Peru Dissemination Activities 2014

On the next weeks after coming back to Peru, I made a call to begin with meetings around discussing and providing some guidance to a formal study and practice at different levels of CBS, all for free. The middle-term goal linked to this was the one of stablishing a regional chapter, which would be the Peruvian Chapter of the ACBS. I was not alone on this, since Silvia Melgar, another CBS folk, has been working with me. This meant the born of the CBS Peruvian Community and since the first session we had discussed scientific articles around functional contextualism, RFT and more applied issues related to ACT. Our community also has worked through a virtual space where the members share CBS literature and where I share specific readings that could help in this first stage of the CBS dissemination in a more formal way (as long as we are following a route that beging on the philosophical level of analysis and its connection with more applied issues that constitutes the technological level). Some time of other sessions were dedicated to questions and answers. But what I think is the most exciting part of it is that our CBS Peruvian community has born with a strong orientation not only on dissemination activities (as it could be the case of a study group) but on practicing all that CBS can provide as a way of contributing to the history of human evolution, to say, for example, sharing certain values that create the context for the occurrence and manteinance of flexible repertoires across its members, in terms of how we relate each other (kindly, with good sense of humor, etc.) and with our society (i.e. curiosity about the needs of our regional context, so we can plan some intervention according to them). So our community is not just a mere academic group but I hope it could achieve the goal of being useful for our context and, in certain way, to contribute to evolution of humanity using CBS. This is the soul of this community, or at least, I'll work with Silvia to make it work in that way. I truly believe that we can do this by giving just little steps momment to momment. Besides this CBS community, another important activity that took place in the last months was the ACT workshop that I leaded on November about ACT since an RFT perspective where a group of participants could get a closer contact with the power of using behavior analysis since a functional contextual point of view in the direction of alleviating human suffering. Finally some of the sessions of the community have also been dedicated to discuss about the benefits and requirements to become a formal ACBS chapter. Until now we got and sent all the signatures required, which meant at least 10 new members from Peru in the ACBS. A good number that calls for happiness and good expectations, considering that we are, as I usually say, so far from the places where things happen. Now I'm just preparing the by-laws to send it to the ACBS so our community could become formally a chapter, which I think is a more practical way to get involved, interested and committed with the whole community around the world. My second attendance to the Conference was determinant on giving these steps which I hope can be the beginning of a more active role of the Peruvian folks in the world community.

- Manuel Garayar, Peru

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