Xerosphere

Ashoka Peace intern Cecilia Chen profiles Jerry White's Campaign for Healthy Homecoming

Jerry White – global survivor activist, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, co-founder of Survivor Corps, and author of I Will Not Be Broken – continues his remarkable work to help victims of violent conflict all over the world. 

At the age of 20, Jerry lost his leg, and nearly his life, after stepping on a landmine while hiking in an area forested with waterfalls in Northern Israel. His experience as a survivor led him to co-found Landmine Survivors Network, now Survivor Corps, in 1997, which is dedicated to “helping people around the world who have suffered war and violence rebuild their lives and rejoin their communities.” In fact, not only does Jerry enable survivors to reintegrate, he empowers them to become active contributors and leaders by changing their self-perceptions from passive victim to active participant. 

In 2009, Survivor Corps teamed up with leading veteran services, nonprofits, government, businesses, and universities to launch “The Campaign for Healthy Homecoming,” the first plan of its kind in the U.S. to actively ensure that veterans will have a healthy homecoming and reintegration after war.

According to the campaign, over 1.8 million service members and veterans have served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Without an effective program to reintegrate these members back into their communities and help them rebuild, there has been a drastic spike in unemployment, substance abuse, domestic violence, failed marriages, homelessness, and suicides. 

“The Campaign for Healthy Homecoming” strives to provide concrete and diverse solutions and services to tackle these difficult issues. The campaign adopts a multi-pronged strategy that facilitates reintegration by assisting veterans with employment opportunities, preparing universities to fully integrate veterans, and providing access to quality healthcare and affordable housing. Additionally, the campaign champions the importance of a robust peer support system, a strong, resilient family, and community engagement in the veteran’s homecoming.

For more on this, watch this short CNN interview with IED survivor Captain Scott Quilty

Furthermore, Survivor Corps continues to propel their goal of eliminating and banning landmines by calling on all citizens to urge and encourage President Obama to sign the Mine Ban Treaty. They are close to the 200,000 signatures goal – 183,569 and counting! You can add your name here.

Earlier this month I sat down with Dr. Craig Zelizer, Associate Director of the Conflict Resolution MA Program at Georgetown University and TechChange Advisor, to talk about the online professional network that he created in 2008 called the Peace and Collaborative Development Network (PCDN).

PCDN has grown to over 16,000 members, 250,000 hits a month and is one of the most well respected and utilized sites for the field of peace and conflict studies. The aim of the site is  “to foster dialogue and sharing of resources in international development, conflict resolution, gender mainstreaming, human rights, social entrepreneurship and related fields.” I was eager to learn about the network’s origins, successes, challenges and future plans. 

Nick: What inspired you to start Peace and Collaborative Network?

Craig: I’ve always been a networker and been interested in finding innovative ways to connect people and democratize access to information. When I was an undergrad I started an informal newsletter to inform people about social change activities on campus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. After the Cold War ended I had the opportunity to study and work in Eastern Europe. While there, I found that information was generally kept in close circles and not shared widely. So I started an informal listserve through Yahoo Groups to distribute information about professional opportunities and events related to the field of peace and conflict. This list grew over time, to about 15,000 people. I was also part of an effort to start a fee-for service job site with the Alliance for Conflict Transformation. We made enough money to support the project but encountered a number of frustrations with the design and web development process.

So with PCDN, I wasn’t starting from scratch, I had been engaged in similar efforts for ten years or so and had a base of several thousand users. It did however take many years to find the right technology. PCDN runs using the Ning Platform. What Ning does is what I had always been seeking in a web-based social networking platform. There are some problems with platform but the company is committed to innovation, democratizing information, and is very responsive to feedback from users. And I don’t need to be a programmer to manage and maintain it. 

Nick: What are the aspects of the site that have been the most successful?

Craig: There are hundreds of social networking sites that have a lot of value – my vision was to try to fill a gap in the field and create horizontal networking and information sharing. When I first set out, I knew that to attract people to the site, there had to be a base of information so I invested significant time in creating core content. This helped to build a following.  The social networking component is essential but people often come to the site for the other features like scholarship, fellowship and grant information, resource guides, conference and training announcements, and many other opportunities. 

I think one of the most successful aspects of the site is its horizontalness - there is no hierarchy. It’s moderated to some degree but anyone can post. From graduate students to experts with 30 years experience, people of all different skill levels participate. 

Nick: What are the greatest challenges, both those you have overcome or those that you still face in administering PCDN?

Craig: One basic question I struggle with is: should the site be open or not? It used to be open but there were a number of spammers who joined and posted inappropriate content. As a consequence, the site is still public (meaning everyone can see the postings) but users can only post if they are registered. If someone doesn’t provide adequate information in their profile when registering they are not accepted in the network. 

Deciding what content to moderate and how to moderate it is also a challenge given that my time is limited. For instance, early on I decided that fundraising requests are not permitted as the site would be deluged. Additionally, there have been arguments in some of the network's subgroups that have been a challenge. I don’t have time to moderate these forums and have encountered situations where users have held me responsible as the site administrator for other users’ comments. I do have a few people helping me with the site, but it’s at the point where I need to develop a core group of people who are committed to administration and promotion of the network so that it doesn’t take too much time for me since I do this a volunteer. 

Another significant challenge is trying to measure the impact of the network.  There is a space on the site where over 300 members have posted clear feedback about the direct benefits they have received from their membership. But it is challenging to be able to develop indicators, and even more so the time to find an accurate measure. I do have a strong interest in exploring this question on a larger level, regarding how can the field more effectively measure the positive impact (and challenges) of sites that promote social networking and dialogue.

