The Answers Are There: Building Peace From the Inside Out

by Libby Hoffman

First, the real resources aren’t the money and projects from abroad or the experts with expensive degrees brought into communities from outside. Second, it didn’t take much to catalyze their efforts or honor their agency. If international organizations could hold back from deciding for communities and instead allow them to claim space as experts on what needs to be done, those communities could come together and decide on their own priorities. The third lesson I learned has become a bedrock principle of my work: being trusted acknowledged people’s dignity, allowing them to be seen and to lead as people of powerful capability. Across the world, people lament a loss of trust in institutions, but very little attention is paid to the importance of placing trust in people—entrusting them to identify their own priorities, make their own decisions, and chart their own paths toward realizing their hopes for their communities and for themselves. Communities around the world express and enact these ambitions frequently—and often without wider recognition, let alone direct support, from international actors.