Developing Participatory Evaluations for Countering Violent Extremism

The paper defines participatory evaluation of CVE as a process by which an implementer or researcher engages various stakeholders to design some of the indicators that they will use as proxy indicators to measure violent extremism. Given cross-contextual variation of violent extremism (VE) dynamics, a participatory approach could clear practical value. How local people experience…

Stop, Look, and Listen! Preventing Recruitment of Youth into Illicit Activities in Southern Colombia

This post originally appeared on Harvard’s Center for International Development’s Building State Capability program’s blog. The authors successfully completed the 15-week Practice of Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation online course. This is their story. As development practitioners, we tend to rush in with solutions to deal with complex problems. We impose so-called best practices without digging…

Manisha Aryal

Manisha Aryal is a development practitioner with more than 25 years of experience in designing and implementing ICT-enabled programs globally. In her current role as the Global Practice Lead for Digital Development, she spearheads the company’s digital development strategy, providing thought leadership and hands-on support to projects and programs that innovate with technology solutions. Manisha also…

Closing Economic and Community Divides in Pankisi

The Pankisi Valley in Georgia’s Kakheti region is disconnected religiously, geographically, politically, and socially from the rest of Georgia, which makes the mostly Muslim Kist population feel excluded from the country’s mainstream. The USAID Community Links Activity in Georgia forges linkages among people of different age groups and religious affiliations within Pankisi, building social cohesion…

Best of the Blog 2018

Check out our countdown to the most popular posts from 2018:* 10. Making Development Dollars Go Further By Spencer Parsons and Gabriel Gonzalez-Kreisberg It will require an extra $2.5 trillion to achieve the SDGs. Can the development community find creative ways to fill that gap? 9. How Can Countries Pay for Their Health Systems? Supply Chains Might…

How to Design Social and Behavior Change Communications for Countering Violent Extremism: A Multi-Sectoral Approach

This post originally appeared in the Council of International Development Companies’  (CIDC) Thought Leadership Compendium.  Violent extremism’s threat to democracy and citizens’ security is growing and changing faster than domestic and international constituencies’ ability to contain it. Countering violent extremism (CVE) experts are urgently searching for effective means to prevent more people from embracing violent…

Enhancing Stability in Somalia

Somalia has suffered decades of conflict and weak transitional governments, triggered by the collapse of its central government in 1991. These conditions undermine government accountability and hinder trust in state authorities. Since 2012, Somalia has made some progress toward overcoming these challenges, but without local accountability and strong legislative processes, stability remains a distant reality.…

What Works to Prevent Violence Among Youth?

What works in preventing and reducing violence among youth? This report draws on the global evidence base of evaluations of existing interventions designed to reduce or prevent violence and identifies those with the greatest evidence of effectiveness. We find six types of interventions for which there is strong evidence of effectiveness in preventing at-risk individuals…

Determining the ‘How’ with Stabilization

The number of civilian deaths due to violent conflict more than tripled since 2007 — according to the World Bank and the United Nations’ Pathways for Peace study — and an estimated 65.6 million people have been displaced from their homes, largely due to conflict. The study also notes that the cost of responding to…

High-Impact Practices: How to Design Social and Behavior Change Communications for Countering Violent Extremism

Violent extremism’s threat to democracy and citizens’ security is growing and changing faster than domestic and international constituencies’ ability to contain it. Countering violent extremism (CVE) experts are urgently searching for effective means both to prevent more people from embracing violent extremism and to prompt current violent extremists to abandon their efforts. Messaging and media…

Increasing Resiliency in the Face of Disaster: Four Best Practices

As Category 4 Hurricane Florence barreled toward the Southeast of the United States last week, preliminary damage estimates indicated 758,000 homes across three states could be impacted. Reconstruction costs were estimated at $170.2 billion. Despite the dire forecast and its associated challenges, however, the United States is one of the countries most prepared to respond…