Building Social Cohesion: A Short Guide for Social Cohesion Practitioners in the Sahel

The program's overarching Theory of Change states that if communities are fully involved in the assessment, design, and implementation of community projects, and these projects work to bring diverse communities together to strengthen trust, improve social interactions, facilitate cooperation, and support tolerance, then community resilience to violent extremism will improve. Mercy Corps defines social cohesion as a sense of shared purpose and trust among members of a given group or locality, and the willingness of those group members to engage and cooperate with each other to survive and prosper. The program hypothesizes that strengthening social cohesion is a way to counter violent extremism, as increased social cohesion will make it more difficult for violent extremist organizations to exploit identity differences, inter-group grievances, and a sense of group-based marginalization or isolation to garner new recruits and support for violence. The PEACE program will design small-scale social cohesion projects targeting key drivers of conflicts, including the incursion of violent extremist organizations from neighboring countries, local conflict trends such as banditry and inter-ethnic grievances, and a growing socio-economic crisis, land degradation, and encroachment, and a lack of governance accountability. These projects will be community-driven, respecting quality processes and values that will improve community cohesion. The CATALYSE approach is Mercy Corps' foundational approach in community mobilization, which strengthens community capacity to identify and organize around collective priorities, fosters peaceful, community-led change, and empowers diverse community members to work together to address their common challenges. The CATALYSE approach involves a participatory process of identifying and understanding community issues, developing solutions, and prioritizing what to work on through community-wide projects. Using CATALYSE, Mercy Corps guides communities through a process of identifying and understanding community issues, developing solutions, and prioritizing what to work on through community-wide projects. This approach brings diverse community members, across different age, gender, and identity groups, into a common process to build common understanding and cohesion. Community management structures are created and/or strengthened, drawing from existing community groups or bodies when possible, and projects are developed, led, and monitored by the community itself, in consultation with the broader community. The CATALYSE approach has seven fundamentals, regardless of program objectives or context: being community-led, providing multiple, iterative opportunities for collective action, encouraging active participation, prioritizing learning and capacity building, fostering stronger relationships between local businesses, government, community members, civic groups, and NGOs, and fostering the development of stronger social relationships connecting communities and leading to the creation of networks across traditional divides. The PEACE program will test the impact of these small-scale projects on social cohesion and, ultimately, resilience to violent extremism influence. The program's goal is to build social cohesion through collaboration and collective action, with an emphasis on the quality of the process.