DAI to Share Lessons on Community Mapping at Peacebuilding Event

September 17, 2019

Leaders from DAI’s Center for Secure and Stables States (CS3) will participate in technical sessions and will hold a panel discussion at the annual PeaceCon event October 3–4 in Washington, D.C. PeaceCon is hosted by the Alliance for Peacebuilding, a network of organizations working to end conflict, reduce violence, and build sustainable peace.

DAI’s panel will bring together participants from programs funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the agency’s Office for Transition Initiatives (OTI) to discuss the uses and benefits of real-world social network analysis and community mapping.

“Mapping and analysis helps implementers approach complex issues such as violent extremism, school-based violence, and promoting peaceful and democratic reform by addressing where to begin, who to partner with, and where the potential spoilers are,” says CS3’s Christy Martins. “Across technical areas and geographic contexts, mapping communities and stakeholders can help us produce useful analysis to inform the way forward.”

Panelists include Dr. Erich Sommerfeldt, Associate Professor at the University of Maryland, who recently conducted a social network analysis of Malaysian civil society organizations to shed light on the promoters and inhibitors of reform under the OTI Malaysia Reform Initiative; Catherine Mbindyo, Program Learning Director for USAID’s Niwajibu Wetu (NIWETU) program, which maps the ecosystem of actors in Kenyan communities to understand hyperlocal factors related to violent extremism; Victoria Mendoza, Monitoring and Evaluation Manager of USAID’s Asegurando la Educación (Securing Education) project in Honduras, which uses social asset network mapping to measure schools’ engagement with community actors; and Huibert Odenhuis, who worked with the USAID/OTI Kann Let II program and local partners in Burma to produce a women, peace, and security map.

Martins will lead the panel and draw out lessons learned and potential future applications across technical areas and contexts.