Peace Rewards is a five-year project funded by KinderNothilfee (KNH.) Commencing in July 2022, the overall goal of this project is to strengthen the contribution of women’s civil society groups to foster a more peaceful Sri Lanka for children. This objective will be achieved through empowering women’s civil society groups to engage across horizontal and vertical dividers in a conflict-sensitive manner, addressing issues related to social cohesion that impact women and children in the target locations.
Goals and Outcomes:
The overall goal will be reached through the following three outcomes:
Outcome 1: Women-focused CSOs have increased understanding of and skills in conflict sensitivity and peacebuilding.
Outcome 2: Members of village-level women Self Help Groups increasingly engage across divides with empathy and understanding.
Outcome 3: Women Civil Society groups at the divisional and district level constructively collaborate and collectively advocate at provincial and national institutions to address issues affecting women and children.
Approach:
Search takes a staggered approach to building the capacity of women SHG members for peaceful coexistence and reconciliation. The project launched an 18-month inception and testing phase during which Search deepened its understanding of KNH partners’ capacity and their engagement with women’s Self-Help Groups, clusters, and federations.
Simultaneously, we designed and tested the project methodology in the two selected target districts, Batticaloa and Mannar, to ensure that we can roll out our methodologies in a minimum of four additional districts during the remaining project expansion phase (18-60 months). As a result, Colombo and Matara will be the next targeted locations for the year 2024.