What if the answer to disinformation is already in your community?
Most people assume that fighting disinformation is a job for tech companies and governments.
That it requires content moderation teams, fact-checking organizations, and regulatory frameworks operating at scale. That ordinary people — especially young people in conflict-affected regions — are simply too vulnerable to the pull of outrage to be part of the solution.
Search for Common Ground has learned something different after years of working in communities where a single rumor can ignite real violence.
The most effective defense against disinformation isn’t a policy or a platform. It’s a person already inside the community, already trusted by their neighbors, equipped with the right tools to recognize a lie before it spreads.
In Burkina Faso, that person is Oumou Sawadogo.
At 22 years old, Oumou was trained by Search as a cyber guardian, one of a network of young people trained to identify disinformation, counter hate speech, and create content that actually reaches people.
Before the training, Oumou hadn’t thought much about what gets posted online. Disinformation felt like someone else’s problem. Something that happened in the news, not in her community.
The training changed that.
She learned how disinformation spreads and how hate speech takes root. She learned video editing, graphic design, and how to craft messages that land. She learned that every post contributes to shaping what a community believes is true — and that that’s a responsibility, not just a habit.
Then she put it to work.
Today, Oumou creates and shares videos on TikTok and Facebook. Educational content about disinformation, responsible social media use, and how to think critically about what you see online.
The impact isn’t abstract. She sees it in her community. In the conversations her content sparks. In the people who message her after watching.
“I’ve been able to impact people through my awareness messages,” she says. “On how to handle disinformation.”
She also won a competition, creating an educational message paired with a graphic, using design tools she’d learned through the program. A skill she didn’t have before. A confidence she’s still building on.
This is what Search has seen replicated across Niger, Mali, Kenya, and beyond. You don’t defeat disinformation by adding more external infrastructure. You defeat it by investing in the people already inside the communities it’s trying to tear apart.
The answer was already there.
It just needed the right training to surface.
Your support equips the next Oumou — young people already in their communities, ready to lead, waiting for the tools to do it.
