Arizza Nocum – A peace and education advocate, founder of a NGO library KRIS, and a member of Kofi Annan foundation.
The interview focused on Arizza’s work and progress since publishing the ‘WE HAVE A DREAM’ book. From her thoughts and beliefs to her updates in her career, she explained in a strong and bright tone, expressing her growth through her career.
Summary
During an hour of the interview, Arizza discussed that despite the pandemic challenges, they had adapted by conducting both online and in-person sessions. She also highlighted their expansion into other Southeast Asian countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. KRIS’s evolution from a physical library space to a community-focused organization emphasizing youth empowerment and addressing intersectional issues like climate crisis, mental health, and political representation. Through the Kofi Annan Foundation’s Extremely Together initiative, Arizza described their shift from focusing solely on violent extremism to addressing broader issues, including the connection between climate change and conflict. She shared personal motivations driving her work, including experiences with inequality in the Philippines and her commitment to education access.
Hello, thank you so much for joining this interview today! I am very excited to hear your updated story. So, it has been a few years since the publication of “WE HAVE A DREAM.” I would love to hear your updates after the book’s publication!
Great. Thank you for inviting me! It’s a pleasure to talk to you more personally.
The “WE HAVE ADREAM” book’s publication was pretty interesting because of the pandemic (COVID-19). It was a good time for our organization, KRIS, because we got significant funding from the European Union to implement a program where we would train over a thousand peacebuilders in the Philippines at that time. We would support youth organizations working towards peace and development in their communities.
Are there any specific cases that you would like to share?
Yes, for instance, we could still train over one thousand young leaders in the Philippines from 2020 to 2022. So, we helped them develop more peace-building skills and think of projects to implement these peace-building skills in their communities. Some of these sessions were held online because of the pandemic, but for some sessions, we chose to go to the ground and to areas where youth needed to be talked to in person. We even went to places affected by war and conflict during the pandemic. We were lucky that we got the support of the local government and officials to ensure that we could conduct these activities safely.
While everybody was experiencing a lot of fear and uncertainty during COVID-19, our project became a way for them to think about the future and what they wanted to improve in their community. Aside from the 1000 peacebuilders we trained, we supported 20 youth organizations with seed grants. Our idea was that we wanted to empower the ideas of young people, however creatively those may be, to support peace and development in their communities.
It was really interesting to see that young people in every community desired to promote peace.
TIs there any other new projects you started?
Yes, while we were doing this, everyone was quite active on social media. So, we also created online content to help promote positive messages of peace. Similar to what we’ve been able to accomplish through “WE HAVE A DREAM”. After completing that project in 2022, we’re so happy to have this network of more than 1,000 young peacebuilders in the Philippines, whom we continue supporting. So we promise that we won’t continue with the project we had before. We will continue to guide and mentor these peacebuilders in the future.
Recently, wegot another grant and KRIS expanded the project to other areas of the Philippines and other countries, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand.
Interestingly, when we began this journey and connected with people like Taichi, who was behind “WE HAVE A DREAM,” there was always this global aspiration to try to work, not just in our own countries but also in other parts of the world. With that kind of spirit, we were able to find support to bring the projects we’ve been able to accomplish in the Philippines to other parts of our region and Southeast Asia.
KRIS as a Community and Arizza’s View of Peace
Thank you so much. It is so nice to hear that KRIS is expanding its scale on a global level! Could we dig more deeper into the recent progress of KRIS and how you facilitate the events there?
Yes, with KRIS, our history is that we’re this youth-led organization that started with libraries and educational programs around peace. And through time, we developed from being a physical space to becoming more of a community space. So, in KRIS’s evolution, we’ve seen now that, number one, we don’t like dictating the ideas for peace ourselves.
When we started, it was pretty clear, “okay, we have these projects, and then young people can come get involved in them.” But now we want to hear young people’s ideas and help them develop those ideas, however unique they may be. And that’s an interesting direction because we realize that every community’s need for peace is unique. There are communities where peacebuilding means focusing on education, while in other communities, it means building on music and art or building on sports. So that’s one change.
