TO: ACR HAWAII MEMBERS
FR: ACR HAWAII BOARD OF DIRECTORS
RE: VOLUNTEER ASSISTANCE TO WINDWARD NEIGHBORHOOD BOARDS
DATE: MAY 11, 2018
“Come, my friends, ‘tis not too late to seek a newer world.”
Dear Friends and Members:
The ACR Hawaii Board is considering offering pro bono peacemaking and facilitation services to three Neighborhood Boards on the Windward side of Oahu—Waimanalo, Kaneohe, and Kahaluu. We want to know if you will be a part of this proposed project to assist these Boards in providing a safe and peaceful environment for conducting community-wide facilitations regarding challenging—and often contentious—public policy issues. These public policy issues may include vacation rentals, homelessness, and our island’s ability to host ever-increasing numbers of tourists, just to name a few controversial issues.
On an experimental basis, ACR Hawaii members are presently providing pro bono peacemaking and facilitation services to the Kailua Neighborhood Board’s Subcommittee on Homelessness. Although this Kailua project is an ongoing experiment, the feedback from participants and co-chairs of the Subcommittee has been most complimentary. They have praised the vital assistance provided by our ACR volunteers to the community, and assisting Subcommittee participants in having a reasoned, non-conflicted dialogue regarding solutions to homelessness in Kailua.
The ACR Board’s thinking is that we peacemakers can be of critical assistance in helping to frame and facilitate difficult community conversations on very important public matters. We are living in political and social times in which conversations among community members are often inefficient and inconclusive at best and tribal and hostile at worst. Such dysfunctional community conversations have contributed to the often-political gridlock and indecisiveness of our public officials on critical issues facing all of us. It is long past the time when we peacemakers need to step up and offer our skills, expertise, and good energy to help move our communities in the direction of dialogue, respectful disagreement, and solutions that we can all live with concerning issues of vital community importance.
Presently there are 65 members in our organization. If a significant number of you volunteer, we will contact the Neighborhood Boards and other public officials to offer our services.
Will you help be a part of the solution to our society’s need to resolve pressing social and political issues by offering your skills and energy to this project? Those of you who volunteer, who have the passion and energy for our project, yet feel that they lack the necessary skills and experience, will be matched with some of our very professionally experienced members to provide the needed peacemaking and facilitation services requested by the Neighborhood Boards. You will thus be getting very valuable hands-on training and experience from participating in this project. This mentoring and training will pay large dividends in your future professional careers as peacemakers. You will also be rewarded with the very fulfilling experience of doing good for others, which is no small matter. Further, you will be advancing the profession of peacemaking in the 21st century, which will also redound to your professional benefit in the future.
In his famous speech in South Africa in 1968, Robert F. Kennedy stated that social change occurs from small “ripples of activism.” The activism that RFK proposed is a result of the work of many individuals and in numerous places, and when such momentous activism is taken collectively, the result is a veritable tidal wave of progressive change. Please join us in being a part of this tidal wave of progressive change. This is what participatory democracy is all about.
For further information, please contact:
Tom DiGrazia @ digraziat001@gmail.com (1-808-262-0770)