I think a final challenge is achieving the right balance for disseminating information.  Some users have said that the email alerts are too frequent while others have said that they would like more. 

Nick: What are some of your future goals with the site? 

Craig: I’d like PCDN to be one the premier social networking sites for sharing information in the field of peace and conflict studies. I’d like to grow the network to 50,000 to 100,000 members. The membership has been doubling every year. Business wise, it’s a social venture and right now it makes very little money (from the ads), not nearly enough to support my time in administration. If it ever got the point where the site was generating more revenue than it took to run, then half would go towards supporting the administration and half would be used to fund projects in the field of peace and conflict studies. 

Cross-posted from TechChange

Zoe Cooprider, of the Global Peace Index, sent us this note.

Record numbers tuned in to watch the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the first ever to be held in Africa. With global attention on the continent, however, few stopped to appreciate the progress that Africa has made in improving peace and prosperity in the region in recent years. In a refreshing op-ed published in the Christian Science Monitor, Steve Killelea, founder and chair of the Institute for Economics and Peace, discusses data from the Global Peace Index that show Africa’s progress in increasing peacefulness.  The region has, during the same time, enjoyed the highest GDP growth since the 1960s, underscoring the linkages between peace and prosperity.

To read the full article, click here.

Deniz Duzenli, of the soon-to-be-launched Peace Portal, shares their vision and goals with us.

Every day we hear news of longstanding violent conflicts, where solutions seem difficult to even imagine. Local communities in conflict regions are underrepresented in the media, only visible when calamities occur. The haste with which stories need to be covered often means that the stories of local people are overshadowed - including the day to day economic, political, social and spiritual dynamics of a community, which are crucial factors in creating or solving conflicts.

It is the people within these communities who understand best the local context, opinions, hopes and worries. However, policymakers usually do not hear these local voices, and instead depend on external information and analysis. The Peace Portal aims to have these local voices heard.  As the secretariat of the Global Partnership for the Prevention on Armed Conflict (GPPAC), the European Centre for Conflict Prevention is building the Portal for the communication, interaction and operational needs of its members across the world.

The Peace Portal is a unique online platform for cooperation, learning and action in the conflict prevention and peacebuilding field. It aggregates the newest digital technologies allowing communication via the web. Specifically built for conflict prevention purposes, it ensures anonymous and secured communication to protect individuals and civil society organisations operating in repressive contexts. The Portal is a tool to support more decentralized and people-centred initiatives aimed at detecting of early signs early warning of conflict. Built on open source technology, it includes features such as social networking capabilities, real time information and communication, and user-generated information.

The project gives a voice to people that directly work with and in communities in conflict areas through social media tools that stimulate dialogue, empowering sources from the ground with on and offline tools to become reliable peace reporters and lastly applying these skills in ensuring that the voices of local communities living the consequences of war are heard.

The Peace Portal is different from a traditional website in that it is a collaborative endeavour and the content is produced and shared by its users. The Portal aims to connect the online information with offline action.

The Beta version of the Portal is online, where further improvements are being made to ensure the Portal is user friendly and that all functionalities are working. The Portal will be launched and live in September 2010.

Interested in working with the Portal, want to be informed when the Portal is live or for more information please send an email to info@peaceportal.org.

Melanie Kawano is the Program Manager of the BEFORE Project: Action to Prevention Political Violence. Read all of her posts here.

The below post is cross-posted from BEFORE Project.

Proving that conflict prevention works sometimes seems as difficult as prevention itself.

For one thing, the nature of prevention is such that the more success and impact you have, the less happens. That is, you’re working for the non-event of war. And, negative events can be harder to pin down than the details of Chelsea Clinton’s wedding.

Then there’s the task of claiming attribution in complex political situations. It can be like untangling an invisible ball of string. Links from one action to its effect are connected to so many other factors.

But occasionally, when you’re working in a country where the government has done little to invest in its people and infrastructure, the proof of impact is plain. This is because work to address the root causes of conflict is also work aimed at building essential foundations to freedom, stability and peace. These foundations actually help people address their conflicts peacefully and fairly.

As BEFORE has strategically addressed wide-spread violence prevention in Guinea, it has seen lives change and hope grow at the same time. From recognition from Guinea’s top leadership to national media coverage, it’s been an honor to work in a country so poised for peace.

(Cross Posted from Ushahidi Blog and the TechChange Blog)

Last month I taught the first ever course on “Technology and Peace” at the UN-mandated University for Peace (UPEACE) in Costa Rica. The course drew 16 participants from 11 countries, representing a number of distinguished organizations including Ashoka, the Council on Foreign Relations and George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR).

Participants engaged in discussions, case studies, and practical exercises involving how technology can be used for building peace. The course made use of new technology-focused teaching techniques to ease the learning process. (Read more about the course in Studying on the Frontier of Technology and Peace and on the TechChange blog).
One of the highlights of the course was a two-hour simulation of the Ushahidi crisis mapping software.  The goal of the exercise was to have participants understand the possibilities and limitations of crisis mapping through a practical application.

To make the simulation realistic we built it around the upcoming Wolesi Jirga elections in Afghanistan, set for September 18th 2010. This election has been postponed several times due to corruption and many experts are concerned that it might lead to new violence by the Taliban to intimidate voters. 

The process:

1.    Software: Ushahidi’s open-source software was installed onto a Web-based server. Because of the location and limited participants with cell phones that worked in Costa Rica, I decided not to install FrontlineSMS. The campus did have wireless Internet, so participants used laptops and smartphones to send messages from the field.

