Think Creative Fall 2023

coming together

When Rasmata Barry fetches water from the community borehole in Ghana’s Upper West Region, she frequently must wait until all the other women have finished before she can use the pump. “Sometimes at the borehole, we have to wait for hours for our turn. The situation is frustrat ing,” says the mother and seamstress. As an ethnic Fulbe, unfortunately, this exclu sion is one of many frustrations she lives with as part of a minority in her community. The rampant discrimination and exclusion facing the Fulbe are sources of conflict. Wanting to better understand the situation and how it creates instability, the USAID Office of Transition Initiatives-funded Littorals Regional Initiative and a local NGO called SAVE Ghana hired Rasmata and others to be enumerators. They traveled to more than 60 small communities to survey Fulbe and their neighbors about their conditions and local situation. Achieving social cohesion is a goal of most development programs, though definitions of social cohesion vary. An April 2023 paper by the World Bank called “Leveraging Social Cohesion for Development Outcomes” offers this view: “Social cohesion in its broadest sense refers to the ability of communities and individuals to collaborate with one another and with gov ernment for the common good,” wrote Shreya Chatterjee, Marine Gassier and Nikolas Myint. “Strong social cohesion makes communities more resilient to external shocks and better able to manage public goods, which in turn fa cilitates stability and growth. Conversely, gaps in social cohesion can substantially exacerbate development challenges by undermining the ability of communities to overcome conflicts in a non-violent, productive manner and to act collectively to identify and implement solu tions to the issues they face.” Alimou Diallo, Chief of Party of the USAID- supported REWARD II program that worked in five West African countries, provides an implementer’s perspective of how local NGOs are making this a reality. “Social cohesion is ... a way of working with communities to give them the knowledge and skills to address any issues that emerge in their communities using peaceful means. Because

and ultimately social cohesion. “The other thing is addressing not only the visible conflict, but also working to eradicate the root causes, because peacebuilding is a long-term process,” he says. “That is one way of empowering these communities to promote peace and social cohesion.” In Honduras, one of the three pillars of the re cently launched USAID-funded program called Sembrando Esperanza seeks to build social cohesion in 25 municipalities, with a focus on youth, families, governmental organizations and civil society, among others. “We’re trying to build a level of trust that builds social cohesion at the local, municipal and national level,” says Robyn Braverman, the pro gram’s Chief of Party. “I think that’s very hard because in this country there’s been a lack of decision making... There is a sense of inability to govern across sectors.” This issue of Think Creative explores the unique ways communities around the world approach social cohesion to solve local chal lenges, improve locally led development, pro mote participatory governance and strengthen democratic institutions. The following are examples of how communities inMali, Guate mala, Ghana and Somalia are addressing social cohesion.

Michel Yao is fighting disinformation in Mali by training youth and civil society organizations to spot fake stories.

conflict is inherent wherever humans are,” says Diallo, whose programworked with 40 NGOs in Benin, Togo, Niger, Mali and Guinea to co-create and administer 200 grants focusing on cohesion, elections, marginalization and democratic backsliding. Diallo says that getting diverse stakeholders in a community to take ownership of their local challenges and crafting fact-based solutions are the first major steps toward conflict resolution

Photos by Erick Gibson (top); JimHuylebroek

16 | Think Creative | Fall 2023