HEALING COLOMBIA: A METHODOLOGY TO OVERCOME HURTFUL EVENTS SUCH AS THE NATIONAL STRIKE IN COLOMBIA

By: Angela Serrano, Deputy mobilization and communications director at Movilizatorio

Colombia was grieving, 46 people died and more than 4.000 cases of police brutality were reported by Temblores NGO during the national strike that set us apart as a society. Some people were asking for stronger actions against protesters and the other half were being abused, hurt, and left helpless fighting for what they thought was right. Shouting out for what they have been denied of, social justice. 

Mistrust is common ground in Colombia according to the OECD document “Building Trust to Reinforce Democracy: Main Findings from the 2021 OECD Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions” where 20,5% of the interviewed people actually trusted the government. Institutions are needed to achieve social transformation and are key stakeholders to keep building trust in the country, hence this outcome reveals a dreadful scenario. 

The question remained, How can we bring together a society that so strongly wants to be apart? How can we heal collectively from years and years of conflict and inequity? Many more questions popped up in our heads as we tried to figure this mess out. We knew dialogue and communication were the key but we had to develop a way to harness this power and turn it into reconciliation and collective work. 

“Healing Colombia” was the answer, this was our way to respond back to feeling and seeing our country tearing apart. This particular methodology developed by Movilizatorio (an expert lab on social transformation for latin america) explored how to connect with each other, to identify the main pain points of our country, to prioritize and then to propose solutions collectively where multiple voices were heard and consensus was reached. 

Many media outlets have promoted the idea of Colombia as a 2 sided country that has more division than common ground. Through our research we’ve been able to prove that we’re divided when specific situations pop up, but in our core beliefs we have, more or less, the same values. Healing Colombia is a collaborative approach to leverage on these core values and to put them into service for further actions towards connection and solution making. We’re taking our country back from those who try to divide us.

Our first study analyzed 2.6 million tweets resulting in 2 highly polarized conversations (peacebuilding and corruption) and one cohesive conversation that revolves around environment. This research also showed that femenine voices were less present in polarized conversations providing a new follow up question on why femenine voices were missing from key issues and conversations in Colombia. 

2000 interviews compose the next phase of this research where we managed to implement the More in Common™ methodology to discover “urban tribes”, segments and cohesive groups. These groups share moral values that explain political preferences in a better way than the traditional demographic approach finding 4 segments in Colombia that have more in common than differences. This outcome reveals that in Colombia there’s no profound gap between people or segments rather than division on topics and specific moments in history. 

With our dialogue methodology we reached over 500 participants translating 7 key issues to be solved in Colombia and prioritizing solutions over complaints in a highly divided context revealing that we did share main concerns on how to heal our country, reinforcing the outcomes of the previously mentioned research.

Communication is key to achieve these amazing outcomes, managing to create a safe space for sharing and co-creating, building trust and delivering actual results is necessary when facing a distrusting and divided citizenry. Hearing each other out, understanding our points of view, sharing stories and opening up our shields is a beautiful process that takes part once we implement this methodology.