2.    Designated Polling Stations: Four polling stations were scattered around campus. Each polling station had a piece of paper with detailed conditions about the level of violence and whether or not the station was open.  Once underway, I circulated around campus to change the papers and post new conditions.

3.    Four Groups:  The class was organized into four groups of four people each:
 

Group 1: UN Officials: UN officials were based in the classroom or UN headquarters in Kabul. Their goal was to use Ushahidi on their computers to (1) ensure as many citizens as possible made it to the right polling stations and (2) ensure that international media had an accurate account of what was happening on the ground. 

Group 2: Election Monitors: This group played the role of election monitors stationed in Kandahar. They were tasked to work with the UN headquarters staff in Kabul to ensure as many people as possible made it to the right polling stations to cast their vote.

Group 3: Citizens: This group played the role of Afghan citizens eager get out and participate in the democratic process but concerned about their safety. They had to figure out as a group how to use Ushahidi’s alert system to receive updates about polling center violence.  Citizens were asked to vote one by one at 10-minute intervals, regardless if any alerts had been sent out.

Group 4: Taliban: This group was tasked with the goal of disrupting the election process and the Ushahidi platform in any “cyber” way possible.

The Action, Resulting Learnings, and Aspects for Further Reflection

1. Communications Strategy: The UN team and volunteer election monitor group came up with a strategy to ensure only messages coming from election monitors were validated by UN staff. Because the Taliban could read the same reports off of the Ushahidi platform, the election monitoring team assumed that hashtag or number systems might not work so they devised a code based on the placement of word “violence” in the sentence. The Taliban group never cracked the code but the reports from Citizens at polling stations were also not validated.  This points to a very real challenge NGOs and governments face when using Ushahidi—do they accept crowdsourced information from the public or limit their scope to NGO staff? There are tradeoffs with each strategy.

2. Trade-Off Between Time and Accuracy: After ten minutes, the first citizen voted but the UN staff group and election monitors had not figured out the Ushahidi system in time to validate and disseminate reports. After approximately 15 minutes they learned the system. 40 minutes into the simulation, the Taliban group decided instead of trying to subvert the process with accurate-sounding bad data, they would try and overwhelm the system by sending as many reports as they could. Even though the UN knew the reports were erroneous it took them precious time to consider and dismiss them. I am eager to see how SwiftRiver and other filter systems might be able to combat this strategy.

3. Email Alerts Didn’t Seem to Work: The citizen group signed up to receive email notifications but never received alerts during the exercise. I’m not sure if this was a human error on our end or some kind of built-in software delay.  Instead the citizens monitored the map on the website and read the live feed of validated reports coming through the system to make decisions about where to vote.

4.  Password Security: During group orientation I wrote the login, password and URL for everyone to see. The defaults were “admin” and “admin.” Halfway through the simulation I reminded the Taliban group that the passwords might still be the default. Indeed, the UN staff had not changed the password and the Taliban group was able to log in and start validating their own erroneous reports. Once the UN staff realized their system had been compromised, they tried to change the password but it was too late.

Some critics maintain election monitoring may not the best use of Ushahidi, and that it is really best for logistical coordination and mapping, as we saw in Haiti. Perhaps, but election monitoring provides a great context to run a simulation examining Ushahidi’s potential and limitations. After two hours, all 16 participants came away with a great command of how to use this important technology.  I’m eager to work with others to design similar simulations. Please leave feedback, questions and suggestions in the comments, or e-mail nick@techchange.org

Priya Parker has worked in India, Africa and the US on peace-building and social-innovation. Read all of Priya's blog posts here.

In my last blog post I wrote about the Afghan peace jirga held in June.  One idea that was put forth in President Karzai’s peace proposal was to pay insurgents not to fight. Like any interesting idea, not only is the devil in the details, but it’s also in the implementation.  Apparently the Iraqi government has experimented with a “cash for loyalty program” and at least according to some accounts it “turned the tide” in the country.

What would have to happen for this to work?

•    Incentives must be aligned.  The government would have to figure out a way to make subscribing to this program attractive to citizens who are otherwise fighting for primarily economic reasons.  The government would have to structure the program, including pricing, delivery, and timings of payments in such a way that meets and surpasses the opportunity cost of joining the Taliban. 

•    Given that it’s a government program, how would they avoid corruption, leakage of payments, or inadvertently funding the Taliban? In any cash transfer program, it is commonly known that leakage happens.  In India, for example, a country that struggles with corruption, Rajiv Gandhi once famously estimated that only 15% of development aid reaches the poor.  How would the government secure such payments, particularly when funds could strengthen the fighting forces?

•    Would it cause a price-war between the Taliban and the government? While it sounds a bit strange, by paying someone not to fight it both acknowledges that as an important choice, but it also commodifies the action.  If the Taliban knows the government is paying a certain amount not to fight, perhaps the Taliban could just pay the same people more.  

•    How would they safely transmit money?   Perhaps through mobile payments. 

•    If they have funds to pay people not to fight, what else could they pay them to do?  Work brings dignity as well as something to do during long days.  Perhaps the government can also pay Afghans to work or help with security projects. 

•    How would one guarantee they didn’t fight anyway? 

Do any readers know of any other examples of governments paying citizens not to fight in a civil war? 

Thanks to onlinedegrees.net for listing Ashoka Peace as one of the "50 Best Blogs for Following Human Rights News".

See the full list here. It will show you "not only how you can help protect under-served or persecuted communities, but also how you can apply your new understanding of the world to society and business back home".

