Throughout the past year SCCRR’s qualified personnel organized and facilitated 85 ‘Specialized Conflict Transformation-Problem Solving Workshops’ in 9 violent conflict environments, particularly focusing on northern Kenya where it interfaces with Somalia, Ethiopia, the Ilemi Triangle, South Sudan and Uganda.
In dangerous, underdeveloped terrains, this entailed tremendous diplomatic, organizational and logistical efforts from the management, program teams, staff and our partners in the conflict zones; well done to all. These trainings all took place within or close to the conflict environments where the people live and experience the issues underlying their warring relationships involving killing, maiming and displacement. At the heart of the SCCRR modus operandi is collaboration empowering the communities in conflict to be analyzer’s, architects and owners of their own interdependent future, from the bottom up as distinct from the diagnostic solution being prescribed from the top down. The avoidance of an arrogance of ignorance and the ignorance of arrogance by all involved in the process of conflict resolution and reconciliation is a benchmark caveat in the modus operandi.
In 2016, 2,975 ‘key influential opinion shapers’ dutifully engaged in the SCCRR process of empowering them with analytical skills and peace building techniques, many of whom were in their second and third year. These included chiefs, elders, government officials, women’s leaders, religious leaders, warriors, youth and other influential opinion shapers.
As these participants are at various stages of being trans-formatively empowered, the SCCRR monitoring and evaluation team, in conjunction with the research department, are vigilant in applying the optimum metrics to both addressing the root causes of conflict and to the resulting progress trends/variables going forward. The role of the M&E department in the evidential in the ongoing step by step successes of SCCRR cannot be underestimated.
As the Peace-Development nexus is a core constituent component of SHALOM’s approach, SCCRR funded a total of 41 development projects which were both as a result of the peace process and a support of peace initiatives, comprising of 35 schools with a combined student population of over 23,000, 4 peace/security institutions, 1 dispensary and 1 children’s foster home.
Of particular note here is the continuing intervention of SCCRR in South Sudan helping with the construction of the specialized peace center outside Juba, and the help given on the issue of ‘awareness against human trafficking’ in eastern Africa. The compilation of a peace syllabus for introduction to all schools in or close to the conflict environments continues to be advanced and widely implemented. The provision of solar panels to schools enabled children to study each evening after dusk, rather than just relying on the fire light outside their grass huts.
Through our monthly newsletter and other forms of social media, our communication department continues to make public the successes achieved, lessons learned and the needs going forward; www.shalomconflictcenter.org. Once again, our deeply felt gratitude to all our donors for their involvement in this peace-development nexus progress cannot be emphasized enough.
– Extract from the SCCRR Chairman’s report for 2016
