Times are changing, so is Focus

We value your thoughts and we would appreciate any comments or inputs from you. Please use the feedback/comment form below. All postings will be forwarded directly to the Focus staff and Transition Team. Thank you.

Why don't you include overseas migration?

"While developing a member/individual donor constituency for an organization is much more difficult than relying on foundation grants, in the long-term it is really important to do this.  Organizations with a radical or strong social change perspective will always be vulnerable to funding cuts when dependent on large donors....those cuts might not always be related to your work/message but some may be...  In any case, it is important, probably essential, to have a core membership or constituency outside of large institutional donors.  There has been a lot of 'easy money' from foundations and progressive organizations floating around the region in past years and it is easy to become dependent on such funds.  But if the use of such funds is at the expense of developing a base of committed individual donors...this could cause long term problems.  A Focus less dependent on institutional donors but with a core constituency base of committed individual donors/supporters may be smaller in some ways (fewer professional paid staff, maybe more volunteer based).  But, over time, it may be be a stronger organization/movement, less vulnerable to the changing priorities or resources of institutional donors.

The Times they are indeed a-changing....and Focus would be among the first to know it....and respond to the complexities it implies.....we wish the Focus team a big success in your grappling with the challenges.  We look forward to accompanying you and to seeing you in the most important future moments of confrontation with corporate power.! From the TNI team Brid

Can you imagine what our world would be like if FOCUS had not been founded in 1995? The global movement for social and economic justice would feel like it's missing an arm, no-- a heart! What would have been our gains otherwise? It's really time to say FOCUS made a difference and the future of genuine change rests on what has been achieved today, together with the common struggles for human rights and people's economic empowerment. Clearly the way forward is to build on these gains.

Kudos to Focus for the work of your people over the years.  At the global trade union federation Public Services Internationl (PSI), we appreciate and depend on close cooperation on many key files.  Our premise is that societies, communities, families, women, children and working people are increasingly dependent on the quality public services which their governments should ensure.  This includes access to water and sanitation, healthcare, education, energy, justice and the range of other services which underpin our increasingly urbanised societies.  Although progress has been made on ensuring universal access, much remains to be done, and we hope that FOCUS will continue to assist in this struggle, which depends on transparent, accountable and participatory mechanisms in government.  

Dear Focus friends,

Three half -baked thoughts:

1. More than ever, we need a strong voice from the global south to help reign in global finance. The world needs a fair sovereign debt restructuring mechanism, a financial transactions tax, the break-up of banks, the abolition of the shadow banking economy, and of tax havens and the corporate transfer mispricing practices that suck billions out of public coffers in the global south. Focus played a brilliant and influential role responding to the Asian financial crisis in 1998 – could it do so again?
2. Take Focus’ unique, intelligent and compelling thoughts to the blog-o-sphere! A one-time sceptic, I have seen how sharp, quick interventions into the key spaces on the blog-o-sphere can shift policy. And maybe it’s finally time to rename “focus on trade”?
3. This paradox has always annoyed me: Asia has the lowest levels of union membership in the world - yet is the workshop of the world, much of it reliant on highly exploited labour. Focus has a great record in working with social movements to better articulate and advance their agendas (and great to see the PSI colleague's comments above). So is there anything more Focus could do to reach out to Asia’s diverse, often fragmented, but potentially transformative labour movements? That’s a complicated question, but I think an essential one in any attempt to tackle corporate power.

Best of luck with the review, Ben

Hi – bit of an interloper here, as I’ve only had occasional engagement with Focus work, apart from having a couple of friends involved as well.

I suggest attention be paid to new and existing tools for HOW movements can organize, mobilize, and campaign, and how these can be learned, applied, and shared. I’m talking here about new media; social media, internet, etc for organisations and campaigns - everything that everyone's been talking about especially since the events in the Mid East / North Africa. I’m very far from being a techno-centrist, but these are different tools that movements can and will (must) use, not just to put their positions and campaigns out there, but also on occasion to organize in different ways.

The question is how can participants in movements gain and especially SHARE skills and tactics in new media areas, and how can that help / change the way they organize and campaign?

One of the reasons why I'm raising this as an area for Focus' engagement is because of the ways in which technology-for-change is being taken up especially by donors. E.g. western donors fund - and therefore help frame, even if just through implicit selection of participants - exchanges between activists, bloggers, and others between the mid-east and s-e-asia; they also fund the development of particular technological tools for social change (sometimes read 'regime change'), and so help implicitly or explicitly frame many of the agendas in the new-media activist space. And so on, there are several areas of involvement. 