KRIS in a Global Scale
The Second change is that we are also working on a more global scale. We realize that what we’ve been doing in the Philippines is also needed in other countries. At the same time, there are a lot of lessons in other countries that we can learn, including lessons from projects that may have already been implemented, how they get funding, and how they get support from the government. We also realize that young people experience a lot of overlapping crises, which makes our work more intersectional. We’re not just talking about peace and education now, in the conventional sense of peace, where you have a world without violence or live more securely. We’re also talking about peace in the sense that there is peace when there’s a climate crisis happening all over the world: “Is there peace when young people face a lot of mental health issues in staggering numbers in many different parts of the world?”, “Is there peace when youth don’t have a voice in politics or governance?” We’re starting to see with our work that we have to look at all these other issues as well and make sure that there is a space to talk about these issues and for young people to work on these issues in our organization.
Mental Health of Youth and Workshops in KRIS
We used to talk about peace on a very societal level, which is in terms of interfaith, intercultural, peace between countries, and peace between groups of people. However, now, we also have to talk about peace personally because the insight is that many young people do not feel that inner peace at all. They struggle with mental health illnesses, feelings of isolation and alienation. A study shows that young people in the Philippines, Gen Z in particular, are the loneliest in Southeast Asia. I was so surprised when I saw that because we are generally seen as happy, hospitable, and welcoming people. So these are the things we now talk about when discussing peace. We now focus our workshops on starting with inner peace because the message is that we can’t promote peace if we don’t have that inner peace. So it’s become quite a big part of our work trying to educate and have these dialogues with young people.
I strongly agree that recent generations suffer from their mental state. How do you think the youth could find solutions to those issues? How do you think workshops and training programs are working for the youth, and how could they be improved more?
It’s a question that we are still trying to discover more about in the answers. But the number one thing is that the first step of implementing these training programs is listening a lot. For instance, we’re developing a new curriculum on peacebuilding and social cohesion that will be for our project for Southeast Asia. The first thing we’re doing is conducting research in the Philippines to look at how young people have been experiencing these recent years. “What are the issues that they’re most concerned about?” “What’s the perspective on peacebuilding?”
The interesting thing is that we have a lead researcher with an academic background in this field for this research. However, we hired youth researchers in different areas of the Philippines, from north to south, to interview fellow youth and get ideas from their perspectives. With this setup, we’re getting as raw and intimate information as we can from young people on the ground in the Philippines.
In more minor activities, when we have a workshop with other young people, we co-create our workshops with a youth organization. We try to talk to the youth organization, give them our program, let them critique it, and see what they want to change. It’s important because every young person has a different experience than others in other parts of the country and the world. When I host these programs, I share something personal and emphasize that this is a space where everybody can be very vulnerable. Actually, some people get a bit shocked at the beginning that a speaker would come in and say something very personal and start it that way, especially if they think that this is gonna be like a lecture with a PowerPoint presentation and all this data. But it sets the right tone: ” Okay, I’m being vulnerable. So I expect you all to hope to be vulnerable as well in this safe space.”
Arizza as an Extremely Together Member and Her View on Climate Crisis
Thank you so much for telling me your activities at KRIS! You are also a member of Extremely Together in the Kofi Annan foundation. Could you tell me about your career as a member of the Extremely Together?
Yes, on Extremely Together, we started the as ten young leaders selected by Kofi Annan to work together to prevent violent extremism.
We started in 2016, and this was around the time when ISIS or the Islamic State was quite active in many different parts of the world, including the Philippines.
I remember the year after Extremely Together was formed, there was a big war here in the southern Philippines where, for months, thousands of people were affected, and thousands of families were displaced because of an active war by a group that was allied to ISIS.
What are Extremely Together facing right now and how do you see Extremely Together as a role in a global scale?
So, the face of violence now has changed.
There is less violent extremism, but there are other forms of violence because of different reasons. We see this especially about the climate because extreme climate changes or weather changes affect the land, it affects water and food. Because of these things, there is a higher chance of conflict in different parts of the world. In the Philippines, there’s less rainfall every time, so there’s more drought, and food scarcity increases.※ Because of food scarcity, there’s a higher incidence of violent actions happening, especially in vulnerable areas like the southern Philippines. So this is where Extremely Together is now coming in.
We see ourselves as a global think tank and action tank to bring young people together from all over the world to talk about these rising issues around violence that aren’t so much related to violent extremism anymore. On the side of peacebuilding, we now help young people understand that the problem now is in violent extremism. But there’s a higher chance that we will be fighting over land, water, and food in the future. The need for peace and social cohesion is more important now than ever because even if there is no war happening, it’s very likely that violence may erupt anytime these kinds of environment-related disasters happen.
※link below
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/27538796241226780?icid=int.sj-full-text.similar-articles.3
Arizza’s Motivation – What makes her go forward?
