Home › Forums › Module 2 Discussions: Purpose & Partners › Consider the implications
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Consider the implications
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A local community group is partnering with a family-owned foundation and an international mining company to build a church.
What might the community leaders need to consider and research first?
What could potentially go wrong and how could they mitigate this?
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The relationship between the family and the company with the community
There could be a risk of the different partners having different views and opinions on the project and maybe result in a power wrangle in the decision making process
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There could be a risk if the partnership with the family foundation affects the image of the community and the potential future relationships with other relevant actors in the community.
Also, if this relationship generates dependency on the foundation it could compromise the community group autonomy
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They need to consider the past reputation of the mining company, do they provide good working conditions for people? What are their long term intentions in this community? They should also consider whether or not there will be clashing interests between the foundation and the mining company.
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they should consider the long term interest of the mining company and then the local community group has to further think about what the church will bring to its community and if this will bring conflict between any groups for security reasons
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What is the community perspective about the mining company. Research about the real motivation about this project.
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The community leaders should do their due diligence about the family foundation and the mining company on why they want to build this relationship and what is there ask in return ?
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- Where does the family-owned foundation money come from? For example, could there be some disputed money?
- Do they share the same values? When building a church, the local community might want to have a specific tradition preserved and certain behaviors respected. For example, are workers paid enough? Do they work on Sundays too? Etc…
- Why an international mining company would want to build a Church? Would they want to use this partnership as an excuse to try finding something in the soil? An issue of trust within the partnership might appear here.
- Does the church style correspond to what the local community is used to and envisions for their church?
- Would these partners buy local goods for the construction of the church hence helping the local community or import them from abroad?
- Who will pay for what?
Solution: before agreeing to partner, each part’s role and limits should be clearly specified.
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The community leaders need to conduct research on the ethical operating practices of the international mining company in terms of whether there have been any cases of violation of human rights.
The relationship between the family-owned foundation and the community needs to be looked into as well.
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There might be a ethical problem regarding the practices of that certain mining company, and possibly other potential humanitarian violations must be considered before proceeding.
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I am wondering what are the interests of the family-owned foundation? What is the family wanting out of this? If the family is donating the money because the community is asking for a church? Does the church cater for the religion of the community? Are there other relgions and how are they represented? We don’t want resentment. We also don’t want the family to then impose or use the donation to dictate what should and should not happen at the church or create a negative effect in the community.
The international mining company, why do they want to help? What are they benefiting from this? Willt hey ensure proper mining and resources extraction?
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depending on the belief of the church in the community (where people use belief towards god as for their own good instead) , the financial need that has went into the family owned foundation could be used in a good use, or corruption.
In my opinion there needs to be more thorough regulation for family owned foundation in small community related to religion.
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The community leaders need to consider and research whether the communities need/want a church in that area. Furthermore there could potentially be issues in partnering with an international mining company in that they might have a history of abuses/violations that could negatively impact the reputation of the other partners.
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I think they need to consider the use and need of a church in that area, is it needed and wanted by locals. What is the reason a international mining company involved? Are there rights to minerals to be had or bought? Will it affect the locals and how: jobs or poorly paid and exposed to detrimental environmental hazards, is it an activity that will pollute waterways? Are they partnering because they already damaged the local environment, how would the locals feel?
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