HAPPY NEW YEAR too all of you! So great and happy to read your stories (especially in CO works) in your field. Just a sharing from my side the bicycle campaign by JERIT (http://www.jerit.org) or the Network of Oppressed Peoples, from the southern team.
We successfully finished cycling along the southern route eventhough faced with intimidations, harassments and also sabotages by the local police force. Our memorandum was submitted to the Prime Ministry and also one copy was submitted to the Opposition Leader.

From the campaign, we managed to expand our networking. The groups we met were local based and some was individuals. While sharing with them, i was quite surprised to heard their stories and in fact those peoples/group actually seems like doing a lot of community organizing work. I was shock because even when we are in same State (Johor), we still dis not know each other until we created a space for them to be involved in the campaign. Some of them were experienced in organising doing low cost flat issues, environmental issues, urban poor and etc. And we did a lot of sharing of experiences and problems in our CO processes.

Johor is a very dynamic state, there are very few NGOs groups. There are some inactive NGOs and Johor was also the strongly UMNO (Malaysian government Malay party) dominated state. There are a total of 29 Parliment seats in the Johor state, 28 was won by Barisan Nasional (National Front, government coalition parties) candidates in the last General Elections. More than a few BN candidates were appointed high posts in the Malaysian Cabinet such as Home Minister, Education minister, Higher Education Minister, International Trade and Industry Minister, Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister, Human Resources Minister, Tourism Minister and etc . So it is really hard to push Human Rights work in Johor.

I still remember Jo Hann said by looking at the "big picture", we can also cut-out and focus at  the "smaller areas" as well. That means we can just focus on our community and step by step empower them to fight for their rights towards a higher achievement. Ya, ya!...That what i always think and my own philosophy in CO works.

Now, at least we get to know each other (i mean my local group NGOs and some individual members). I have started to think it is a suitable time to conduct a session on "Community Organizing". I will plan it this year because i think all of us need this kind of knowledge to help in our CO works. Lets continue burning the  "CO Philosophy" in my working area!!! And the fire will spread to "burn another area!!! Only we can make changes for our lives!!     
 
For your information, I am now busy doing annual reports and JOHOR Human Rights report. report!! report!! report!! my world full of report!!