And thanks also to our readers, volunteer writers, and tweeters!

Ashoka Peace interviews Esra'a Al Shafei, founder and Director of MidEast Youth.

AP: What is the innovation you have pioneered? What are you doing that nobody else is doing?

ES: At Mideast Youth, we leverage the power of new media to facilitate our struggle against oppression in the Middle East and North Africa. We're driven by our passion for civil engagement, freedom of speech, and employing innovative solutions to these pervasive and persistent human problems. Relying on open source platforms like WordPress and Ruby on Rails, we began experimenting with community-based sites, widget applications, Facebook applications, Twitter applications, Google map apps, iPhone and BlackBerry applications as well as comics, video animations and infographics that document and expose human rights violations against ethnic, religious, sexual and intellectual minorities in the region. Aside from building our own websites and tools, we also provide free hosting, development, and design to organizations and free speech advocates throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Our latest projects include Mideast Tunes, a platform profiling and connecting underground musicians using music as a tool for social change, and CrowdVoice.org, user-powered service that tracks voices of protest from around the world. In total we operate 15 campaigns, but support the development of hundreds throughout the region.

AP: What's the biggest challenge you are facing right now?

ES: We are facing three main challenges. The first one is state censorship, and us constantly having to find better ways to easily bypass it. The second one is our personal security and the security of our authors and activists. Finally, our struggle to find interesting models to financially sustain our work. This has been hard because we really believe in the free services that we provide, and every new tool or application that we build, we wish to make completely open source. But we're spending the next year exploring ways to can monetize our upcoming projects.

AP: At what point in your life did you realize that you simply had to do this? What was your personal turning point?

ES: Increasingly frustrated in my early college years by the prejudicial stereotypes throughout media of Middle Eastern youth – a portrayal unanswered because of censorship and state control of media in the region - I turned to my keyboard to respond with my own voice, to show not only the diversity of ethnicities, religions, and cultures in the region, but also the diversity of opinion, fervor, ideals, hopes, and politics; to prominently portray in the global discourse Middle Eastern youth in all our depth, our feelings, and our complexity. The moment I started using the web I knew it had promising potential, the opportunities provided were limitless. I knew right then that I had everything I needed to turn my vision into reality, so I started right away.

AP: How do you know you’re being effective? (i.e. affecting social change)

ES: Mideast Youth has had a pronounced effect on the conversation in the region and beyond. We don’t see our success only in numbers of readers, but in the add-on effect down the line. Most of our efforts are dedicated to aiding others in setting up successful web campaigns. We know some governments are threatened by our work as many have tried to block our efforts by censoring our content. We know that millions of people are aware of our message, primarily due to the growing amount of media coverage we are generating worldwide as we raise controversial issues otherwise not covered by the press in our countries.

Read more about MidEast Youth here.

Given that the world's most-watched sporting competition - the football World Cup - just concluded, we'd be remiss if we didn't have at least one post relating the World Cup to peacebuilding.

And this heart-warming story comes from one of our own Ashoka Fellow organizations, Search for Common Ground. On their blog, they tell the story of how one of the world's best footballers, Ivory Coast's Didier Drogba, attempted to unify his very fractured country. Read the blog post here, and the full story here.

This story highlights again the extraordinarily influential role that athletes play in their respective countries, and perhaps also reveals that they could be doing a lot more, especially if we asked. What do you think can be done to involve more great athletes and other societal role models in the quest to end violent conflict?

PS: For an example of an Ashoka Fellow who uses football as a way to build a better world (including more peace), read about the work of Jurgen Griesbeck's streetfootballworld, which is also involved with FIFA and the World Cup.

Nick Martin is the Founder of TechChange and Executive Director of the US Association for the University for Peace (UPEACE/US). Read all of Nick's blog posts.

On June 24th my new organization TechChange co-hosted an event with the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) entitled: Can You Help Me Now? Mobile Phones and Peacebuilding In Afghanistan. The event featured panelists who were country experts on Afghanistan, members from the Afghan telecommunications company Roshan, policy makers from the US department of State, Department of Defense and USAID, and a number of technology for development innovators.

According to the representative from Roshan, just over half of all Afghan homes had mobile phones as of 2009—44 percent in rural areas—and one percent of Afghans are now using text messaging to get news at least once per week. Some 1.2 billion dollars is being poured into Afghanistan’s Telecommunications industry, which sees over 12 million mobile users—a dramatic increase from 150,000 users in 2007.

This was the first time so many distinguished key players had been assembled to explore this issue and it was really fascinating to see the interplay among individuals from these different sectors. For another post about the event by one of my colleagues at TechChange on our blog, click here.

TechChange will be working with USIP to produce a detailed follow up special report on the many themes and action items that emerged. But there were two working examples that I thought were particularly relevant to the intersection of peace and social entrepreneurship:

1. Community-level social entrepreneurship for cell tower security: the representative from Roshan shared a story about how the cell phone company originally thought that the best way to protect cell towers in zones of conflict was to increase numbers of armed security guards. This model proved to be expensive and ineffective so they shifted from a security model to a community engagement model. Roshan decided to let the community members take control of security. In exchange, Roshan shared the excess power generated by their solar-powered towers with surrounding homes and businesses and developed a revenue sharing model with the community so that if their towers were operational they saw a percentage of the profit.  This proved to be hugely successful for both the company and the community. I think this kind of model for corporate-community financial and security interdependence is an exciting one with lots of potential to help bring peace through social entrepreneurship. The key though is that companies must have confidence support these strategies.

