A Great Step Forward - Interview of Franco Famularo

October 2008

With many GPFs one thinks of thousands of members of the local community mobilized on a community clean-up program, or rallies filling a city park. But what if your region has just a handful of families, and they are spread across the country? Such is the situation of Canada, which held its Global Peace Festival in October. We asked Franco Famularo, secretary-general, UPF Canada, how they approached the challenge.

What was your first thought when you heard GPF would be held in Canada?

Franco Famularo: The first question we had was how we were going to work together with our Ambassadors for Peace. The emphasis was on developing partnerships and having the Ambassadors for Peace claim ownership of the project so they would see it as their own.

You were given the task of working out an initial plan. What immediate factors influenced how you formulated that plan?

GPF basically consists of a social impact program, an International Leadership Conference, and a main program that brings together the different components and showcases those who have been promoting peace in their respective ways.

So the first thing to consider was what financial support we could expect from UPF International Headquarters. And, next, how much we could expect from our existing partners.

Canada is the world's second largest country and has a relatively small population. You do not have a vast membership base. How did you deal with that?

Generally, members do live hundreds of kilometers apart. Transport to bring them together is very expensive. There are no more than a hundred blessed families across Canada. That's two hundred adults and about two hundred and fifty children, most under twenty. In Ottawa, which is where we decided to do the GPF, we have three families. A hundred and eighty kilometers away, we have twenty-five to thirty families in Montreal and some four hundred kilometers away in Toronto a similar number.

Some forty families actively contributed their effort or money.

Although substantial funding came from the international headquarters, more came from Canada itself. We received considerable in-kind contributions from volunteer AFPs and Unificationists amounting to substantially more than what was provided from UPF International.

What was in your favor and how did you formulate your basic plan?

Our Ambassadors for Peace come from every country on earth -- we have white and black, we have Asian and South Asian, we have Christian and Jew, and we have Muslim and Sikh to name a few. We have representation from every background and this is the flavor of Canada-the whole world lives here.

We decided to do something in Ottawa, the federal capital. With support from international headquarters, we brought our Ambassadors for Peace from across Canada together for the first time. We called our ILC the Canadian Leadership Conference because the delegates came from all across Canada. We also wanted to mobilize as many new people as we could, considering budgetary limitations, so that we could make an impression on the capital and the political leaders of our country.

What was the greatest difficulty during preparations?

We planned to have the opening banquet in the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, and one parliamentary contact had already reserved a room for us. We were going to give a high level briefing and invite the prime minister and some of his cabinet. But about three weeks before GPF was to take place, a national election was suddenly called.

We had to scale down our expectations and inform our Ambassadors for Peace that we were not going to do as big a program as we had hoped to. Our focus then became not so much on quantity but on quality.

What was unique about the program that GPF Canada provided?

The most positive aspect of this investment in our Ambassadors for Peace is that we can count on them to help us make it a much more substantial gathering in the future.

We had a main program that involved close to five hundred people. We called it a Peace Awards Gala. We honored one individual, Dr. Bill Bhaneja, with the Canada Peace Award (the first of its kind). He has been instrumental in promoting the idea of establishing a department of peace in the federal government -- which is akin to our idea for an inter-religious council [at the UN]. Because there is a department of defense, his idea is that there should be a department that promotes peace initiatives and trains people to be peacemakers or "peace professionals" as he and others call it.

We also chose one representative from each major city in Canada -- Ottawa, Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal -- to be awarded a Community Builder award.

Our theme was Educating for Peace. We approached it by explaining more fully what the Millennium Development Goals are, and had sessions on youth conflict resolution and social engagement, youth voices for peace, ethics education and so forth. The focus was on educating for peace and on how Canada could use its role historically as a peace broker -- which has been this nation's role for a long time.

We had a bridge of peace ceremony emphasizing reconciliation between black and white which we hope to expand to reconciliation between all the different communities in Canada. And of course Hyun-jin nim's speech!

We learned that it is possible for Unificationists to collaborate with others in making things happen, putting together a program and organizing different activities -- such as the interfaith food drive, which involved inviting Christians, Jews, Muslims and others to collect food for the needy and bring it to a food bank, which then distributed it to those in need in the community.

How would you measure its success?

It was not a large gathering. The leadership conference involved a few more than a hundred Ambassadors for Peace from across Canada. But the main point was to bring the Ambassadors for Peace together, to give them confidence, give them a sense of vision for the future development of GPF activities, which we emphasized was something we intend to do every two years on a regular basis. What surprised me was how willing the Ambassadors for Peace were to volunteer their time and support us. Some went beyond my expectations.

Can you say something about the overall effect the Global Peace Festival had?

It showed us that we have come to a new level. We don't have to do everything by ourselves, and we can expect people from different faiths and different communities to collaborate with us. The era wherein we are an exclusivist sect is now over.

It was a tremendous learning experience for us to work with people who are not members of the Unification Movement, because we had to change our way of doing things... It gave us hope that we can go much further than we ever have by creating alliances and collaborate with people on issues that Father is greatly concerned about. This is a tremendous step forward and it gives us hope -- especially since GPF is an ongoing activity we should be doing until peace is established -- that by collaborating with people of different communities we can actually build a world of peace. We have the hope that this can actually happen. I have that hope.