Hearing what you were doing for KRIS and Extremely Together was fascinating. Now, his question is a little different. As an empowering leader of poverty and violence mitigation, I want to know how you stay motivated and keep going forward!
“It was a scenario where I felt so privileged that I knew I had to do something about it.
And if I didn’t, I would feel guilty.”
It felt like I was taking my life for granted if I didn’t do something that would help people like my cousins, relatives, or even the people I grew up with as a child. So, comparison was a significant basis for my decision to keep going. I grew up in Mindanao, in the Southern Philippines, for the first years, but then my family and I moved to Manila. So, all my cousins, relatives, aunts, and uncles stayed in Mindanao. I remember growing up comparing our situation. I was in Manila with my family and parents and had access to all these opportunities. I had a quality education.
I lived in a peaceful community, so I didn’t have to worry about security, order, or anything. But when I heard about the experience of my cousins around my age, back in Mindanao, where they lived in Zamboanga City and Sulu, I saw that poverty was still very much their reality. It was difficult for all the kids to attend school because the parents couldn’t afford to put them all in school. Some would start working already, even though they’re still minors. Even basic things like going to fast food restaurants or buying toys that I had access to were not something that they could always get. I remember going to a fast food restaurant, Jollibee if you know it. I was with my cousin, and I ate fast because I was hungry. And he was eating very, very slowly. He said that he sees it as very rare to go to this fast food restaurant and enjoy the food. So he ate very slowly to enjoy it. It showed that there is a gap in the quality of living. And it was something that always stayed with me. I feel very privileged. When I hear about the experiences of my family members, they have stories of waking up to gunshots or finding out one morning that one of their neighbors was kidnapped by a criminal or an extremist group or living near the shore where they say that these violent groups come. And then they dock their boats there. And then they do their thing, whether that’s like a criminal or a violent act. So, it was a scenario where I felt so privileged that I knew I had to do something about it. And if I didn’t, I would feel guilty.
Role Models and How Arizza Frames Herself
Thank you so much. Who do you look up to now?
I’ve been asking myself this because the old peace champions, sadly, are not here anymore. Even their stories and examples are from so long ago that sometimes it feels hard to relate to them. So obviously, I look up to people like Kofi Annan and Gandhi, as well as Martin Luther King, Jr. But again, when I think about them, it’s such a thing that is happening. But more recently, I have been drawing more inspiration from fiction. Particularly recently, I’ve been reading up and watching Lord of the Rings again. And it’s a nice story because it talks about a world where you have evil that has been happening for a very long time. But even if this evil has been happening for a very long time, there’s still hope that you will do what you can with what you’re given. I can relate that to the present reality of the climate crisis and all these mental health issues. Post-pandemic, seeing the economy suffer, seeing people suffer with inflation, loss of jobs, and everything. Right now, so many things are happening that it’s easy to give up. And I do have moments where I’m like, “Why am I doing all these things? I’m not even sure if the world will still exist in 30 or 50 years because of the climate crisis. So why put this effort in?” But because of drawing from the lessons of Lord of the Rings, even though you’re not sure what will happen, I can try to do what you can right now. And maybe even touching the lives of one person or a few people is enough to say that your existence matters.
One last question. I would like to ask this since you do various things as for promoting peace and education…How do you frame yourself?
“The best word I can use to describe myself is advocate. “
I’m a lot of things because besides running KRIS and working in things like Extremely Together, I run my own business in the Philippines. And it’s a marketing business; we’re a marketing agency. I usually share this because people who work in the NGO sector could be paid better in the Philippines. And that’s a sad reality. And I hope it will change. But at the same time, I want to be on this journey for a long time. So, to do that, I need another source of financial income. And that points to even the discussion around people working in the development industry should be paid more than even bankers or lawyers. The best word I can use to describe myself is advocate. Because what I do is something that could be better, it’s a lot about the actions and what we do on the ground. But I use the word advocate because it talks about influence and the capacity of influence to affect people’s values, behaviors, and the way they think. And I see this as a lifelong journey as well. So this might apply even if I’m not working at KRIS anymore, if I decide to start another organization, or if I decide to write more and try to influence people in another way. So, advocating a more peaceful world through education and changing these values and perspectives can help build peace.
Thank you so much for your time Arizza, and I am very happy to see you. I am sure your update story would be very inspiring to other dreamers who will be reading the interview article!
Thank you!