2. Afghanistan mobile banking pilot projects: Mobile banking is a critical practice that can make a huge difference in restoring stability to Afghanistan. This mobile technology allows users to withdraw money, pay bills, buy groceries through e-currency, etc. Pilot projects have not only eliminated significant corruption but also reduced intermediary time and resources needed to transfer money, handle payroll and provide security.  After listening to her speak I couldn’t help but think of many ways providing financial inclusion to the very poor has huge potential for citizen driven social entrepreneurship to take hold. 

My next few posts will highlight different emerging and ongoing technical efforts that grow from social entrepreneurship beginnings to effectively build peace. So stay tuned!

Looking for a new way to get your news? CrowdVoice is a new online platform that generates up-to-date and often overlooked news stories from local voices around the world, particularly the Middle East and North Africa. These are voices of struggle and protest. By bringing together the global community with topics that might not necessarily be covered by mainstream media, CrowdVoice provides a platform for freedom of expression in areas of oppression around the world. It also connects us at a personal level with one another's daily struggles by seeing what people really want to share. The content is user-powered - the submitted information is chosen and approved by the community. Finally, CrowdVoice helps us to become better informed about a topic, outside of mainstream coverage.

Issues covered by CrowdVoice include: Censorship in China, Human Rights Violations in Suddan, Protests over Fuel in India, Prisoners of Conscience in Iran, Israeli raid on Gaza flotilla, and others. Pick a "voice" and see what people on-the-ground are saying about it. Then post your own images, videos or links to add your own voice. You can also follow or spread stories. Or "request a voice", i.e. submit your own issue and begin to crowdsource around this topic. Instead of checking traditional news, video and social networking sites, consider CrowdVoice for updates on issues that matter to you.

Guest blogger Zoe Cooprider of the Institute for Economics and Peace highlights some of the findings from this year's Global Peace Index.

As the global economy continues to falter, this year’s Global Peace Index (GPI) shows an intensification of conflicts and growing instability linked to the downturn that began in 2008, with several countries seeing sharp increases in homicides, violent demonstrations and fear of crime. The release of this fourth annual Global Peace Index generated hundreds of articles around the world, including in The Guardian and in Bloomberg.

The increase in violence is depriving the global economy of assets when they are needed most. A 25 percent reduction in global violence would free up $1.8 trillion USD annually - enough to pay off Greece’s debt, fund the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and meet the EU’s 20-20-20 climate and energy targets.

The only study to quantify global peacefulness, the GPI is produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP). This year it has expanded to rank 149 independent states. Composed of 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators, it combines internal and external factors ranging from military expenditure to relations with neighboring countries and levels of violent crime.

Commenting on the results, Prof. Jeff Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University said: “The GPI continues its pioneering work in drawing the world’s attention to the massive resources we are squandering in violence and conflict. The lives and money wasted in wars, incarcerations, weapons systems, weapons trade, and more, could be directed to ending poverty, promoting education, and protecting the environment. The GPI will not only draw attention to these crucial issues, but help us understand them and to invest productively in a more peaceful world.”

Taking a fact-based approach to studying peace, the GPI is a valuable resource for scholars, researchers, business leaders, policy analysts and philanthropists alike. In an increasingly interconnected world, realizing greater levels of peace will enable us to address the challenges of the 21st Century. Peace used to be the domain of the altruistic, but today, it is in everyone’s self interest.

Watch this terrific short video below on why peace is good for profits:

For more information visit The Global Peace Index. You can also click here to read the discussion paper, results report and find press releases in 12 different languages.

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of taking the first-ever academic course on Technology and Peace. Taught by Ashoka Peace blogger Nick Martin at the University for Peace (UPEACE) in Costa Rica, the central focus of the course was the role that emerging "social technologies" such as cell phone applications, social media, and video games can play in building a more peaceful world.

The course mixed both working professionals and UPEACE students, who ranged widely in terms of familiarity with using these new technologies. Studying at the beautiful and calming UPEACE campus was a highlight. See here for a review of the course, what it covered, and student feedback.

My favorite aspect of the course was how the instructor inculcated new technologies into the pedagogy itself. He replaced books and readers with flashdrives, used TED Talks instead of academic papers for the course reading, and used class time for live demonstrations of these technologies (an Ushahidi simulation, a global Twitter chat, playing video games) rather than lecturing, of which there was very little.

Following on from the class, Nick's pioneering new venture - The Institute for Technology and Social Change (TechChange) - is going to pilot a suite of new tech-based courses, which I believe will begin to seriously disrupt the traditional ways of teaching and learning for development and peacebuilding students and professionals. This will be a major new contribution towards shaping the field of peacebuilding. (Follow TechChange's growth here.)

I recently came across an interesting program of UNICEF's that involves incorporating children's voices into reconstruction efforts in Haiti. Through drawing, children are encouraged to envision a better surrounding environment. Their drawings are then being used as a tool for developing proposals for reconstruction efforts, from cleaning up trash in camps, to designing schools, to improving lit areas for increased security for girls.

In post-earthquake Chile, UNICEF is supporting a traveling 'Caravan of Happiness', which includes cinema, musical numbers and 'laugh-therapy' sessions. The project's mobile support team will travel to about 50 affected cities, targeting some 30,000 girls and boys. This initiative arose in part from a UNICEF-commissioned study which found that 93 percent of children in the quake-affected region show signs of emotional stress. Among the activities, clowns that play soccer while riding a unicycle are raising the spirits of children during an uncertain and distressful time.

