Garowe, Puntland – Somali Family Services led a two-day training on grassroots mobilization strategies for 59 village leaders on June 17-18, 2012. Participants learned about the history and techniques of successful grassroots campaigns, and collaborated on effective mobilization strategies for pressing issues facing their communities, including clean water access, education, and police corruption. Somali Family Services’ Faysal Maatan and Dylan Groves led the workshop.Somali Family Services conducted the workshop as part of its ongoing program on democracy and civil society building in Puntland in partnership with the National Endowment for Democracy.

The joint SFS-NED program builds the capacity of the seven Neighborhood Committees in Puntland’s capital city, Garowe. Neighborhood Committees By formalizing traditional informal village governance structures, Somali Family Services empowers civil society to actively engage and legitimize efforts to build a stable democracy in Puntland. The grassroots mobilization workshop aimed to train neighborhood committees in listening to the needs of their constituents, prioritizing key issues, and building effective social and political movements to demand substantive reforms from government officials.

Participants, including over 35 women leaders and 25 representing the youth, spoke passionately about the need to better integrate marginalized populations, including internally displaced people, the elderly and the disabled, in Puntland’s political institutions and discourse. Breaking into teams, they developed mobilization strategies for their most pressing community needs, and encouraged their collaborators to act on proposed reforms.

The workshop included presentations from SFS executive director Abdurashid Ali and SFS Civil Society adviser Dylan W. Groves. The bulk of the training involved small group deliberation and dialogue on strategies for increasing government accountability and service provision. With Puntland’s first open and democratic elections schedule for 2014, participants were eager to learn, discuss and apply techniques for political empowerment.

Somali Family Services is a non-governmental organization dedicated to fostering a peaceful and democratic Somalia through support of civil society, women, youth and other marginalized groups

Learn more about SFS’ democracy and governance programs

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