did things at the interpersonal and family level. And I actually said to her, "That's fine for the people that you work with, but I want to fight like normal people." By the time I got to summer camp, the next summer, I was teaching other people eye messages. So she was a very effective teacher. Yeah, I mean, I think that's just about it. It's like, how could I be doing something else, except for maybe the arts? But in terms of the work that I'm doing, really the house that I came out of, where everyone is your neighbor. And that it's important to see the world in that way and understand that what you do has consequences. And they can be good, and they can be bad, and sometimes you can struggle with them. But that you've really got to work to your highest sense of right. That's something that she used to say a lot, or she says a lot. She still works to your highest sense of right. And if you're not working to your highest sense of right, then you've got to ask yourself what you're doing. When you come out of the shower these days, does she still say "Uftanding citizen"? No! She lives in Nigeria now. We've traded places. But I do think about that whenever I'm with a friend who has a little kid, I'm like "Oh, you should tell them! I'm standing citizen to get them out of the tub!" Because I think it's awesome! It sounds to me when you talk about your work with AFSC right now, I think I'd need to have a graduate degree in your field of study to have a better sense of what that means. Can you give me something that's more concrete that I can understand how this is changing the world, making it better? Well, I want to tell you about the part of my work that I enjoy the most. So the part of my work that I enjoy the most is when I can host people that we work with. And just this past month, I worked with someone from Burundi, healing and rebuilding our communities in Burundi. They do reconciliation work in community healing. And people should understand if they don't. We're used to thinking of Rwanda and the genocide in this country. Rwanda and Burundi are right next to each other and the Hutu Tutsi conflict. It happened also in Burundi. So the same thing that happened in Rwanda was happening in Burundi. So, background. Thank you. He came to Washington, D.C. and we did meetings with different offices on the Hill. So House and Senate offices, just to give them a better background about what was happening in Burundi, especially about the importance of community reconciliation and trauma healing. Because these are folks who are tasked with creating legislation, especially legislation to give money to agencies like the US Agency for International Development that will support programming like this. So, AFSC as an organization, we don't take US government money, but we definitely have opinions about how the US government should spend its money. And we want it to be as effective as possible and as community supporting as possible. So, when guests like this come to the United States, we make sure that they are meeting with people who have decision-making power to say, "Hey, this is what's happening in my country and in my community. These are the suggestions that I have for the work that you're trying to do." So, we went to the State Department, we went to the US Agency for International Development. Then he went later on to New York City, where he worked with the Quaker United Nations office, met with different offices there. It's nice when I can come in and say, "These are suggestions that we have." Even if there are suggestions that are based in the work that is happening in the countries that we're talking about, it's even better if someone from that country can come and sit down with decision-makers. Especially because decision-makers who are living in Washington, D.C., or New York City may not actually get to go to the country that they're working on very frequently. And so, it's really important from them to hear from people who are engaged in this work about what is necessary to move forward. You know, Alyssa, because I have my special connection to Africa, it's part of my heart. I'm going to head to the Congo next month and do peace working through international folk dancing with Quakers there. Because I've got that kind of connection with Africa, it's just so fun for me, as well as inspiring to see the work that you've done over the last ten years, connecting with making a difference at the highest levels and at the deepest spiritual levels with Africa, including your connection to West African dance. All of that together just makes me so pleased to get to know you, to be hopeful for what we can do to help our brothers and sisters in Africa. And I so much appreciate you doing that work and joining us for Spirit in Action. Thank you. We've been visiting with Alyssa Wilson, public education advocacy coordinator for Africa as part of AFSC. And since we have a moment left, I'll take you out for today's Spirit in Action with a little West African music. It's a golden oldie now, but it was all the rage in Togo West Africa in 1977 as I was starting my Peace Corps service there. And it fits here also because of the central influence Alyssa's mother had on Alyssa's path of world healing. So we'll close with just a snippet of Prince Nico and Marcus song, Sweet Mother, and we'll see you next week for Spirit in Action. Sweet Mother, I'm not going to forget you, For this is the way you suffer for me. Sweet Mother, I'm not going to forget you, For this is the way you suffer for me. When I didn't cry, my mother got married She goes and might begin, where do you dare cry? You're yours, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, make you look right again. When I was asleep, my mother got mad me She could lie me well, well, well, well, well. She could have a mid-gloss, silly, silly, silly, my big kiddo. When I did hungry, my mother got wrong, but now They find me something when I could job. Sweet Mother, I'm not going to forget you, I'm not going to forget you, I'm not going to forget you. When I did seek, my mother got crying, crying, she could say he said, "When I go down, let she die." She'd go back on, "Don't hurt me, don't hurt me, my big kiddo." [Music] The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World" performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing. You

Featured Music:
Sweet Mother - Prince Nico Mbarga