The Haiti program was organized by UNICEF's Global Movement for Children along with World Vision, Plan International, Save the Children, SOS Children’s Villages International and CARE. It excites me that development organizations like these are using strategies similar to those adopted by social entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurs have found that including community voices in future development projects ensures the sustainability of such projects. For example, to create the most useful public toilets for communities, Ashoka Fellow David Kuria taps into the creativity of the local population to generate architectural ideas for the facilities. The theme of his workshops is, “Think beyond the toilet,” to encourage participants to develop their ideas. The participants first draw their ideal facilities. Then David’s extensive experience and advanced understanding of structural design allow him to advise the community about practical considerations for the space and the available resources.

The strategy of 'clowning' is also used by social entrepreneurs. Ashoka Fellow Wellington Nogueira took the idea of the transformative power of humor and applied it with ground-breaking success in the Brazilian context. His organization, called the Doctors of Joy, uses clowns to work with hospitalized children, their families, and with doctors and nurses, thereby bringing a human element into hospice care. Wellington's fundamental idea is to make the clowns available to children, so that they can regain control over their own lives and bodies, an element that is frequently lost in the often invasive and traumatizing process of a hospital stay.

Whether it be health care, public sanitation, reconstruction efforts after natural disasters or other contexts, there are common strategies in social change work which seem to work across the board. Integrating community voices in development projects and taking advantage of the power of humor are just two of many strategies leveraged by social entrepreneurs and other social change organizations.

The United Nations mandated University for Peace (UPEACE) is hosting a Twitter discussion on Technology and Peace tomorrow, Friday June 17th from 1:00 - 2:00 pm EST. Use the #TechChange hashtag on twitter to join the conversation. More information can be found here.

The discussion will address the following three questions:

1. How can emerging technologies best be used to build peace?

2. What ideas do you have for applying existing technologies in news ways to create peace?

3. How do we maintain the human or personal aspect needed to build peace in an increasingly technological world?

Hope to see you there!

Did you know that we live in a country where 48 percent of Americans hold an unfavorable opinion of Islam? (ABC/Washington Post poll 2009) Many people see mainstream Islam as advocating for violence against non-Muslims; the misunderstandings that exist towards Muslim populations are vast and they have negative implications for the wellbeing of civil society. (For other stats on misunderstandings between mainstream Americans and Muslims go here.)
 
Alex Kronemer, founder of Unity Productions Foundation (UPF), recognized the direct correlation between tension and xenophobia towards Muslim populations, and the lack of familiarity with these populations. After releasing their first film, Muhammmad: Legacy of a Prophet, UPF saw individuals and groups, both muslins and non-Muslims, around the world viewing and discussing the film, and building personal relationships around this emerging dialogue and debate. Alex and his colleagues recognized a fundamental power in film that they had not witnessed before. 20,000 Dialogues emerged from the insight that film has an amazing potential to facilitate positive dialogue about Muslims and Islam, and to ultimately build bridges of understanding. 
 
Why film for interfaith work?
1) Films get people talking (everyone has an opinion) and they are low barrier (no one needs to be an expert to watch).

2) Dialogue breaks down barriers: Discussing a film is a practical, meaningful way of helping people share ideas and build new perspectives.

2) New perceptions turns into action: Equipped with the right tools and resources, people will want to get involved with a cause and share their experience with others – and the ripple effect begins.
 
How does UPF measure its impact?
A major challenge in using film for social change is measuring its social impact. UPF does it through measuring attitude shifts. After researching how the popular media portrays Muslims, it identifies key areas of misunderstanding. Across these areas, UPF measures participants’ attitudes before and after they watch and discuss a film. Participants have shown a substantial shift in understanding as a result of the 20,000 Dialogues experience. Over 80 percent of participants rate the experience as highly effective in breaking down stereotypes towards Muslims.
 
You can run your own dialogue
View 20,000 Dialogues' award-winning films and choose one to screen in your own community. Check out 20,000 Dialogues resources to learn how you can run your own dialogue in your school, church, or even your living room. UPF empowers you from promoting and publicizing, to facilitating your own dialogue, to evaluating the program.
 
For more information contact Daniel Tutt at daniel@upf.tv

Priya Parker has worked in India, Africa and the US on peace-building and social-innovation. Read all of Priya's blog posts here.

I’ve been watching the events of the peace jirga that was held this past week in Kabul with interest.  UK Foreign Minister David Miliband mentioned this planned national consensus building process at his talk last month at MIT that I blogged about here.

This past week, at the invitation of President Karzai, about 1600 Afghan delegates and 200 foreign dignitaries met at Kabul’s Polytechnic University to consult on President Karzai’s  proposed peace plan and suggest ways to bring peace to Afghanistan. 

As the events unfolded, it is clear that while there is cause for hope, there are more problems with the process than solutions.  That said, a few interesting initiatives have been put forth by President Karzai, including a cash-for-loyalty program that would include paying insurgents to denounce Al Qaeda and the Taliban and stop fighting. 

What is the jirga?
A jirga is a traditional consensus-forming process among a tribal assembly of elders.  President Karzai promised a peace jirga last November in his inauguration speech to attempt to gather support for his peace plans.  This week, delegates met for three days in Kabul and the meetings included an address by President Karzai (during which the Taliban bombed the premises but very fortunately no delegate was hurt), sub-meetings in which the delegates were divided into 28 different sub-committees to suggest ways to bring peace and comment on the 156-page peace plan, and other speeches. 

