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Introduction:
Helen Chauncey, of the Coexistence Initiative, explains how important it is for them,
as well as other NGOs, to have a clear conception of what they are doing, how, and for whom.
For instance, they had to decide what they meant by "coexistence," and how they would pursue it.
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This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
Goals and Visions
Helen Chauncey
The Coexistence Initiative
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Part of this is also a function of where we think the broader peace
building and peace management field is right now. Particularly in the
post-September 11, post-haydays of the dot-com economy world. There simply are
not as many people available to write large checks, simply on faith.
The Coexistence
Initiative thinks it is extremely important that any organization, and of course that also means us, can clearly
explain what its goal and vision is. It cannot use random words that might be
interpreted by one person one way and another person in another way. That is
important in general because any non-profit organization is basically holding
the public trust. We don't have to pay taxes; we are given a series of
advantages in society writ large. We feel that it is important that we are good
guardians of that trust, which means that we've got to have, and this is a word that's key to us, a "value added." We've
got to be able to say that we do something we think is good and that the person
writing the check will also decide whether they think it is good or not. And if he or
she thinks it's good, they write the check. If he or she thinks it's good then they write
the check. We do something we think is good that isn't necessarily duplicated by
anybody else out there. It is not simply more of the same.
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