Harmoni is a four-year program funded by USAID and implemented by Management Systems International (MSI) in collaboration with Love Frankie and Search for Common Ground, and in partnership with Indonesian civil society organizations (CSOs) and government agencies.
Commenced in August 2018, Harmoni seeks to increase the resilience of Indonesian society to intolerance and violent extremism (VE) by supporting communities, migrants, and key institutions to increase their awareness of related risks and to develop more effective tools and systems to bolster tolerance and counter the appeal of VE organizations (VEOs), reintegrate former VEO members and supporters, and support migrants.
Harmoni works through and in support of a range of partners at the national and sub-national levels. These partners include national, provincial, district, and community-level government agencies and administrations; CSOs; universities and research institutions; private companies; and individual families and informal groups at the grassroots level. Harmoni’s assistance comes in the form of seed grants, research and analytics, strategic communications, networking, and technical assistance, including provision of international expertise.
In addition to the joint program activities, Search also campaigns for VE prevention through specific capacity building programs, including series of Conflict Management and Life Management Training for parole officers in Central Java area; workshops for women and girls; and a peaceful journalism fellowships program. We also advocating the tool development for reintegration process for former VE actors (former VE convicts and ISIS-returnees) in Solo Raya area in form of POKJA (Kelompok Kerja/Taskforce) which aim to be a Multi-stakeholders Forum (MSF) for assisting related government agencies.
Building the Resilience of Indonesian Girls Against Violent Extremism (BRIDGE)
Search, in collaboration with Campaign.com implemented prevention/counter violent extremism (P-CVE) activities, which emphasized on promoting peaceful messages through youth empowerment and building resiliency toward violent extremism. Among these activities was BRIDGE a continuation of the Influencer #ForChange Academy that will empower young women and girls to become agents of change and facilitators for positive learning in their communities. In September 2019, Search trained participants to deepen their understanding of violent extremism and encouraged more focused messaging that counters and or prevents violent extremism. The participants gained the knowledge through sessions like Common Ground Approach to understand the foundation for participants’ perspectives on conflict and conflict response, public speaking and training tips, social reintegration, and peace journalism. Participants actively involved in the training simulation, where they honed their skills in delivering the training materials and developed social media plans to address the case study on social reintegration.
Workshop for the Directorate General of Correctional Affairs, Ministry of Law and Human Rights
On 15- 16 July 2019, we held a Public Communication and Media Handling Training in Bogor, West Java. This two-day training was the result of a collaboration between Search Indonesia and the Directorate General of Correctional Affairs (DCG), Ministry of Law and Human Rights. The training aimed to increase the capacity of DGC Indonesia staff in maintaining the integrity and trust of the public regarding information about prisoners in Penitentiary. Participants learned more about radicalism, the crisis of communication, and how to work around this using public speaking skills, media handling, and communication strategy sessions.
Common Ground Approach ToT for Women Peacebuilders
Search has developed a training module to mainstream the Common Ground Approach (CGA) into women’s peacebuilding efforts. The training seeks to empower women who are important actors of peace and tolerance promotion efforts in their organizations or communities, in order to initiate action that transforms conflict through the Common Ground Approach. In January 2020, Search carried out a 3-day pilot training in Kuningan, West Java, to test the training module and gain feedback on the module from key Search – Indonesia partners working in the prevention and countering of violent extremism (P-CVE).