While parts of the process attempted to follow a traditional jirga process, certain changes were made, including appointing the chairman of the jirga, rather than voting him in, something that has been hotly contested. 

Positive aspects of the Jirga process
•    Using traditional indigenous practices to address conflict rather than imported practices.  The Afghan leadership was wise to attempt using traditional processes to address the conflict.  Both South Africa, in their Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and Rwanda in their use of gacaca courts, developed indigenous ways to address their conflicts.  While both of these processes addressed post-conflict reconciliation (rather than bringing about peace talks like is presently happening in Afghanistan), they used traditional methods to address their grievances and to gain buy-in from their citizens.  
•    Attempting to address national problems through dialogue and consensus building.  While there are problems with the way the jirga was conducted (the Taliban and most of the Opposition party are absent), attempting to include major parts of the population in facilitating peace is a necessary complimentary process to the ongoing conflict. 
•    Symbolically powerful.  In the same way mapping peace efforts in Kenya bring attention to those who want peace, publically demonstrating a large gathering of diverse delegates who want peace is an important step for Afghans. 
•    In-country.   It is important for a gathering like this to be able to be hosted in the home country, rather than abroad as many efforts end up doing for security reasons.  It is also important to host such a gathering on neutral ground and the site of this jirga, a university in Kabul and the location of the previous 2002 Loya Jirga, accomplished that.  However, it was a huge government security failure that the Taliban was able to penetrate and attack the gathering. 
•    Small group discussions and reporting back.  Though the entire delegation including around 200 foreign dignitaries was about 1800 people, the organizers gave time to break up into small discussion groups.  These groups had time to go over the peace draft and submit recommendations to the Afghan government.  Breaking up into smaller groups provides a much-needed opportunity for more members to talk and discuss and have more of a dialogue, rather than just listening to a speaker. 

Negatives
•    Too many relevant players not involved.  While the organizers attempted to include a wide-variety of Afghan society, both the boycott by the Opposition and not inviting the Taliban makes it difficult to build consensus among the relevant players.  While the administration attempted to involve a cross-section of society, without the involvement of the parties who are most against the government, a peace process will likely prove fruitless. 
•    Huge security breach.  Many of the delegates are knowingly taking massive community risks by participating in the jirga.  For one thing, the Taliban has already threatened to kill anyone who participates.  While participants in any dialogue process are responsible for making their own decisions to participate and bear the consequences afterwards, they must at least be assured of their security during the process.  The fact that the Taliban was able to breach the security and set off bombs during President Karzai’s opening address is extremely unfortunate and breaks the trust of the safety of such a process. 
•    Too big and too small.  It is extremely difficult to have a national consultation process with 1600-1800 delegates.  Even by breaking into 28 smaller groups, the average group size will still be about 60 delegates.  An ideal dialogue group is between 12 and 18 people, and it is unlikely in a group of 60 that many people had a chance to speak. 
•    Appointments of jirga leadership rather than elections.  In the closing day the Afghan government announced the appointment of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani as the Chairman of the National Consultative Peace Jirga.  There was concern among the participants that the Chairman was not a neutral appointment and not chosen by the delegates.  The role of the chairman of a process like this is extremely important.  If all parties do not perceive the head as a respected, neutral and fair member, then the legitimacy of the process can be questioned even before it begins. 

Suggestions for moving forward
•    Take the recommendations proposed by the delegates seriously, assign a timeline, and show public benchmarks on their implementation.  While officially this jirga was a “consultative process”, the Afghan government would do well to publically share the major recommendations of the delegates and demonstrate a commitment to the consideration and implementation of each.  The government should offer a timeline and public benchmarks to show its commitment to the process well after the 3-day jirga has passed. 
•    Follow-up with smaller working groups.  The National Consultative Peace Jirga should develop smaller working groups from cross-sectors of society to continue to work with the government on the report and its implementation.  For these working group meetings to be effective, participatory and inclusive, they should be limited to groups of 15-20 in a room.  In dialogue, less is often more. 
•    Backroom dialogues with trusted representatives appointed by the opposition party and the Taliban.  If not already doing so, the Afghan government should host track 1 ½ dialogues in which citizens that hold the trust and respect of the opposition party and the Taliban (but are not its current leadership or member) should engage in a dialogue with the government to determine ways forward.  It is often difficult to give any concessions on either side when in the public eye.  Without some buy-in from these important groups, any peace gained will not likely be a lasting peace. 
•    Find public forms of accountability for follow-up.  To legitimize the jirga the government should regularly update the public on its progress and find public forms of accountability (such as television interviews and more public forums) to increase public trust and buy-in to this process. 
•    Think seriously about how and whether to involve the Taliban in peace talks and at what cost.  The government seems to be caught between a rock and a hard spot in that the US government won’t agree to peace talks with the Taliban until they lay down arms and the Taliban won’t engage in peace talks until “all foreign troops” leave Afghanistan.  Regardless of the timing and the conditions of the talks, the government and the Afghan people need to seriously consider under what conditions they will allow the Taliban to re-enter politics.  If the Taliban, for example, would want to forbid women from attending school again, or implement other aspects of its earlier regime, for the price of peace, the Afghan government and people need to have a serious conversation around what they are willing to give up for peace, or at least, an absence of violence, as the case may be. 

During the Q&A session last month with Foreign Secretary David Miliband, I asked him whether this jirga would be a one-time event a sustained process, and what plans there were for follow-up.  He indicated that there would be follow-up, but wasn’t clear on who or how or what.  In any of these processes, much attention and money is placed on the one-time event and much less so on follow-up.  To see whether or not this jirga was indeed cause for hope, the bulk of the work still remains in the follow-up and implementation phases. 

