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By Ella Duncan

More than 300,000 people lost their lives in the bloody civil war that ravaged Burundi from 1993 to 2005. Almost twice as many were forced to leave their homes, slowly returning over the last decade. Today, the relative peace that Burundi so arduously achieved is again at risk; violent protests and rising tensions threaten to make the upcoming elections a moment of widespread chaos, rather than democracy and national unity.

Dr. David Niyonzima experienced the horror of the civil war first-hand. A member of the historically peaceful Quaker Church, which introduced him to peaceful social activism and helped him develop his spirituality, David survived a massacre in 1993. “I was teaching a training for young Quaker pastors when soldiers came to exact revenge, because they thought the students belonged to a rival ethnic group. I saw 8 out of my 11 students murdered,” he recalls.

David is now the Director of Trauma Healing and Reconciliation Services (THARS). He has dedicated his life to understanding the impact of peacebuilding programs on the communities they involve, in order to design better strategies. It was his experience as a survivor that inspired his determination to make his country a more peaceful place.

For David, meeting the man who led the soldiers to come to kill him and his students was a life-changing experience. “I extended forgiveness to him,” he says. “It gave me a great sense of transformation, even though I had not planned for it. I was inspired that there must be a reason I was alive, that God wanted me to plant a seed of peace.” Invigorated by the experience, David started community programs to foster reconciliation and healing, but met challenges that seemed insurmountable. “I began to organize peace workshops and seminars to promote peace through Quakerism. Yet we were not making progress, so I asked myself – why are we not making impact? Trauma healing was the missing element of peace.”

David believes that peace is not possible without trauma healing, that “treating the past” is the key component of peacebuilding. “Peace is not only the absence of fighting,” he explains. “It is also the restoration of relationships.” As a result, THARS takes a holistic approach to interpersonal development and relationships through Sensitivity Training, Trauma Healing Capacity Building, Individual and Group Therapy, and Self-Help and Self-Reliance initiatives.

To monitor and measure its work, THARS has adapted an existing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder tool to the context of Burundi. They assess participants as they enter a training or workshop, and then again six months later. Progress is measured on the basis of self-reported indicators of social behavior, the participants’ approach to conflict in their communities, and their decision-making strategies.

According to David, “the most important monitoring tool is testimony. It gives participants the opportunity to demonstrate through stories how they are self-reliant and addressing trauma on their own.” He strongly believes in the importance of developing a culture of speaking among the participants in THARS’ programs; “empowering people to speak truth about their history contributes to peace,” he says.

One of THARS’ current programs, Addressing the Past, focuses on villages where atrocities occurred during the civil war. It employs testimony and the growth of a culture of speaking to measure healing at all levels, using individual and group therapy to work through trauma issues. Addressing the Past doesn’t focus exclusively on those who were directly in the war, but also on people who are affected by the so-called remnants of war. David gives the example of wives who become victims of the untreated trauma of their husbands, when the latter return from fighting and engage in gender-based violence in the home.

David says that the major challenge in measuring THARS’ work is creating and communicating standard definitions of trauma and forgiveness. However, he and his colleagues have already made a lot of progress. “When THARS began in 2002, there was no discussion of trauma in Burundi,” he remembers. “We have brought awareness, and now people can see what trauma is, what to do to address it, where to go for help.”

David is hopeful that Trauma Healing will further spread as an accepted process in Burundi. He envisions it as an inclusive tool, that will unite all Burundians behind the common goal of emerging together, and stronger, from the violence of the past. “Peace will come when those who perpetrate violence join the healing process,” he concludes.

Dr. David Niyonzima

Suggested resources to learn more

Visit THARS’ website at http://thars.org/.
Read a mid-term evaluation of THARS’ work with Search for Common Ground on a 2007 Victims of Torture program, funded by USAID here (https://www.sfcg.org/2004-victims-of-torture-mid-term-project-evaluation/).
Explore Trauma Healing related resources on DME for Peace http://dmeforpeace.org/category/themes/justice-truth-and-reconciliation/trauma-healing.

About Ella

Ella Duncan is the DME for Peace Project Manager, DME for Peace is a project of Search for Common Ground which connects a growing global community of over 4,000 members to over 800 resources on Design, Monitoring, and Evaluation for Peace and Peacebuilding programming. Ella received her B.S. from Cornell University.

