30 Ways You Can Contribute
1. Join MBB or similar organizations and help publicize their work. To contact MBB, visit the website at www.mediatorsbeyondborders.org, or email mediatorsbeyondborders@gmail.com.
2. Send a donation to MBB or similar organizations and assist them in locating potential funders and making media contacts in your area.
3. If you have expertise in a particular region, country, language, or conflict and would like to help or become a member of a project team and work in that country for a period of several years, contact MBB and specify your interest.
4. If you have training materials in communication, dialogue, problem-solving, negotiation, mediation, prejudice reduction, conflict resolution, and similar topics that might be useful to people in conflict areas, especially if they are in other languages, send them to the MBB Library.
5. If you have useful information regarding a country or region where conflicts are occurring, contact MBB and share or coordinate your information with others through our newly created “conflictpedia”.
6. Select a country or region where conflicts are occurring, form a small group of like-minded people, or create a local chapter of MBB to study, think about, and discuss what is happening there.
7. Go online to see what has already been written about the conflict and synthesize it in a briefing paper that others can supplement online or read before traveling there.
8. Prepare a summary of the history of a conflict; or description of the dominant political forces and constituencies, economic factors, or environmental concerns that impact it; or list the main sources of impasse and similar information that might be useful in briefing groups or project teams working there.
9. Adopt one or more pen pals in an area you select and wherever possible add correspondents from the opposing side.
10. Once you make contact, ask questions to expand your knowledge and understanding of what is taking place there, then pass it on.
11. Find out what is needed or desired by way of assistance and let MBB or similar organizations know.
12. Identify important cultural “dos and don’ts” and publicize them.
13. Prepare a list of useful quotations from indigenous authors, including poetry, stories, folklore, novels, religious tracts, and political ideas and send them to the MBB Library.
14. Develop a list of stereotypes used by each group against their opponents and send it to MBB.
15. Start a local area blog, or send information and ideas to MBB’s blog site.
16. Collect important news articles from media in and around the area, translate them, and forward them to others.
17. Create a list with useful descriptions and contact information identifying mediators, facilitators, trainers, and allied professionals in the country or region who might be willing to assist.
18. List other potentially useful contacts, such as leaders in government and hostile organizations, for use by groups or project teams in the area.
19. Identify institutions and organizations already contributing to peace, including descriptions and contact information.
20. Organize a public dialogue in your community to discuss global conflicts, pass resolutions supporting conflict resolution, and publicize facts and stories that raise people’s awareness.
21. Send pen pals information about MBB and other organizations, and assist them in forming chapters or supporting conflict resolution activities in their area.
22. Send useful books, training materials, and articles to conflict resolvers in other areas.
23. Assist in preparing or revising training materials targeted to areas you select.
24. Contact media to increase awareness of conflict resolution, write letters to the editor, or op-ed pieces advocating meditative approaches to conflict.
25. Contact political representatives to encourage support for conflict resolution.
26. Write to the United Nations, especially country representatives, and encourage use of conflict resolution.
27. Contact schools, religious gatherings, etc., and ask to speak about conflict resolution and conflicted areas.
28. Invite friends from ethnically diverse communities to dinner, ask them to bring cultural food, artifacts, and materials to share, discuss conflicts in the area, and agree on ways you can help.
29. Travel to an area to gather information first-hand, but do not intervene in conflicts without adequate training, preparation, support, and assistance.
30. Make copies of this list and pass it on. If these ideas don’t succeed, invent others. Don’t give up. Remember that a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.