Initiatives of Change formally recognizes certain programmes as members of our network. We partner with these programmes to provide visibility and support for their global reach.
Creators of Peace
In 2018, a thousand women and some men took part in 89 Creators of Peace ‘Peace Circles’ in 21 countries. The outreach was similar in 2019. Peace Circles or facilitation training took place in Australia, Burundi, Cameroon, Colombia, India, Lebanon, Mali, Nepal, Romania, South Sudan, Switzerland, Syria, Uganda and the UK.
In February 2019, twelve teenagers from Nepal’s least developed districts took part in a Creators of Peace Circle in Surkhet, Nepal. These young people, who had been badly affected by the armed conflict of the last 10 years, voiced their concerns about child marriage, alcoholism and domestic violence.
By the end of the weekend the participants had come up with plans to form peace circles in schools, take problems to the school principal for action and raise funds to build girls’ toilets. One concluded, ‘We can help to create peace by looking for solutions.’
The Centre Kitumaini in South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has formed a partnership with AFDI, a French farmers’ association specializing in overseas development projects. Their aim is to encourage the agricultural activities run by the women survivors of war who the Centre Kitumaini supports. A French delegation went to DRC in March to meet the women and in July the centre’s coordinator, Pierre Lokeka, came to France to conclude the partnership. This partnership was the fruit of contacts made through the Farmers’ Dialogue International (FDI) over the last five years.
Foundations for Freedom (F4F), the Initiatives of Change network in Ukraine, has been promoting citizen engagement in local government through ‘participatory budgeting’. Under this programme, a town or city council invites its citizens to propose how a part of their budget should be used. After a vote, the most popular projects are implemented. Over 230 Ukrainian towns and cities are involved, and the programme has spread to Moldova and Georgia. Leonid Donos, Executive Director of the Association of Communities for Participative Development, comments, ‘Cooperation with IofC has led to improvement in trustbuilding, cohesion and social inclusion in the participatory budget process.’
Initiatives for Land, Lives and Peace (ILLP) focuses on the link between environmental regeneration and conflict resolution. Its flagship is the Caux Dialogue on Land and Security (CDLS), which for the last seven years has brought together policymakers with small farmers, activists and researchers to build a community of practice.
CDLS 2019 took place in June and saw the launch of the Summer Academy on Land, Security and Climate, organized in partnership with the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and designed for the next generation of policymakers and researchers. One who took part described the programme as ‘self-transformational’.
ILLP was represented at the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP14) in Delhi in September. In October, it co-convened a one-day multi-stakeholder meeting in Kenya, which brought together government, grassroots activists and experts to brainstorm on how to work together to tackle the environmental challenges facing their country.
You can find out more about these programmes by visiting our website.