First of all, we, as members and collaborators of the NGDO, will have to get a sufficient knowledge of the area and the social group that are going to be the object of our intervention, to minimize the possible communicative dysfunctions caused by the ignorance of local customs.
With this purpose, it would be very interesting to organize trips to the zone before the beginning of the project, allowing us to apprehend personally the reality of the situation in that zone. Another initiative to be considered will be that every aid worker and volunteer of the NGDO participating on the project take part in a training process, with a part dedicated to communicative specificities, that is held, at least partially, on-the-spot, combining theoretical and practical learning.
Furthermore, it'll be fundamental an adequate selection of the counterpart, so its members can guide us in situations of confusion originated by unknowledge of certain communicative behaviours or, in case of need, interpret conversations in languages and dialects we don't master.
Besides that, we must favour the most suitable conditions to get an effective intercultural communication between different groups of the same community. Let us remind that the main goals of reCOMciliation are promoting community development and post-conflict reconciliation, in situations where usually coincide phenomena of group exclusion based, for example, on ethnic, religious or gender criteria. Even though this cultural gaps between subgroups can sometimes seem, from our point of view, not so important, it is not convenient to minusvalorate their importance on the interpersonal relations that take place on-the-spot.
We can work in some ways to reach this objective, such as:
- Establishing a common working language, that must not be taken as an imposition by any of the counterparts. In case it's impossible, we will value the option of incorporating mediators who also do functions of translation and interpretation (they will have to be accepted by all the participants).
- Organizing speeches, reunions and, in general, any kind of meetings where representatives of every subgroup can expose their points of view (and even their ways of life), promoting a better intercultural understanding (knowledge of both the own culture and the culture of "the others") and the gradual giving up of certain prejudices and stereotypes that determine human relations.
