One of our most impressive meetings took place on our last day in Nepal, with Search for Common Ground in Kathmandu. Not only are their projects fresh and inventive; their general outlook on how to deal with conflict situations is insightful and seems applicable to nearly any case. For example, rather than making grandiose plans for change that are always hard to implement and make people accept, SFCG focuses on the details, those tiny changes that in the long run have huge effects on society. They call them ‘5 degree shifts’: small when they start out, but as the angle extends, they become wider and wider.
I was particularly struck by their stress on ‘trimtabs’, or rudders – that tiny piece of a ship (or society) that, when turned, steers the entire giant mechanism. So what are the trimtabs in Nepal? What are those most basic of issues that could change all of society for the better?
As soon as I started thinking about this, one example came immediately to mind: a youth club in Bara district told us that, in all their programs and classes, they make an extra effort to make sure that kids of all castes and ethnicities are mixed together, sitting side by side at lunch, working on projects together. When they’re brought together like this from an early age, it helps to paint over the divisions and prejudices that plague society in so many ways. When these kids grow up, won’t their mindsets be different from their parents and grandparents, and won’t they provide a whole new base for change?
The larger issue is the discrimination present throughout Nepalese society: between ethnic groups, castes, and genders. The larger issue is the weakness, or perhaps lack of, an overarching Nepali identity that can bring all of these people together. But the small detail we can focus on to bring real change in the long run is to throw these kids together from the very start, and let them see that their ‘different’ peers aren’t so different after all.
So what are the other trimtabs we can look for in Nepal?