There's lots that can be talked about here, of course, but while the new media online / mobile space is relatively new-ish, the issues are familiar r.e. how funding policies can influence the shape of civil society campaigns on the ground, with all the issues around agency and so on that come up.

The other aspect of that, of course, is how regimes across the board are simultaneously building up surveillance and cyber-attack skills which they're turning onto different movements. It’s a tussle and movements learn fast – but often they also learn painfully, i.e. when participants have felt the hard edge of the state’s surveillance. China, Singapore, Vietnam, and a range of other states in the region are all expanding their capacity in this way, not to mention states elsewhere.

I'm sure a lot of Focus' members are connected to this stuff, but I'm not sure how that plays out and is shared among the network. My suggestion is less about what actual issues to take up, but more about possible ways a group like Focus can help out at the structural / learning level of movement participation. Of course there are other orgs also doing some of this; Tactical Tech is one, and on the human rights front WITNESS is another, along with several others (I’m personally involved in engagemedia.org, which overlaps with this). But Focus does have a pretty unique position in the type of networking and support it provides to a range of global justice movements and campaigns that these organizations don’t, especially regarding long-term relationships and the development of critiques and campaigns.

Perhaps developing some analysis in this new-media-new-organizing area, from a Focus perspective, is in order; as well as pooling or developing, as needed, some skills (for sharing) in the same space; and lastly, establishing some relationships with, or accessing the expertise of, orgs like those noted here?

One aspect of Focus I have always admired is that your political beliefs are reflected through your own internal structure. There are thousands of NGOs around the globe that operate through the dominant hierarchal system of management that is essentially modeled after a corporate structure. That system is the antithesis of what we are fighting for and what we are providing alternative paradigms to replace. I believe that is one reason why Focus has been so respected, effective and truthful in your work. Through this transition you are pursuing, I do hope you can maintain your internal structure that truly reflects your political and social ideology and preserves your integrity. You talk the talk AND walk the walk, which is so rare among organizations.  

Dear Focus Team,Ex ante: I cannot say that I know in detail the Focus work areas of the last years. For most areas I also cannot tell who you worked on this.Thus, I can only offer my thoughts based on my personal experience with Focus, e.g. reading selected publications, exchanging on specific issues....From my perspective the unique about Focus is, that (1) it has a high profile and ability to come up with very elaborated theoretical/ conceptual framings of "what goes on in the world". (2) But you do not  simply translate this into "advice" for the people on the ground (which very much organisations do) - you offer it as part of a process of transformation. These characteristics should be upheld.Regarding the topics, I have a very simple suggestion: When I look at the countries you are based/ active in, the issues of land conflicts and commons are at the heart of social conflicts. This is why I would highly welcome that you contribute further in the area of land conflicts, commons and strengthening of rural communities doing their own actions, deciding their own paths to go.... This type of work is much, much needed today!I hope my thoughts can contribute a bit. Good luck for this struggle of reorganisation. We hope that Focus with evolve even stronger from this process!My solidarity, Roman

Dear Friends,

Two months ago, we announced on our webpage and through email that Focus is undergoing at ransition. We received many responses to our invitation for ideas and suggestions, as well as dozens of warm expressions of support. Thanks everyone.

We would like to share an update of where we are going.

As many of you would have seen, we are recruiting for two new positions: executive director and operations manager. The results of this will be announced in due course.At the same time, we have been working on a document that articulates our vision of social change and outlines the areas of work where we think Focus can make the best contribution. We are very grateful for the terrific contribution to this document from all Focus staff as well as the individual funders,friends and former staff whom we contacted directly for in-depth discussion.

The new framing that has emerged out of this process is called "Whose New Asia?". Exploring this question from a system-critical perspective and working with others to build socially and ecologically just alternatives will be our main work in the next years. The "Whose New Asia?" proposal is still a work in progress, but early in 2012 it will be online for feedback and comments.

The next step has been much harder. Faced with financial realities, and to complement the new programme, we have restructured. In the process the number of staff has been reduced. We will retain all the country programmes but at the same time we have strengthened the regional nature ofour perspective so that the new structure will have four coordinators: Thailand/Mekong, India/SouthAsia, Philippines/Southeast Asia and China/East Asia. Together with the executive director and the operations manager, they will be responsible for the process of deepening and fleshing out the "WhoseNew Asia?" project.

We believe that the "Whose New Asia?" project meets the demands of the changing global context and will ensure that Focus remains relevant and proactive in its contribution to progressive social change and transformation. We will provide you with regular updates on our progress.

Thanks again to all our friends who have shared ideas and expressed support. We are looking forward to the next steps.

In solidarity,The Focus Team