Conflict Mitigation Specialist Shannon Bruder Speaks about New IREX Program in Rwanda

In honor of Conflict Resolution Day 2010 this Thursday, IREX is launching a new conflict mitigation program! This month, IREX is beginning the USAID/IREX Youth for Change: Building Peace in Rwandan Communities (Y4C) project. I met with Shannon Bruder, who will be managing the project, to get more information about the project’s goals and the current situation in Rwanda.
 

Can you give us a brief overview of the Youth for Change project?

The program will first identify five community-based organizations that will be key partners, and they will recruit 100 youth leaders from five target regions in Rwanda. Youth leaders will be a diverse group from various backgrounds – ethnic, gender, socioeconomic, urban and rural, etc. They will get training in leadership, management, and technical skills, especially in the areas of conflict mitigation and conflict resolution. The incentive to get youth to participate is that will gain leadership skills that will help their career prospects, but they will also develop positive relationships with peers that they wouldn’t have previous opportunities to interact with. This will help youth leaders overcome stereotypes and misconceptions about the “other.” Afterwards, they will go back to their communities to share experiences and help their communities develop small grant projects to address issues of common concern. This will help members of the community from different backgrounds to work together.

Why do you think this type of program is a good approach for Rwanda?

I think it’s a good approach because the issue of ethnicity is so sensitive in Rwanda that any program that attempts to work on that explicitly would not succeed. This program gets around that issue by bringing people that happen to be from different backgrounds together for another purpose, thereby increasing their mutual understanding and debunking stereotypes.

How does this program add new innovations to what has already been done?

The focus on youth is really important – youth make up half the Rwandan population, but their voices aren’t heard because it’s a very hierarchical society. This program will help youth demonstrate to their communities that they can play a positive role in the future of the country. It’s also really helpful to work with youth on this program since youth were young or potentially not born when the genocide happened, so their negative perceptions and stereotypes are less deeply ingrained, making them more malleable and more willing to develop relationships with peers from other backgrounds. Also, one of the keys to the program is providing funding for tangible, small grant projects as an incentive to bring people together who wouldn’t normally cooperate. You can bring people together for conflict resolution training until you’re blue in the face, but if you don’t give them an opportunity to practice the new skills, you won’t have an effective program.

What is the one result to come out of the program that you’re most excited about?

I am looking forward to seeing the changes in youth attitudes about peers from other backgrounds as a result of working together toward common goals and forming positive relationships. This has worked really well in other IREX projects, such as the Youth Initiative for the Promotion of Peace in the North Caucuses (YIPP) program and the Youth Community Empowerment Program (YCEP) in Lebanon, so hopefully it will also happen in Rwanda.

Katie Sheketoff is a Program Officer at IREX.