The bad news is that it’s taking me much longer to upload the remaining blog entries since I've returned home than I ever would have imagined.
The good news is that as a result of the extra time, I’m able to think much more deliberately about what happened in Rwanda and not just rush through the process.
So, I’ll continue…
After lunch on the second day of training, we got down to the business of how to build coalitions. I explained that there isn’t just one kind, but rather a continuum of collaboration:
• Networking – when you (or your organization) exchange information in order to help each other do a better job.
• Coordination — when you (or your organization) modify your activities so that, together, you can provide better services for your stakeholders.
• Cooperation – when you (or your organization) not only share information and make adjustments in services, but when you share resources to help each other do a better job.
• Collaboration – when you do the above and also help each other expand or enhance their capacities to do their jobs.
• Multisector Collaboration or Coalition – where private, public and not-for-profit organizations from different parts of the community form a partnership to solve systemic problems in a community.
We discussed each of these levels of working together in some detail. Finding that the consensus was to build the most complex, and complete, type of association, I cautioned the group that a successful coalition allows its members to move from the lowest level of participation to the highest, going through all of the degrees of involvement with each other. I wasn’t getting this point across the way I wanted, so I sketched a diagram showing an example of multiple levels of involvement and then drew the best route through the levels. There was a little more recognition, but then I thought of a way to illustrate this using some of their own, albeit painful, history:
“You can’t drag people into reconciliation until they’re ready to move through the steps.”
Immediately, this diagram made complete sense to them. They lit up and started talking animatedly with each other. Zienabo Hamisi, our Muslim participant, said that she was so very happy with this diagram. And then Donatira Mukasekuru, explained further:
"This diagram is the answer to a question that I always have. I am always with leaders from all churches. One time I was so sorrowful, but no one could understand it. But now my sorrow has been taken away by this diagram. I used to hear various faith teachings and even the National Committee of Unity and Reconciliation all say, ‘If you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven. You will be destroyed and you will not enter the Kingdom of God.’ Is the Kingdom of God all theirs? This teaching is the best part of the seminar, worth all of our time here. We in Rwanda are invited to live together again. But if I don’t forgive my neighbor [an offender], he might harm me. So we make it seem as though we have forgiven, but not inside of us. Churches and organizations are now even bribing people to forgive, giving goats to widows to forgive offenders. Thank you for this diagram. Yesterday, you were our teacher. Today, and forever, you are now my sister.”
It was the greatest gift I could have received.
I next moved the group into the final sections of this day's training with a paper tearing exercise. 
I handed out blank sheets of paper and asked everyone to once again close their eyes. I then ran them through a series of simple folding and tearing steps and then asked them to open their eyes AND their papers.
To their surprise, there wasn’t a single paper that was the same! It seems that we had broken through a barrier because without having to explain very much, we got into a very lively discussion about equity perspective – that no two people exactly share the same worldview, and what the implications of that are when trying to build a coalition.
The rest of the afternoon was spent defining more concepts, drawing more diagrams to illustrate them, and in more vigorous discussions.
By the end of this day, they began taking a closer look at who was in the room and how their diverse identities would affect the ways in which they would assemble their group. Their vision had been sharpened, while, at the same time, they had become more open to each other.
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