Liberian communities

July 2022, we began a 5-year program in Liberia that aims to increase the psychosocial and collaborative capacity of young people and their communities. At present we are working with 7 communities in 6 towns.

Our partners are:

• The National Commission for Peace, Justice and Caritas

• The University of Liberia Kofi Annan Institute for Conflict Transformation

• TRENDS Global

• Kennesaw State University

• USAID

Here’s a fact sheet about the program:

Here is a link to the program website.

Below is a description of what Sovereignty First is doing in Liberia, why we are there, how we are working, and an update on the progress of the program.

What

Sovereignty First’s processes help communities, towns and states to stabilize, rebuild and develop. We do this through introducing processes that increase social inclusion, common understanding, trust and self-governance. In Liberia, we are beginning with individuals, then helping build teams, then systemically engaging communities, and finally systemically engaging towns.

Why

When societies are not stable and developing they are a threat to their own citizens and to their neighboring countries. Unstable countries, especially those caught in poverty, generate violence and immigration, are vulnerable to having their natural resources extracted in ways that damage the society and the physical environment, and are havens for local, regional and international terrorist organizations.

How we learn

Sovereignty First works closely with local partner organizations. We take the time to properly embed our processes. We solicit feedback from our partners, project participants and local leaders continuously. With our American partners we prepare, listen, analyze, and run small pilot projects with our local partners, and adapt our approach at the beginning of a project to find appropriate entry points. We measure each of our interventions for behavior changes in the individuals, groups, communities and towns with whom we are sharing our processes. We continue to adapt over months and years as our local partners assume implementation responsibilities for the project, and as local communities assume ownership of the processes we are sharing with them.    

State of the program

In the fall of 2022, the program began in 1 town in Nimba County. After 2 years we expanded into 4 towns in 2 counties, Nimba and Grand Gedeh. After much trial and error, we found that in Liberia the community (in Liberia, communities are typically partially self-governing neighborhoods of 500-1000 residents) to be the key societal unit around and with which to share our processes. Today we are working in 7 communities. We expect to be working in over 30 communities within the year. 

So far, we have introduced two processes in Liberia. The first (“Safe Spaces”) is focused on individuals. It is a set of exercises that participants can practice to strengthen their psychosocial capacities, in particular resilience, agency and the ability to collaborate with others. Since 2022 we have led over 1000 participants through a 50-hour, 5-week training, and those participants have shared the exercises with other thousands of Liberians. We are conducting pre- and post-tests for Safe Spaces. The results so far are positive. Once they are published, we’ll add a link to them here.

At the beginning of 2024 we began a pilot of our second process (“Youth Dialogues”), in which we train small teams of young adults to envision a “dream project,” plan the project, and craft an agreement of how they will manage the project together as a team through thick and thin. This year we’ve led over 40 young adults through three 40-hour, 4-week trainings. We are now learning how to best track and support the teams with their dream projects over time. These dream projects will be a significant result that should be obvious and measurable by anyone. Within a year, we should have publishable results for them. Once they are published, we’ll add a link to them here.

The third process (“Community Accelerators”) begins in 2025, to be followed by the fourth and final process (“Solution Accelerators”) in 2026.

A final note: Though we do not pay residents to participate in our processes, interest and participation continue to grow.