Iraq: The Way Forward
images and then in the analytic mode conceptualize the institutional infrastructure, values, and behavioral patterns that would make the fantasied world a sustainable, continually evolving one. Next an imagined history is constructed, working back form the future to the present, and finally strategies are examined for action in the present to bring about the desired future.20 It is JLDP’s position that the sort of visioning exercises explored at great length by Boulding would offer a chance to creatively engage the future at both the individual and group level, emphasizing a sense of agency that may at first feel unfamiliar to youth thus far discouraged from dreaming about a non-violent future. Participants would be free to imagine a shared reality that cuts across ethnic and gender lines, one in which infinitely more possibilities exist than what is ordinarily considered day-to-day. As participants endeavor to work backward from an imagined future through the steps that are needed to arrive there, the capacity to generate dialogue around tactical changes that are needed within their communities in the present to support envisioned change will become possible. At the end of the program, community leaders will award top prizes to the teams with the most innovative visions of the future. Activity #2 – Building Up a Critical Mass Program Harnessing the momentum of activity #1, the Building Up a Critical Mass Program will work to identify future leaders of Iraq from the list of participants in activity #1. Central to this program will be what John Paul Lederach calls the “Theory of the Critical Yeast.” Within the metaphor that he develops to support his theory, “yeast” refers to “a few strategically connected people [who] have greater potential for creating the social growth of an idea or process...”21 The “yeast”, or strategically connected people, must be “sweetened with sugar” in 20 Elise Boulding. “Feminist Inventions in the Art of Peacemaking: A Century Overview.” Peace & Change. Vol. 20 No. 4, October 1995, p. 413. 21 John Paul Lederach. The Moral Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press. 2010, p. 92. 9