Specific objectives include:
The overall project objective is to strengthen community resilience to violent conflicts among communities in Narok County.
- Functioning community networks for violent conflict early warning and early response
- Community organizations leaders have increased their capacity to support community members incoping with stress/trauma
- Diversified sources of livelihoods for the vulnerable youths in the targeted areasTo achieve the above objectives, the project sought :
To contribute to conflict prevention; recovery from conflicts; and transformation of conflicts through the use of the ICT integrated Early Warning and Early Response to conflicts in the target areas.
To enhance security – community relations through advocacy campaigns, awareness creation, inter-community/police interactive forums and awareness creation on community policing policy. To support individuals, households, and communities in recovery from conflicts by working with community leaders, religious leaders and community based organizations in building capacities for Psycho-social support and trauma healing in post-conflict situations.
To enhance capacity strengthening of the religious leaders, community professionals, youth leaders and CBOs leaders, for effective reach out to the vulnerable, traumatized groups of individuals and households as redress support and psycho-social support and healing from trauma. To deepen inter and intra-community reconciliation through establishment of community dialogues targeting the women, youth, elders, and school going children.
accountability and transparency. We believe in the innate worth of our beneficiaries, their ability to redefine their own destiny and work towards their achievement.
Achievements:
Narok peace project successfully provided ability of people to voluntarily organize themselves and respond quickly to issues which have tremendously improved, therefore sustaining life during violent conflicts. Community resilience principles of self-organization, collaboration and responsiveness have been embraced by the community. Relationship between the two warring clans have been restored. This is evidenced by the support and cooperation provided by the general community. Members from both clans are traversing the entire community without fear or suspicion. The community members in the project target area have developed a sense of ownership to the project. This is evident by the way they speak about its effectiveness in de-escalation of conflicts and realization of resilience in coping with trauma caused by the perennial conflict and violence. Businesses in various markets have been opened and the youth, women and men from both clans are happily conducting their business activities without interference, unlike before where tension was the order of the day and some market places were a no go zones by rival clans. Interaction among the members of the two clans have improved. This is witnessed during communal traditional ceremonies being attended by both clans This change has been realized through effective implementation of the project activities using community networks such as the trained TOTs, who became peace champions,
TOT paralegals, TOTs lobbying and advocacy groups and TOTs psychosocial support counsellors. A very good coordination with the state and non-state stakeholders as well as the local FPFK churches was built and this has provided a stable platform for the implementation of the project objectives.
The involvement of women in conflict management has increased advocacy campaigns towards community resilience for peace. This has been achieved through women CBOs, which have been effectively conducting peace dialogues across the target community. At least 4 Market places which were affected by the conflicts and closed are now opened for both clans where they now freely conduct their businesses peacefully.
Development of joint peaceful prayers campaigns in various religious institutions has to a large extent improved the relationship between the warring clans and communities. FPFK has spearheaded this process through conducting monthly fellowships for religious leaders. The church has provided a safe platform for the project’s implementation. This has built trust and confidence by the community and they were able to support the project to achieve its objective.
FPFK has engaged state organizations such as National Cohesion Integration Commission (NCIC) for training and capacity building for conflict resolution mechanisms with TOTs, community peace champions and paralegals. These groups were able to conduct community dialogues and as a result of their engagement over a two hundred and 60 cases were resolved and peace was restored.
In order to bring sustainable resilience for peace the project embraced a serious approach of provision of psychosocial support for stress and trauma healing among the community members. The project in collaboration with other FPFK projects, successfully managed to conduct an exchange learning visit to Rwanda, where over 30 FPFK participants working in projects participated. The purpose of this visit was to provide an opportunity for community members and leaders to acquire practical knowledge, skills and learning on trauma healing as an important component in peace projects to be able to provide psycho support to victims of violence. This is believed to be an effective process aimed at achieving some specific results to help the victims of violence recover and heal from trauma. This is an exchange learning visit to Rwanda purposely selected because of their historical experience of the genocide against the Tutsi in 1994 cause during violent conflicts and recovery strategy.
This visit was meant to support the target community through counselling, motivating and helping individuals and the community to heal the psychological wounds and rebuild social structures after a period of violence and conflicts that has resulted to great loss of lives and properties. This will help change people into active survivors rather than passive victims and therefore building community resilience among the victims of violence. Healing from trauma caused by conflicts will enable the community members to accept the outcome of conflicts and find the best way to adopt good practices and resume back to normal life. FPFK staff gladly providing community service by building a house of one of the victims of genocide in Rwanda