Communities Building Peace Together Quarterly Report FY19Q1

The project began in 2019 with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The CBPT consortium consists of four partner organizations, including Creative Associates International, Inc., Save the Children, and others. Initial start-up activities focused on planning, community selection, and relationship building. A work planning workshop was held in Quetzaltenango from November 13-16, 2018, to develop the FY2019 workplan and corresponding annexes. Representatives from all four consortium partners participated in the workshop, which was successful in constructing a shared project vision. Municipal and community selection was also a major activity during the first quarter of FY19. The CBPT team updated the municipal selection tool, which incorporates three scales: conflict typology and vulnerability, political and social openness, and resilience factors. The team conducted the final round of municipal visits, dividing into six groups to introduce themselves and present formal letters requesting meetings with municipal authorities. Collaboration with the Impact Evaluation (IE) team was another key activity during the first quarter. The CBPT team, USAID, and NORC held bi-weekly calls to discuss the IE and held a three-day workshop in Quetzaltenango from December 11-13 to discuss the difference between the CBPT core and CBPT+ interventions, geographic/community selection process, and incorporation of Do No Harm principles in project implementation and the IE. The community implementation team was also established during the first quarter. Save the Children continued the process of recruiting and hiring the community implementation team, including two community supervisors and seven community facilitators. The recruitment process for the next round of community facilitators began in December, with a focus on identifying candidates that speak Mam, K'iche, or Ixil. Institutional strengthening was another key activity during the first quarter. The Deputy Chief of Party for Institutional Strengthening held initial meetings with government officials and non-government actors in the target departments of Quetzaltenango, Quiché, San Marcos, and Totonicapán, as well as in Guatemala City. The purpose of the visits was to begin to understand the departmental level context, present the CBPT project to key actors, and identify the needs of key Government of Guatemala institutions and non-governmental actors involved in preventing and responding to social conflict. The CBPT team identified several contextual challenges that will likely present themselves in the upcoming quarters, including the ongoing political and constitutional crises related to the conflict between the Guatemalan government and CICIG. The team will need to focus on communicating, both at the local and national levels, that the project is a 5-year project and that while the team recognizes the importance of the electoral process, the project seeks to remain neutral and to mitigate long-term conflict and violence at the community and municipal levels. Given that CBPT is in the geographic selection phase, the project has no indicator data to report for this quarter. Once the indicators have been finalized and implementation has started, CBPT will begin reporting project indicator data, likely in FY19Q4. The CBPT project aims to address social conflict and promote peace at the community and municipal levels in Guatemala, and the first quarter of FY19 laid the groundwork for this effort.