chile: foe chile takes stock, builds on 38 years of campaign strength

To address these challenges, FoE Chile’s General Assembly approved a new Institutional Development Plan. Under the plan, the group will have two equally-weighted central units, which will coordinate their strategies and actions. The plan also aims to better serve the needs of its membership, and to participate and reinforce its work with Friends of the Earth Latin American and the Caribbean (ATALC ).

what happened: To accomplish the general goal of building stronger links with citizens, FoE Chile’s organizational and management capacities needed to be improved. To this end, a participatory strategy and methodology was set out. First, they sought to motivate FoE Chile’s staff and membership to become actively engaged in the process. They also focussed on communication and training through electronic bulletins and regional workshops. And finally, they held a national meeting to map out a political framework for the next three years of work.

The first step engaged about 200 people from all over Chile, through workshops at regional branches and online forums. Five modules were used, designed around Friends of the Earth International programs and campaigns. In this way they sought to update the conceptual basis for FoE Chile’s work; develop a projects unit and a campaigns unit; and define the group’s policies for the coming three years.

Workshop participants looked at how FOEI’s work could be applied or reflected in their own, and debated any needed organizational changes. For the campaigns and projects units, strengths and weaknesses were identified, and conveyed to the subsequent national meeting. A training process was also created for campaign volunteers; over 70 participants answered the call, and about 37 participated in training.  (Current campaigns include recycling, defending the Aysén “Reserve of Life”, defending the Andean foothills from urban sprawl, and protecting sclerophyll forest ecosystems.)

In an effort to expand its membership to strengthen its political and campaigning work, a series of general public informational and training sessions were held for specific campaigns, and an electronic bulletin “Tejiendo Redes” (“weaving networks”) was used to reach more than 500 people.

At the national meeting, an ATALC representative was invited to join the membership in contributing to the ideas, positions, strategies, programs and campaigns of FoE Chile. Several key decisions were taken, including the need for a political framework or manifesto, a democratic and transparent decision-making process for urgent national/regional matters, and the definition of a policy for forming alliances with other actors. The need for a membership and communications units was also identified.

lessons learned: The need to balance and coordinate specific project-related work with campaign work on critical environmental conflicts was identified; environmental conflicts involve not only FoE Chile’s membership but also volunteers and the general public. FoE Chile also learned from the new methods used to allow members, regional branches and the central office to participate in this process and to train volunteers. These included face-to-face meetings, training courses, or electronic exchanges. All exchanges emphasized the importance of sharing organizational history, assessing regional and campaigns needs, making people aware of activities underway, and responding to Chile’s increasingly complex environmental conflicts.

what's next: Implementing the new plan, with all its challenges, will demand active participation of the staff, the national and regional offices, and the membership, as well as strengthened alliances with other national and regional actors.

with thanks to our funders: the sigrid rausing trust and the dutch ministry of foreign affairs.