Côte d'Ivoire

Resolving Community Level Conflict

Two elders participating in a traditional reconciliation ceremony organized by SFCG trained community facilitators.

Search for Common Ground’s (SFCG) outreach program aims to promote dialogue at the community level and strengthen local peace actors’ ability to analyse, manage, and mediate conflict. Capacity-building activities target community members, partner organization personnel, and staff of local radio stations and include training workshops, dialogues, and solidarity events.

SFCG’s community level activities seek to empower Ivorians to be in charge of the mediation of conflict. To reinforce the local capacity for peace building, Search for Common Ground provides training and mentoring for local peace activists helping them effectively intervene in community conflicts. Conflict transformation trainings target individuals who are in positions of influence and who have conflict mitigation roles in their communities.

Participants learn how to mediate and improve listening skills; to reframe angry statements to elicit constructive responses; to differentiate people's positions and interests; and to analyze the causes and symptoms of conflict. Using interactive and participatory approaches, the trainings draw on local experiences and prepare the participants to transfer the skills and knowledge they gain to other members of their communities, using a “training of trainers” (TOT) framework.

SFCG also organizes and facilitates workshops and dialogues between divided groups in communities vulnerable to violence. Implemented with a participatory approach, and including techniques such as role-playing and dramatizations, these interactions provide community members with the opportunity to discuss difficult issues and foster confidence, mutual trust, and reconciliation. This is turn helps communities to prepare for the reintegration of returnees and ex-combatants. At each dialogue and workshop, participants are encouraged to move their discussion into action by developing joint action plans.

Finally, SFCG supports locally solidarity events that combine shared interests like art and culture to provide a platform for communities, including marginalized groups, to celebrate peaceful coexistence around festivities. Local artists and musicians from different ethnic backgrounds will perform together, helping to overcome negative stereotypes and prejudices that groups may have about one another.