Community Leaders Set to Take Digital ‘Stage’
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With support from Policy LINK, community representatives from four counties in South Sudan are set to present their priorities for aid programming directly to donors and other agencies that, together, form the Partnership for Recovery and Resilience. The PfRR’s Digital Annual Learning Forum will take place on April 14 and 15, 2021.
Their priorities correspond to the four pillars for resilience programming: rebuilding trust in people and institutions, restoring access to basic service, strengthening productive capacities, and nurturing effective partnerships.
Among the delegates will be community members from Aweil, Torit, Wau, and Yambio, where Policy LINK has led a months-long effort to survey and convene local leaders, including through a series of town halls, face-to-face meetings, and a three-day orientation workshop. Each community’s priority list was then “sense-checked” with USAID and other donor implementing partners through face-to-face meetings attended by 183 people across the four counties.
The resulting priorities correspond to the PfRR’s four pillars for resilience programming: rebuilding trust in people and institutions, restoring access to basic service, strengthening productive capacities, and nurturing effective partnerships. With a clear sense of their priorities for each pillar and experience presenting them to implementing partners of the various donors working in each county, the counties’ delegates will be well-placed to help drive the agenda for the PfRR’s work in the coming year.
This kind of locally-led development is a key principle of Policy LINK’s work, positioning the program to serve as “backbone” to the multi-donor partnership’s activities in rural areas. The face-to-face meetings were organized with the PfRR’s Area Reference Groups, which include representatives of UN agencies and international NGOs. The entire process, which wrapped up on April 9, was organized with the PfRR’s Area Reference Groups, which include representatives of UN agencies and international NGOs.