Guest blogger Josh Gryniewicz is Grants and Contracts Specialist at CeaseFire.  

In many ways, this is a story about what didn’t happen.

As a respected Shī‘ah anniversary date approached, representing a divergence in religious thinking with the Sunni, tensions in Basrah, Iraq were high. A date reserved for reverence historically triggered violent clashes. Anticipating the conflicts the Basrah Anti-Violence Campaign (BAVC), a replication of the CeaseFire violence prevention health model, went into action. Using social marketing and public health communication strategies, BAVC launched targeted messaging around the anniversary to interrupt the potential for violence. BAVC conflict mediators visited mosques, clerics and tribal leaders to defuse simmering tensions before they erupted.

The campaign was successful. Tribal warfare did not ignite. Feuds did not spill out into the street. Family homes were not torn apart by gunfire or bombs. So in many ways, this is a story about what didn’t happen, and since January 2009, CeaseFire’s Iraq-based implementation has prevented 105 violent incidents. 

CeaseFire is a violence prevention health system. It re-envisions violence as a public health issue rather than a moral one. In the parlance of epidemiology it detects and interrupts all potential transmission of violence, determines those who might transmit next and reverses the transmission potential, and changes community norms. On-the-ground this translates to recognizing the significance of events like the Shī‘ah anniversary date and their inherent potential for violence. It means sending highly-trained conflict mediation specialists into the community to visit mosques, clerics, tribal leaders and community influencers and recruiting them to the cause. It means coordinating a culturally-specific social marketing campaign with focused messages.

For the model itself Iraq is a proof-point. While it has earned favorable results since first being launched in 2000, this has primarily been applied to urban violence in the United States (an independent evaluation demonstrates its tremendous Chicago impact), but it had previously been untested overseas. Proof of its effectiveness in a different cultural context lends enormous credibility to CeaseFire’s underlying theories. In short, that violence is an epidemic and can be treated with disease control methods.

This success has received some attention. A case statement on the Iraq-based implementation will appear in a Center for Disease Control & Prevention book slated for publication mid-summer. Dr. Gary Slutkin, founder and executive director of CeaseFire and an Ashoka fellow, presented the Iraq-based program at the World Bank for a workshop on “Evidence-Based Approaches to Violence Prevention.” This discussion focused on strategies that are effective for reducing and preventing violence worldwide with Dr. Slutkin sharing how the CeaseFire intervention can be addressed to international conflict areas. This recent interview with Dr. Slutkin from Next Billion.net further elaborates on the intersection between economic development and conflict internationally.

In this post, guest blogger Roberto Lorente discusses connections between microfinance and conflict prevention.

Microfinance is nowadays widely recognized as a powerful tool for combating global poverty by giving micro-entrepreneurs access to small loans and other financial services to which they usually would not have access. But how about its potential as an instrument for preventing violent conflict? This post will concentrate on Paul Collier’s theory about the economic causes of civil conflict, and how microfinance could potentially address these issues before a violent conflict breaks out.

In his paper “Economic Causes of Civil Conflict and their Implications for Policy”, Collier states that there are two ways of looking at the causes of civil conflict. On one hand, there is what he calls the “popular perceptions of the causes of conflict”, which see rebellion as a fight against injustice, hence motivated by grievance. On the other hand—and this is the point of view he defends—there is the economic theory of conflict. It argues that the factors which ultimately determine whether a country will experience civil war are not related to grievance, but rather depend on the potential for a rebel organization to sustain itself financially.

Collier lists a series of risk factors which, as he argues, determine the likelihood of a civil war to break out. Here’s a short summary of these factors:

Natural Resources: Countries with a substantial share of their income coming from the export of primary commodities bear a higher risk for civil conflict.
Geography: It is more difficult to control a highly dispersed population than one in a small area.
History: If a country recently had a civil war, the risk of further war is very high (40% chance of further war).
Diaspora: Countries with large diasporas in wealthy countries bear a higher risk than countries with small diasporas (36% vs. 6%). Diasporas harbor rather romanticized attachments to their group of origin, they are much richer than the people in their country of origin and can therefore afford to finance vengeance, and they do not suffer any of the awful consequences of renewed conflict as they don’t live in the origin country.
Economic opportunities: i.e. the higher the education level, the lower the risk; the higher the population growth, the higher the risk; the higher economic decline, the higher the risk.
Ethnic and religious composition: Risk of conflict doubles if one dominant ethnic group constitutes between 45% and 90% of population. By contrast, ethnic and religious diversity makes a society much safer.

Microfinance can certainly not influence on geographic conditions and the recent war history of a country, on the size of its diaspora, or on the ethnic and religious composition of its society. Where it actually could have a positive impact is on the economic opportunities and maybe, to a lesser extent, on a country’s primary commodity export dependency. Access to microfinancial services can certainly contribute to a deceleration of economic decline and to economic growth.

Further, the influence microfinance can have on the level of education is not be underestimated. On one hand, it gives families a higher financial independence and allows them to send their children to school rather than to force them to child-labor in order to help sustain the family. On the other hand, many MFI’s do not only provide microfinance services, but also transformational training covering topics such as basic business skills, budgeting, leadership, communication, and civic responsibility. And if fostering social entrepreneurship leads to economic diversification, this could even result in a shift in the GDP, lowering the share of primary commodities exports.

Microfinance is certainly not the instrument for preventing civil war. But it can be considered a helpful contribution to positively impact some of the risk factors that Collier outlined.