Thursday Talk: Peace Bubbles in Nigeria with Prince Charles Dickson PhD

[00:00:00] Zander Willoughby: Welcome everyone to this Thursday talk. We’re really excited to have Dr. Prince Charles Dickinson, a ConnexUs influencer for change. And if you don’t know about the Influencer for Change program, head over to ConnexUs to see all of the amazing projects that have been done.

[00:00:16] Prince Charles is joining us today to talk about peace bubbles in Nigeria, and today’s Thursday talk is part of the Evidence and Impact Summit. So I’m gonna hand it to my colleague Emily Long to tell us a bit more.

[00:00:28] Emily Long: Awesome. Thanks Zander. And hi everyone. I’m Emily Long from the ConnexUs team, and I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for participating in the Evidence and Impact Summit this week.

[00:00:39] If you’re not aware, we have been showcasing practitioners who are making a positive impact in their communities with work ranging from youth peace and security to evaluation and learning. And of course, that features Prince Charles himself. We’ve had over 200 registered participants, 3,800 Summit visitors and over 15,000 visits to the Summit homepage this week, which we’re all very excited about.

[00:01:00] So if you haven’t already, please register for the summit so that you receive our culminating report tomorrow and our digest next week. And to connect directly with other participants and or share work of your own. Please be sure to check our ongoing discussion, which Zander will drop in the chat along with the registration link.

[00:01:18] Lastly, we appreciate your support and are really excited for the collaboration opportunities that this creates. So thanks all and take care and look forward to hearing from you, Dr. Prince Charles.

[00:01:27] Prince Charles Dickson: All right good afternoon from this part of the globe and from wherever you are listening to, it’s quite a ha and a pleasure to be sharing thoughts.

[00:01:37] I like to use the phrase sharing, unlearning. So it’s all about sharing and learning, sharing our collective experiences and seeing where we could also learn from other people and the work that we do. So I, I talk, I talk us through as slowly as I can through about three phases of what the peace bubble is all.

[00:01:59] And I take those phases first by putting Nigeria in context for our listeners to understand the Nigeria in context, and also then the work that peace viewers do across Nigeria. And then specifically in Plateau state, non central Nigeria, which is where our organization’s operational base is. So in the last, in the last one, two decades, in fact, since the advent.

[00:02:24] Democratic governance in Nigeria. The level of peacefulness for this country Africa’s most black population has greatly diminished. It’s been largely plagued within security a country that’s got 36 states. And whatever dimensions you are looking at, it’s been a consistent downward trajectory when it comes to safety.

[00:02:49] Cohesion, diversity, interfaith conversation. There’s been a high sense of intolerance. Quite interestingly, wherever the conversation is, whichever narrative you’re listening to the country isn’t as unsafe as some of the indices and some of the reports.

[00:03:07] Has been that safer state in the north. You’ve had places like Jigawa, you’ve had places like Bauchi. Which been relatively safe and in recent times if not for the headsman clashes banditry in places like Niger State, these are places that have been relatively safe. Gombe State in the first quarter of 2022 has been the safest state in Nigeria, and quite interestingly, that’s a state.

[00:03:35] In the northern part of the country. And so when you look at it, the dynamics. Lots of dynamics. And you look at this dynamics, the Igbos in the southeast have been recently accused of either a mastermind in the killings or outrightly killing northerners as a result of separatist movements.

[00:03:56] In other parts of the country, we have groups like the iy Youth Consultative Forum that have also asked the Southeasterners, the ethnic group, The Igbos to leave the north or based on form of violence. And the Yorubas also were given 72 hours notice to leave the north with boycotts in terms of food items from south to north.

[00:04:19] You find out that it’s a country that has p probably almost reached its wits end. And in terms of managing its security apparatus. And with all this, you see a, a country that its security architecture has almost failed. But, in spite of that, you find out that we can take historically that peace walkers.

[00:04:41] Community workers in terms of the peace structure. The peace structure has been able to hold the country to the best of its ability. So the peace bubbles itself comes from the covid, its attempt that originated from the Covid 19 pandemic where we looked at small, local organizations. And the work they do with small local community in maintaining cohesion.

[00:05:07] And this is, this is coming against the backdrop of the analysis I gave about how insecurity has slowly but gradually deconstructed the country and given a weak system as it were. Having said that, so we looked at local community organizations and how they’ve been able to build this piece bubbles.

[00:05:28] Where people could stay and protect themselves in respective of their ethnic differences. Religious differences have these support bubbles have been united by common interest, and in this case, the interest is the need for collective safety and away from the covid 19. For the pandemic, the idea was for them to have collective safety against.