This post originally appeared on DME for peace.
Featured image credit: Dave Proffer Flickr (Creative Commons License)

By Innocent Hitayezu and Ella Duncan

How can peacebuilding programs get a better understanding of trust? This question is at the heart of Innocent Hitayezu’s work with women and issues of reconciliation, and continues to shape his work as a peacebuilder and evaluator in Rwanda.

Innocent was working with a reconciliation project that brought together widows of victims of the Rwandan Genocide with widows of perpetrators of the genocide when he questioned, How do we know we are bringing community relationships to the next level? During group discussions and interviews, he asked the women if they were working together outside of project activities, and the group replied positively that, yes the project was changing their interactions and attitudes in daily life. However, during individual interviews, he found that some women were still experiencing extreme challenges of reconciliation and that outside of the mandatory group meetings these two groups were not coming together. Individual interviews showed that the project was not building trust in the community in the long term. To Innocent, this moment demonstrated that the power of group level projects could be better harnessed with the inclusion of reflective monitoring and evaluation on the individual level subsequently having positive effects on entire family and community at large.

Innocent works at the community level to examine the root causes of conflict in Rwanda, and on the issue of post-conflict intercommunal trust. Innocent’s work explores how new approaches to monitoring and trust-measuring evaluations can strengthen programs aimed at traditional community building through reconciliation and those focusing on the peaceful reintegration of former refugees.

Innocent’s own experience as a refugee sparked his passion for community building and trust building. In 1994, to escape the war, he and some of his family members fled Rwanda to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Upon returning to Rwanda the family faced the suspicion and distrust of those who had stayed behind and experienced the genocide. In search of community, Innocent joined with other repatriated refugee youth to create support systems for community action and economic opportunity through informal youth symposium.

This youth-led community building has been the foundation of his life’s work building peace in Rwanda through inclusive community development. Innocent says, “in some families, People are taught that communities are divided, but they must fight to say instead that ‘Rwanda is for all of us.’’

It is this conviction that reconciliation processes, in Rwanda and elsewhere, must be inclusive that inspired Innocent to pursue a career in Monitoring and Evaluation. Digging into the root causes of conflict, and extensively measuring trust within communities led Innocent to question, “Where is our evidence that we are making positive change?” Innocent, like many others in his field, believes that peacebuilders must be able to demonstrate success.

In the two decades since the Genocide, Rwanda has made great progress toward stabilization. As a result, Rwanda is often cited as a model of stability and security in East Africa. Rwanda’s security has come through traditional methods of community justice and reconciliation such as the Gacaca, a community court system, and Umuganda, which roughly translates to “coming together in a common purpose to achieve an outcome,” which is observed through a nationwide monthly day of service. Innocent believes that these traditional group based reconciliation methods can be strengthened through modern monitoring and evaluation methodologies. This is because traditional community-based methods are focused on the group level, which may miss tensions and challenges that participants are hesitant to express in front of their peers. In response to this challenge, Innocent advises that group reporting be validated by individual reporting, to make sure minority voices have an opportunity to be heard in the process of evaluating, and designing programs.

Giving space to individual voices also helps a program remain vigilant to the concept that progress should come from within the community, and that no pressure is applied from the top-down.

Based on his experience, Innocent sees individuals’ ability to express their views as an important indicator that communities are healing and maintaining peace. For Innocent, monitoring self-expression is key to understanding what is happening at the community and individual level.

Innocent is proud of the progress of reconciliation in Rwanda, and of the power and strength communities have drawn from traditions like the Gacaca and Umuganda. He is also hopeful that new approaches to reconciliation will help community trust and open expression continue to grow, enabling communities and individuals to build a lasting peace.

* * *

Innocent Hitayezu is a peacebuilder and evaluator living and working in Kigali, Rwanda. He has over 13 years of experience, including consultancy work in sustainable agriculture, socio-economic assessment, strategic planning, market research and consumer behavior analysis, farmers’ trainings; 8 years working with International NGOs. He holds an MBA in NGO Management from Kampala International University (Uganda), a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology; and a Diploma in Philosophical and Religious studies.

