Practical. Local.Vocal.

Mapping Local Peacebuilding.

Peace Direct aims to create significant change in the world by putting local peacebuilders at the heart of all strategies for dealing with conflict. To do this we fund their life saving work but critically, we also promote it to people in power by demonstrating effective alternatives to the use of force. Insight on Conflict is Peace Direct’s most ambitious attempt yet to promote and profile global peacebuilding – it’s a web showcase mapping local peacebuilding happening all over the world.

Why?

It is impossible to put local peacebuilding at the centre of strategies to manage conflict if those in power cannot easily find out what local people are doing. Insight on Conflict is intended to stimulate partnerships between those with power, status and resources and those who can actually deliver peace on the ground, as well as raise the profile of their work in the media, and promote partnerships between local organisations.

How?

We use local correspondents in each conflict area to select organisations which are genuine and effective, and which together present a cross section of types of peacebuilding work. We particularly aim to cover organisations based outside the main centres of population where their work is almost completely invisible. The profiles prepared by local correspondents are edited by interns at Peace Direct and then uploaded onto the Insight on Conflict website, supervised by the Project Manager. Monthly meetings with the Communications team flag stories of potential interest to the media, and proactive marketing is undertaken by the Insight on Conflict team, for example to UN and other international agencies and donors in the region.

The projects

There are currently over 250 initiatives on the site from 12 conflict areas. Two thirds of the organisations featured have no web presence apart from Insight on Conflict. Visit the site here and find out more.

How to choose a dance partner.

One of the common reasons given by ‘outsiders’ for not forming equal partnerships with local people is the difficulty of knowing who to work with.

‘How to choose a dance partner: Insight on Peacebuilding’ is our new publication to tackle that issue.

It is a collection of interviews with people who’ve gone through the process, or observed others doing so and is intended to show how people have found the right partners and the way that working with these partners enables a wholly different kind of peacebuilding to develop.

Click here to download the booklet.