[00:05:53] The usual, what we call the usual suspects, and in this case, political violence. In this case, community violence. As a result of ethnic and ethnic interfaith squabbles, old held grievances across communities. So civil societies and non-governmental organizations in their efforts to strengthen these ungoverned spaces have largely relied on this peace bubbles.

[00:06:19] Find them. I mean, what, how do we know this piece bubbles? So we’ve looked at basically where work is done by local organizations, local community based organizations, where they’ve been able to create an absence of violence or the fear of violence and alongside. Conflict zone. Like when you look at Gombe states which I gave as an example. Gombe State has a proximity to the, war theater that Borno State has become the.

[00:06:50] From Adamawa state, yet it’s been able to create a sense of security. And this is not just about Gombe States, it’s about other states where these has evolved in many parts. What is a capacity? This community, either by a conscious use of early warning and early response systems. And holding themselves together at the heart of a country, a nation that seems to be disintegrating at all paths.

[00:07:19] And for these community bubbles peace bubbles. It’s quite interesting to see the intersection of the dynamics of peace the perception, conflict economy, political, ethnic, and faith indices. In practical terms, what we’ve found out in evaluation is that a, a group can actually be in a peace bubble because they share the same fate.

[00:07:42] So you have a bubble that is largely a Christian bubble of their political affiliation. So people in that community tend to have the same voting party, the same political ideology. It also could be a function of their history. Or again, a shared aim of building community cohesion, which has been there over decades amongst people in that community.

[00:08:06] We also found out in our evaluation that education and poverty also plays a very conscious role in, in our community, particularly really where we work, but across the nation because where we’ve, we’ve seen that. There, there’s a conscious effort at putting basic social infrastructure, those community members such as, for example, early warning, early response, or where you have good public health system or where you have good public or even private school facilities.

[00:08:37] You find out that the level of conflict significantly. Of the functional peace bubbles. So what these local organizations have done is to strengthen community cohesion at this point. And what they’ve done is spread them, duplicate them. So if you have a community piece bubble in location A, there’s a conscious effort at replicating it that. Across various organizations have been able to, as a result of effective work, learning from errors and mistakes over the years, have complemented the efforts of those communities by working to establish social and community cohesion, making sure that localized early warning and response mechanisms are functional in these communities.

[00:09:28] Now, coming down specifically to Plateau State, north- central Nigeria. We, we, we walked across with three organizations and developed two functional peace bubbles in, in what we refer to as city centers. With proximity to where we thought were red flag zones. And these red flag zones are places where at every interval there’s an escalation of intense violence, either as a result of religion, faith, ethnicity, or politics or natural resource conflict dynamics.

[00:10:02] And, and we discovered, Over a period of time the work this organization did in a place called Cornish Soldier and another place called [Dadincoa?], both communities that. Not seen conflict and violence across either religious or ethnic lines had shown that this peace bubbles can work. And one of the things we found out was there was a need for consistency.

[00:10:27] It wasn’t just a one-off six months, eight months projects. No. These were projects that. Simply jumped into one another at the, at the expiration of one project, another organization simply actually built on the successes and the learned lessons of another organization on several locations. We must be very frank.

[00:10:48] The elasticity of these bubbles have been tested. And that’s the exciting part of the development of this peace bubbles. So we’ve not just dwelled on the fact that, oh these are peace bubbles and so we just leave them. No, they’ve been tested over and over. So for example, in, in areas where we see that, The elasticity of the peace construct is across religious lines.

[00:11:13] What was simply done, like in Common Soldier, is to develop a sports for peace activity which we called the Music Plus Sports Equal Peace Initiative which was funded by the Peace Direct Local Action Fund. The idea behind that intervention was to bring Christian a nd Muslims to be part of soccer teams which we call football in the spots.

[00:11:36] And we didn’t give them names of their vicinities or their locals. But we decided to give them names of that were cross-thematic titles, Hope forgiveness unity, this where the, the names we give to each team to be able to build social cohesion at a point where that peace bubble was being tested.

[00:12:00] And so we found out that another thing we did beyond the sports itself, there. There were the intention of the intentionality of targeting economic livelihoods of these community. Now, the sports program, which we hosted with our local partner was to help these communities bond by more than just one factor.

[00:12:20] So it wasn’t just about. Just having to play football or soccer. We infused monthly peace and dialogue forums, which took into cognizance and brought together stakeholders to discuss early warning signs in those areas as as frequent as once every month and subsequently twice every month. And also to bring.

