The net works...

While I was visiting a village in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, I was discussing with Habib (Malik) about how can we network, communicate, connect, rebuild and strengthen our society. We arrived by the banks of the river Swat and admired the beauty of the high speed - flowing water.

We were surprised to see workers by the river bank, bending, cutting and connecting aluminium wires to create a net, strong enough to prevent stones from falling.

I asked Habib: “Which is stronger? The heavy, mighty stone which two men have to carry? Or is it the wire being assembled by a man? Habib answered: “It is the stone”.

I replied that he was right, as long as he was talking about only one wire. When a person creates a net with these individual wires, it can hold thousands of stones. It becomes the foundation on which a bridge can be built to ease the life of thousands of people. It can save their lives by preventing the flooding of the river bank.

An individual wire cannot stand against one stone. A network of weak wires can prevent thousands of stones from coming and blocking the river floor and save lives.

This has to be felt when we talk about our individual organisations. Do we need to network and connect?

We have to look at the practicalities of the difficult humanitarian circumstances we are facing in the world today. The scale and complexity of disasters demands that, no matter what resources we have or how good we can be, we have to work in partnership.

A single wire will never stand strong against tsunami of man-made disasters. If you want to break the wind and the speed of flow of the flooding rivers you have to create a network.