Kins Aparece is the initiatives coordinator for the Asia West Pacific working group of Friends Peace Teams. She recently talked to QuakerSpeak about her work, which can include projects like acquiring motorized fishing boats for a community devastated by a typhoon. Before that, though, she and her colleagues draw upon Quaker faith and practice to ground themselves in worship and listen to the people they hope to serve with open minds and open hearts.
“This is a very powerful practice,” Kins says. “It changes communities. It changes organizations. And we can do it every day… This is human. This is how friends should be.”
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Transcript:
In the Philippines, I am very, very interested in human rights and climate justice. Climate justice is not all about, you know, going to the streets and shouting and fighting and giving messages. That is very important, but there is also a part of the work that can be very practical — and that involves people, it involves friends, it involves inviting other people to join you on that.
My name is Kins Aparece. I am a Filipina from the Philippines, and I attend the Bohol Worship Group. I am the coordinator, initiatives coordinator of the Friends Peace Teams Asia, West Pacific. It is a work that supports peace workers, that is present all over Asia, West Pacific. I work with peace librarians, teachers who are opening schools, peace schools. There are also people who are living in very difficult areas, where in religious intolerance is so high, so we go there and support them. We work with these people over a period of time, sometimes two years, sometimes five years. And they would come to us and say, “I’m called to” for example, “open a peace library program in my community.” We discern together if it is what is right, true, and just, and we can feel this spirit living in that. And just going into the truth of the matter, like helping them thresh out what is important and what is not so important, and how are we going to address issues?
It can be an issue of advocacy. For example, like saying no to a coal fired power plant in province. Or, it can also be very practical things — like in December 16, 2021, with complete dates, there was a very strong typhoon in my place. I supported together with friends of mine who are also into climate justice, and we said “what is the best way to help?” Sharing the Quakerly way and saying, “what is our gifts? How are we going to do it?” And so we said, “maybe we will do something on livelihood.” You know, long term help of people. We’ve learned in the trauma healing sessions that we used to give is do not prolong the agony of the people. You need to let them know that you are there. When we found a place, then we do it and we said, “We are going to raise funds and give them 30 motorized boats, fishing boats for them.” So the questions are not just ours. The Queries that we try to answer were not just of ours. It’s also that the query of the community. We stayed in their houses, and I can see the difference when they didn’t have them fishing boats yet. When they were able to get back to their own lives, and put the pieces back together. And we can see improvement in the food for example, and they were happier, they were smiling more.
I can also say that my main work is paying attention to the steps, because it’s very difficult for other people to listen to the inside if they if their mind is not cleared. All of us embrace stopping. We could never do this work if we don’t know how to stop. I think for the Quakers, in a proper term, it’s the worship. And in the process of stopping, we slow down. And just like in the Quaker way, we listen to the insights, and we recognize that the truth may be coming from anyone in the room.
We ask questions. And that’s the second step. We put things in the open and ask if I need a feedback about this. Even in the example that I gave earlier, it may look very natural that we will be giving boats, but it took a while for us and we ask ourselves, “Is this really true?” Is this really the right response to what’s happening?” But the third big step is listening. Me listening to myself and the group listening to me, holding me in the light. Because it’s only in listening that they know the context and they would know what is happening with me, what is happening to the community that I’m paying attention to. Before feedbacking and it’s very important that there is the clarification process. And and to me, it’s very respectful. People can ask questions, but it’s different when you ask questions in order to understand it. And then they would be able to reflect back what they have heard.
So there is stopping, there is listening, there is feedbacking, and there is also this group community of saying, okay, so how do we do this? How do we operationalize what we have heard? So there is this whole aspect of learning and listening and, in so doing, I didn’t I didn’t realize these are all the components of love! Don’t you think so? I don’t know. And the reason why people can be very rational and just go ahead, it’s because perhaps they have deadlines to meet. But when we do this work, and we do it, we temper conscience with love. This is a very powerful practice. It changes communities. It changes organizations. And we can do it every day. This is not supposed to be the work of a psychologist. This this is human And this is how friends should be.
Discussion Question:
- What practices define peace work for you or your meeting
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