[00:12:43] Community and traditional leaders. Now, here is where it takes a a, a dimension of his own in, in part of our communities in many parts of Nigeria. And in those parts, particularly sometimes you find out that the traditional leaders double as religious leaders and also double as, as cultural leaders in, in a way.

[00:13:07] So you find out that there. A duopoly, sometimes a leader sits on a tripod of several titles, and so it makes the work sometimes complex and sometimes easy. So sometimes you wanna have a conversation. An intervention across fate lines. And then you find out that those faith leaders are also custodians of the traditional system in those communities.

[00:13:31] So it’s about the expertise, the knowledge of the local organization. And one of the things we’ve done is to use a localized system why this is important for us. Over the years, I mean, recent times there’s been that conversation around localized peace building the relationship between I NGOs and local partners in understanding the dynamics of conflicts.

[00:13:56] So that has worked for us because we tend to have conversations with our partners where they are flexible and we want to say, This is what works. So beyond what we refer to as workshop entrepreneurs. The peace spectrum is about workshops and workshops. We’ve looked at new initiatives gains, sports, communication for development, theater women and peace, security engagement, youth engagement in the, in the security spectrum, in getting peace to work in these bubbles.

[00:14:29] Now, what we’ve also done is we are looking at how do we make this bubbles bigger because again, When we say peace bubbles, I’m sure someone wants to find out what are the population sizes of this communities. So can a bubble, if a bubble is saved, 5,000 per community, 3000 community, how do we build on that numbers?

[00:14:51] How do we replicate from community level to local government level to regional levels, state level? How do we do that? And this is. Of course bigger interventions are needed. Replicating at a big spectrum is also considered. But what we believe is that as much as we try to replicate, and when we use the word replicate, put it in in perspective.

[00:15:16] You have a country where. Say for example, 700 and 776 local governments. So if we pick local government by local government, we’re able to replicate looking at the red zones where we have conflagration, and we’re able to impact by duplicating what works in peace bubbles that share proximity with those conflict areas.

[00:15:41] And we believe that by doing that, these peace bubbles simply grow bigger. And they have ripple effects far and wide. In total we, we’ve, we’ve been able to map out 17, now 18 piece bubbles We’ve worked with about. Five CSOs and NGOs in those bubbles. ConnexUs also helped us during the heat of Covid to be able to also bring tech and to manage rumor, which also is within the ambits of misinformation and disinformation in an age of tech, which has considerably heightened tensions across the country.

[00:16:17] We’ve worked with ConnexUs as donor partners, Search for Common Ground. Peace Direct the HWPL Creed in London, and a few other development partners in multiplying, in duplicating this peace bubbles. I, I’ll take a breather for now and and let this long conversation sink in. Thank you very much.

[00:16:41] Zander Willoughby: Thank you Prince Charles. That’s a lot to, to sit with, to think about and really interesting. As people think of their questions, their comments, their their reflections, one thing that I’m curious about Prince Charles is sort of the reaction or the, the impression that people living in these peace bubbles. Has it been mixed? Have people been really excited? Is there skepticism? Sort of curious about their general reactions.

[00:17:04] Prince Charles Dickson: Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s created a sense of excitement and I I tell you that in Plateau Stat, north-central Nigeria, you have, you have a, a lot who’s 19 years old, and at 19 he has never. He’s never, he’s never had an association of some sort of integration with a Muslim if is a Christian. We have Muslims who are almost 20 years and haven’t had any form of integration with the Christian community.

[00:17:33] So we’ve had divided cities put in perspective. So one side of the community is one fate, the other side. And so there is that big wall. And so one of the things this peace bubbles have done is to bring. Both the sides of the divide, not just to what we refer to as what we used to refer to as a neutral venue.

[00:17:54] No, but be being able to get into each other’s communities and exist pretty much coexist and share thoughts and, and in our peace bubble conversations in those communities, you can see the excitement. Why do I say the excitement? You see people who have. Loads and loads of questions about other faiths based on their perception, shared learning, or things they used to think in one of our interventions in, in a particular community, a young, a young Christian, a young, a young Christian boy who was Catholic, said he didn’t know that.

[00:18:29] Muslims also used the beads that cutlets use. He was, he was saying to his father, How come Muslims are using, Do they pray to the same? So you, you, you, you’re pretty much shocked at the level of ignorance, for lack of a better word. And so one of the, and you can see the excitement on their faces, because these were things until now, they didn’t know as a result of the violence that was prevalent before now.

