Paving the Way for USAID Support in South Sudan’s Jur River County
Interview of a female candidate underway in Rorcrocdong payam. (Photo: USAID Policy LINK)
‘This is a very unique process which cleared our doubts, and it will build the communities’ confidence in [USAID’s] activities.’
Kicking off its engagement in South Sudan’s Jur River County, USAID, through its global Policy LINK program, has brought together local officials, community leaders, and youth representatives in an unprecedented bid to overcome longstanding divisions, paving the way for new, USAID-led resilience programming.
Spanning South Sudan’s western frontier, Jur River is one of the 13 counties that form USAID’s Resilience Focus Zone—an area spread across five states largely unreached by the international donor community. Coping with “shocks and stressors” like flooding, conflict, and political instability, the county’s more than 200,000 residents have reaped relatively little from the international donor community, which has reserved the bulk of its resources for less volatile areas.
Overcoming that gap will take the buy-in of a broad swath of the county’s population, said Policy LINK Program Lead Jeffrey Campbell. He described how Policy LINK’s team had recruited 27 Jur River County residents from more than 400 applications to serve as “mobilizers” and “enumerators” ahead of an ambitious community resilience mapping effort that will help improve the targeting of USAID’s investments to address vulnerability.
The group’s appointment comes with the buy-in of local representatives from South Sudan’s National Bureau of Statistics, Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, and Labor Office, who—together with local officials known as payam administrators—formed an “observatory team” to oversee the recruitment process. The transparency of that process, said one representative of the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, has helped earn the trust of the local community, paving the way for further engagement with USAID.
“This is a very unique process which cleared our doubts, and it will build the communities’ confidence in [USAID’s] activities,” he said.