The Change Agency by Alberto- Thursday, 26 July 2012, 09:51 PM

Andres, I think that the Agency is not the one doing the action; it is just an intermediate that “pushes” the action into movement. But like Jenny said when she talked about PNG, it does not provide all the solutions. As we said so many times, social movements should be analysed in their specific context (that is what sometimes is not taken into account).

I have been following the discussion and it is interesting! As Jenny said, any change should ultimately be directed by the political hierarchy of a country and the other important thing to note is that the so called political leadership should have a genuine will to get the proposed change done. The same thing applies to any individual or institution that works towards making a change in the society by any means. Probably the society needs an activist merely because it cannot stand itself and work towards the change merely because it hasn’t got the right idea of the change may be due to lack of education or exposure to the world. However, the whole “Change Agency” approach fails in the global sense if the change activist is not genuine and has proper will to do so. For example, the whole bunch of western developed nations are asking the poorer nations to reduce pollution and slow down the economic progress while on the other hand they continue to do so using carbon trading. They just raped the environment in the past and achieved higher economic status and now asking the poor who have not actually polluted the environment in the past and of course not doing it at present at the same rate the North did.

After all, on what ideology that the Change Agency should work and how can the subjective society makes sure that the change is for them are very important aspects. It is really hard someone to expect that a total outsider would genuinely work for his or her own positive change. This is the most important challenge that any change activist has. And it is equally hard someone to be self interest free....