This post originally appeared on DME for peace.
Featured image credit: Leandro Neumann Ciuffo Creative Commons License

By Celestin Nsengiyumva and Ella Duncan

“Rwandan society has suffered the wounds of genocide. To make sure that the heart of the community is healed, to know that there is no more fear in society, we must work in peacebuilding evaluation.”- Celestin Nsengiyumva

When asked how he was introduced to M&E, Celestin Nsengiyumva says that he “joined accidentally”. After graduating university with degrees in applied statistics and development studies, he thought he would become an accountant or statistician. Instead he was accepted for a position as an evaluator. Celestin now describes M&E tools and methodologies as the “cornerstone of success” for peacebuilding programs in his homeland of Rwanda.

Rwanda has achieved stability since its civil war that ended in 1994, but continues to be challenged by its violent past. Celestin advocates for peacebuilding and its measurement, though he faces skepticism from those who say the nation should focus on more tangible things. To peacebuilding skeptics, Celestin counters that building peace creates opportunities for other change. He says “Peace is the building block of economic and social progress”, and believes that M&E is the path to a deeper understanding of what communities need to achieve sustainable peace.

Even before becoming an evaluator, Celestin believed peace and development programs must be contextualized to the needs of the communities they aim to serve. Working on a land dispute program with Landesa Rural Development Institute, Celestin was able to see how DM&E supports that contextualization through program design and learning. Land is a focal point in Rwandan society, and played major roles in the genocide and recurring conflicts the country has experienced. Around this key Rwandan issue of land, Celestin was able to be a part of the program from the very beginning. This involvement allowed him to collaborate with local partners and get feedback from partners and participants as he developed his M&E tools. By being involved and able to incorporate community needs and perspective from the beginning, Celestin believes he helped the program reach a better result, with meaning and relevance for participant communities.

As a method to achieve depth and contextualized understanding, Celestin uses and recommends storytelling as a tool to answer the questions of “How?” and “Why?” With Landesa, Celestin and his team used storytelling to collect feedback and success stories, adding personal elements to data. When communicating back their participant communities, showcasing stories of disputes the Landesa program resolved strengthened the presentation of the program’s value back to the community. And sharing practical examples and solutions to land conflict helped spread the program’s messages.

Celestin draws not only on his experience as an evaluator, but also three years he spent as a teacher for his guidelines on how to collect and tell a good story. For him the value of a story that it can be both instructive and engaging, so that the audience doesn’t only learn but also cares, and is able to draw parallels to their own challenges and strengths.

Celestin’s Guidelines for Collecting and Telling a Good Story in Evaluation:

Know what kind of story you need;
Prepare the questions you will ask, use the structure as a balancing tool to be open to unexpected statements and still stay on task;
Focus on using the story to identify the most significant change resulting from the storyteller being exposed to programming;
Do not get hung up on only looking for successes, collect stories on what isn’t working and what is slowing processes;
Ask for stories that include not only individual beneficiary experiences but also capture how those around them are affected.

The growth of Peacebuilding M&E in Rwanda depends on individuals like Celestin, who come to value and advocate for contextualized and reflective practice. Celestin’s hope is that there will be more opportunities in Rwanda to study M&E, so that stronger local evaluators can emerge and bring local insight to peacebuilding programs. Stories like Celestin’s will be repeated as peacebuilders are asked to expand their skills and roles, learning by doing, to learn what works, what doesn’t, and why.

Celestin Nsengiyumva is an M&E professional living and working in Kigali, Rwanda. Celestin received his BA in Applied Statistics from the National University of Rwanda.

This post originally appeared on DME for peace.
Featured image credit: Neil Palmer (CIAT) Creative Commons License

By Zacharia Diing Akol and Ella Duncan

“It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to be older than your country, to raise it and help it grow.” – Zacharia Diing Akol

The crisis that broke out in South Sudan in December 2013 has multiple root causes. A broken sense of national identity and lack of trust in the state at the national level, coupled with intercommunity grievances and mistrust, as well as high level of individual trauma and frustration have resulted in 22 months of a conflict that killed an estimated tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 2 million. South Sudan gained its independence in 2011, yet the cycle of violence stretching back to the First Sudanese Civil War in 1961 continues today. It is in this environment of violence and war that peacebuilder Zacharia Diing Akol was born.

It was a long path for a child in war-torn Jonglei State to become a researcher who shapes the growth of a new nation. At the age of 11 Zacharia left his family to cross into Ethiopia by foot, traveling with groups of other children and young men, all fleeing the Second Sudanese Civil War. His personal journey has taken him around the world and back to South Sudan, where he now works as a Senior Policy Analyst at the Sudd Institute in Juba, supporting good governance and policy as part of what Zacharia calls the “collective journey” to build South Sudan.

