How Long Does It Take to Change an Institution?

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Aront: Trust takes time to be built, but can also be destroyed so fast. You can take a year or decades building trust, and if you have a few weeks of all out violence, that trust goes back to zero - sometimes for a full generation. In our experience, and we've looked at our own case studies for this, not always, but most of the time, it takes a good eight to ten years. And not less, you can generate results faster. But the critical thing is that peace moves at the speed of trust. These things have to go through phases.

How many technologists have traveled to Niger, or the Balkans, or Rwanda, to learn the lessons of peacebuilding? Technology and social media are creating patterns and pathways of conflict that few people anticipated or even imagined just a decade ago. And we need to act quickly to contain the effects, but we don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are people, such as this episode’s guest, Shamil Idriss, CEO of the organization Search for Common Ground, who have been training for years to understand human beings and learn how to help them connect and begin healing processes. These experts can share their insights and help us figure out how to apply them to our new digital habitats. “Peace moves at the speed of trust, and trust can’t be fast-tracked,” says Shamil. Real change is possible, but as he explains, it takes patience, care, and creativity to get there.