Policy LINK Convening Power Noted in New South Sudan Report
Photo: Policy LINK
Policy LINK demonstrated its convening power, bringing together a broad range of local stakeholders to build consensus and lay the groundwork for their engagement with other USAID implementing partners.
USAID/South Sudan’s third-party monitoring project has given high marks to Policy LINK for its engagement of local communities in Jur River — one of 13 counties that form USAID’s Resilience Focus Zone in the country.
The feedback, part of a report submitted last month by the USAID Monitoring, Evaluation, and Support Project (MESP), followed a pair of November 2021 “sense-making” workshops facilitated by Policy LINK, at which MESP representatives observed “high participation of groups such as women, youth, community leaders, and the private sector” from two payams in Jur River. A payam is an administrative division, representing at least 25,000 people, within a county.
At the workshops, Policy LINK demonstrated its convening power, bringing together a broad range of local stakeholders to build consensus and lay the groundwork for their engagement with other USAID implementing partners. That shared agenda, according to the MESP report, is all the more important given ongoing tensions in the area. “Both Rocrocdong and Kuajiena payams of Jur River have experienced violence in the recent past,” wrote the MESP observers, “and it is likely that such violence may reoccur.”
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.
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Read more about how Policy LINK is laying the groundwork for USAID engagement in Jur River here.