When Zacharia first returned to South Sudan, he intended to stay for two weeks, but quickly became convinced his skills as a policy expert and researcher were needed to support the fledging nation. As Zacharia says, “It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to be older than your country, to raise it and help it grow.”

Zacharia believes data can effect positive change by helping people, organizations, and governments make better choices. The pursuit of this belief drove him to co-found the Sudd Institute.

The Sudd Institute is an independent research organization premised on the belief that public policy, especially in this key historical moment of state building in South Sudan, must be informed by reliable data, objective analysis, and thoughtful debate. Backed by data and evidence, Zacharia and the Sudd Institute make policy recommendations to the new government.

Men gather in a South Sudanese IDP Camp, Photo Credit USAID

For Zacharia, giving solid evidence-based recommendations is the best way to effect smart and responsive policy. Furthermore, Zacharia believes evaluations are for posterity, that they capture the realities of the new country – he says, “People will look back in the future and ask, what were they thinking? What were they doing? The work of the Sudd Institute will help people understand what was going on during this time in South Sudan.”

Zacharia hopes that his work will inspire other civil society organizations so that evidence-based policy recommendations become the norm in South Sudan. The next project for Zacharia and the Sudd institute is to include trainings for CSOs so that local organizations can provide their own recommendations for action, and policy advocacy efforts across South Sudan may be strengthened by evidence. Through sharing information and skills, Sudd hopes to make their goals and impact sustainable. By empowering more groups to engage in evidence based advocacy, the institute’s work strengthens public policy lobbying power to inform government decisions.

The Sudd Institute also works though public research publications, including a weekly review, monthly brief, and quarterly special report. These publications aim to give everyone – from civil society organizations (CSOs) to government officials – the research they need to make informed decisions about the trajectory of South Sudan. Moving forward, the Institute is increasing the influence of their work by forming more direct relationships with CSOs using their publications.

These goals are especially important in South Sudan because as a new country, that was formed by and continues to be defined by conflict, “It is not just important to end conflict, it is about HOW you end it. The process is as important as the ending.” Zacharia sees that there must be a collective effort to address the issues candidly with honest data and evaluation, because he says the country has this choice: “deal with the issues, or the issues will deal with you”.

“It is not just important to end conflict, it is about HOW you end it. The process is as important as the ending.”

Visit the Sudd Institute’s website at http://www.suddinstitute.org/
Read their policy briefs and other publications at http://www.suddinstitute.org/publications/

Zacharia Diing Akol is the Director of Training at the Sudd Institute. Diing has extensive experience in community outreach, government and organizational leadership. He is currently working on M.Res./Ph.D. in political science at the London School of Economics. Diing’s research interests include the role of civil society organizations in peacebuilding, traditional leadership and democratic governance, post-conflict reconstruction, faith and public policy, and the dynamics of civil war. Diing holds a Master’s degree in Peace and Justice Studies from the University of San Diego and two Bachelor’s degrees from Michigan State University in Public Policy & Administration and Policy & Applied Economics.

This post originally appeared on DME for peace.

Featured image: Daniel X. O’Neil (Creative Commons License)

How do you measure peace?

In July, DME for Peace got in touch with TechChange to help tell the story about the challenges that peacebuilders face. DME for Peace (Design, Monitoring & Evaluation for Peace) is a project of Search for Common Ground that serves as a network of peacebuilding practitioners, evaluators, and academics. As a platform for conflict management specialists to communicate with each other, DME for Peace allows this professional community to share best practices and insights on how to design, monitor, and evaluate peacebuilding practices around the world.

TechChange’s Creative team tackled DME for Peace’s challenge of communicating their story in a short, yet compelling way. Like many narratives, the best way to tell DME for Peace’s story was through a short, engaging animation. As 65% of all people are visual learners, TechChange’s Creative Director, Alon Askarov believes that to make data intensive information easier for people to digest, we need to communicate these ideas through graphic and data visualizations. TechChange’s creative team spent 4 weeks to create various assets and animations to create a video to tell DME for Peace’s story about the great work they are doing. We enjoyed our first collaboration with Search for Common Ground on this project and hope to help tell more stories about other projects and organizations doing great work around the world.

If your organization is interested in working with us to create an educational animation video, please contact the TechChange Creative Team at info@techchange.org.