Chapter Five
The Meeting of the Mayors
It had finally come. The first of the anticipated workshops that the C4 team and I have been preparing for for the past month. The municipal training workshops are slated to take place over the next month and cover the complete geographic area of Jordan: Northeast Jordan, North-Central Jordan, Southern Jordan, and today’s, Mid-Central Jordan—four altogether. The second is scheduled to take place two weeks from now in Mafraq.
As I wrapped up my preliminary version of the donor map, making the matrix look pretty, citing my sources, and meticulously reviewing every box, I prepared myself for the rest of the day’s needs with my legal pad, pens, and background notes all tucked away in my backpack, and my suit, pressed and ironed, all laid out for the morning.
Arriving at the venue of the event, a pleasant hall in the dead center of Amman’s “Sports City”, we quickly set out to tie up all loose ends before the event began. Thankfully, the majority of setup had been done the day before, courtesy of a site check we had completed as a team the previous afternoon. After fixing up the registration table and last minute adjustments to the projector, the event began around 10:30 am, with guests arriving, signing in, and finding their seats after light refreshments of tea and coffee. Following a few opening remarks from Mohammed Al Amoush, the workshop patron—and Deputy Chief of Party of CITIES—and brief introductions of everyone present, Hala took over, welcoming the guests one more time, with a few more opening remarks, an overview of the workshop agenda, and its goal.
With the workshop in full swing, the participants found themselves tasked with the group activity, a labor in which each table, acting as a team, was to build a paper bridge under which a person could pass, with only 13 pieces of printer paper and 5 minutes. This was done to showcase how municipalities can be self-reliant with minimal resources and time, in an effort to see what one can do in such conditions—with surprisingly pleasant results .
When asked about activity, the guests gave many insights about how they were forced to think outside the box on the topic, and this simulation was a good microcosm of the challenges faced by local governments tasked to carry out duties but having limited resources with which to do so.
Another comment passed had to do with how, through working in a team, the group managed to build a stronger and more stable bridge due to the fact that everyone was able to pull together their different backgrounds and life experiences (for example one of the municipal heads was actually an engineer by training) which was invaluable to completing the task, another fact that spoke true to the concept of community cohesion, and which I knew resonated extremely true in many regards.
After a quick break for tea and the midday prayer, Ruby, a member of the C4 team, gave a presentation about the threats to community cohesion, effectively summarizing the first phase of the project. Her overview moved the workshop perfectly into discussion of the second phase, with Hala giving a presentation about the new system and touching upon the threats to community cohesion that affect the various municipalities along with interventions to halt them. This would be done, it was said, by laying the foundations of the work with municipal leaders, to establish a system that enhances the capacity of municipalities to be self-reliant in defining, analyzing, and dealing with the resources available so solve the issues, current and future, affecting their respective communities.
Some important background information to know is that at the current time, each municipality has a community cohesion intervention matrix that demonstrates the identified threats to community cohesion, including a description of the threat, it’s level of priority, stakeholders involved, and possible solutions to fix it. Now, it is incumbent on the given municipal leadership to choose which of the aforementioned threats they decide to pursue in solving, and setting up a task force specially designed to deal with threats to community cohesion in their municipalities.
Of their many proposed tasks, including renewing the analysis of their community's cohesion and identifying new threats to it—while finding new solutions and interventions with which to face them—the one of paramount importance would be to keep track of the available means the municipalities has to carry out their aforementioned duties. Dubbed the “Tool Kit”, this resource will serve as a gateway device for community cohesion teams, and municipalities in general, to be able to access a larger support system of accessible resources.
With a final discussion following the presentation, the session ended with some closing comments by the team, thanking everyone for their participation, patience, and perseverance, and concluded with a lengthy luncheon, in which guests continued to mix, socialize, discussing the event and so forth.
All throughout the day I had been running around and recording the questions and answers that the guests would pose and receive, along with various other comments and concerns that were passed, occasionally frantically scribbling down the more austere and unfamiliar words said in Jordanian dialect on the margins of my page to look up afterwards. Seven pages of handwritten notes later, I knew I had a lot to content to sift through to write a discernible report of the event the next day.
I got home exhausted, eager to toss my dress shoes off and fall face first into my bed. I thought a lot about my role here as a 10-week intern, doing what little or more I can every day, researching for the Tool Kit that the country’s various municipalities would use in the future, and I couldn’t help but think about just how much I admire the C4 team. From Hala and Ruby to Riyad and Nebras, I can’t begin to describe all the work they put in each and every day, working to help the Jordanian people, their communities, and ultimately their future. The team’s dedication and commitment to the cause of improving the lives of their countrymen never fails to both impress and reassure me. Seeing the fruits of their labors on display, while watching them sow more good into the various communities they help across the country, leaves me humbled, happy, and hopeful.
Jordan is in good hands, and I had learned that today more than ever.