The Prout Research Institute of Venezuela

by Mariah Branch, Director of Planning and Development at PRIV (presentation given at the Global Prout Convention in Copenhagen, July 21 2009).

I am going to share two things that we are doing at the Institute to improve our efficacy:

1.working with local and international volunteers and

2.integrating Prout into academic disciplines.

These two topics may seem slightly unconnected however they are similar in that they require cooperation and working with groups to increase their effectiveness.

Local Volunteers: Local volunteers have deep understandings of their communities and resources. Locals can advise you as to which community members are known for achieving desired goals and which community members are trustworthy. Local knowledge can save immense amounts of time and money. If your goal is to help the local community, locals are the only ones who can tell you what they perceive their problems to be.

Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar talks about the importance of cultural exchanges...[Use the Read More... button below]

International Volunteers: International volunteers contribute additional information, resources and perspectives. They provide the catalyst and support to instigate changes within the community. We welcome international volunteers at the Institute. Our listings are on our website: priven.org, please share them with your friends. Please call us and/or visit our webpage.

Why is it important to have both local and international volunteers? Projects have a higher chance of success and longevity if the local community has ownership of the project. Working together facilitates skills transfers and cultural exchanges (both ways).

Fostering relationships is a key component of successful project development. For most of us, it is easier to do something that we know is in our best interest if we are emotionally invested or have a relationship with someone who cares. For most of us, it is far easier to run a mile and we are much more likely to actually do it when we are running with a team or at least know we have someone to talk about our run with each time.

Dialogues are a key part of creating and maintaining relationships. Dialogues require lots of active listening. Community Developers can practice asking questions that generate long answers.

For example, you can ask:

What do you think about …?

Why do you think …?

What have you heard other people say about …?

What are your problems?

Who else suffers from these problems?

Write down the answers to these questions and follow up with your colleagues. Use these conversations to also help foster a personal connections between community members. Community members are most likely to want to work on issues that they perceive as addressing their own problems. We often talk about teaching a man to fish instead of just giving him a fish. However, if he isn't worried about eating … he probably won't fish after you leave. Thus is it important to support local development of solutions. – (It can be very insightful to ask how local community members think international volunteers can help support them.)

Rules of Thumb for community development work

a. Listen - Ongoing dialogs are vital for community development projects.

b. Buddy System - International volunteers should only do things with local volunteers. I know that if a local volunteer doesn't want to go with me or help me to do something, then I am probably focusing on the wrong thing.

c. Coaching and encouragement are very important for having successful volunteer relationships.

Resources: If you want to learn more about working with local and international volunteers there are many resources. You can search for the following key words:

Community development

Community organizing

Social entrepreneurs

I also recommend reading books about community development and community organizing including the second half of Transforming Power by Robert Linthicum and books about social entrepreneurs including How to Change the World by David Bornstein.

If our goal is to bring Prout further into the public domain, then integrating Prout into academic discourse is a vital contribution.

If you are wondering where to start,

Consider where your joys and passions lie?

How does Prout uniquely contribute to these areas?

Now think about what the sources are that inform these areas of your work.

One of the easiest ways that we can bring Prout into the academic discourse is to publish in academic journals and present at conferences. Young Proutist academics can approach published authors ask them to co-author papers that use Prout. Having a published author as a co-author dramatically raises the chances of getting published or asked to present at conferences.

Please be sure to cite Proutists in your academic works because search engines, like google scholar, track authors and sources. These search engines are one of the primary ways that young scholars are introduced to new ideas.

In addition to citations, please also mention Prout in your:

Blogs

Press releases

Art

Contribute to your favorite information sources on a regular basis.

Invite colleagues to join in your effort so that they also gain a stronger understanding of Prout.

Share Prout with friends in other activist groups.

Share Prout with policy makers.

Repetition is a key part of helping other people to adopt Prout.

We hope you will come and visit us.