[00:18:55] Zander Willoughby: Thank you, jared says, Thank you for sharing your work with us. Dr. Dickson, could you share how you think the upcoming elections in Nigeria will affect the peace bubbles.

[00:19:05] Prince Charles Dickson: Already, the good thing about the good thing about the peace bubbles is that we’re already seeing an elasticity of the peace bubbles and it’s not exactly new.

[00:19:16] And the reason why we say it’s not exactly new is that we can understand the perspective to which elections are conducted, conducted in an Nigerian context. So what we’ve done, Sizeable amount of the interventions moving forward have actually dwelled on voters education. The electoral processes campaigns are going on around and across conversations centered on automatic area of hate, speech, inflammatory and dangerous speeches around the election period.

[00:19:48] So there’s, there’s, there’s. There’s been a fixation of all interventions get towards that in the, in the, in the peace bubbles. So we’re trying to make them understand that there’s this local, local palace that says Election, Not war. Election, nubi fights, which loosely translates to the fact that the elections don’t have to be war.

[00:20:07] And of course, the good thing about the bubbles is those in this bubbles are guiding their communities. So they’re, they’re really, really conscious of the. That the elections can have, and they’re asking for interventions to help them view their elector electoral intervention knowledge at this point. Of course, the good thing about the elections in Nigeria is that it, it provides ample time for interventions to help sequel to the elections proper.

[00:20:36] Hmm.

[00:20:37] Zander Willoughby: I’d be really curious to sit into tho those convers. This must be fascinating within the peace bubbles, especially leading up to the elections.

[00:20:44] We have another question from Heli. Thank you a lot for the presentation. Peace bubbles are wonderful. One question, How can you rate the effectiveness of peace bubbles comparing to other means to teach peace and communities?

[00:20:57] Prince Charles Dickson: Well one of the things we’ve done is for the peace bubbles with giving ownership.

[00:21:03] So the community own it, like we said, more like the Covid 19 bubble. So they own it. They know what the issues are, they know what they are. They, the early one in Steins are, they know what the contestations in every community. And so that has given it a semblance of a very strong localization. Unlike the pro, the, the what used to be the practice before now where by and large programs were pretty much in terms of programming programs were just lumped on CSOs.

[00:21:35] Maybe they walked in some other climb. There are no considerations of whether they’re gonna walk here or not. In as much as it’s a peace intervention, you just carried it out. The donor provided the funds. But the idea for the peace bubbles are strictly localization. The, the interventions, the programs are all very local in nature.

[00:21:56] And the languaging, the, the, the participation, the, the, the, the, the resource that comes in, the resource persons, the expertise are all within those local communities.

[00:22:09] Zander Willoughby: Thank you. Sarra, do you wanna ask your question?

[00:22:11] Sarra: Yes. Hello. Thank you so much. This is amazing and inspiring. I was wondering if also you have any initiative where you use technology and social media as we have a current initiative to showcase work of peacebuilding organization across the world that use technology in social media. I would be interested to know if you use any of these tools.

[00:22:33] Thank you so much.

[00:22:34] Prince Charles Dickson: Yes news social media handles are very, very active and beyond its activities. One of the things we’ve done for the local gov- community system in this bubbles is also to enhance the local knowledge in the use of technology. For example, in the early warning, Early response system, how community women at very local level can use mobile phones to be part of a reporting system.

[00:23:03] We, we conducted a project in both Bayway and then we replicated it through the social influencer project of ConnexUs where WhatsApp groups are empowered to be able to act as an EWER and as a an economic livelihood project using technology. And then we’ve also received that training from Bureau of Peace, who is a partner with us in helping some of this peace bubbles to understand the role that social media can play.

[00:23:33] And why this is also important for us is that in our, in our evolving nature, in most of this local Communities. One thing we’ve discovered is there’s a whole lot of, like I said earlier, misinformation, disinformation, rumors that trigger a whole lot of conflict. So it’s things like learning how to fight fake news in the peace spectrum, discovering deep fakes, even at that local level. Things we’ve been able to pass on to this peace bubbles.

[00:24:04] Zander Willoughby: Thank you. Victor, do you have a question?

[00:24:06] Victor: Yes, I do. Good evening.

[00:24:09] Prince Charles Dickson: Good evening.

[00:24:10] Victor: Yes. Dr. Dickson I was wondering if there are, say, certain topics that, you know, prove contentious or maybe they tend to say threaten. The peace within the peace bubbles, Like say, when you are discussing some of these topics, would you say there are certain things that you know that tend to cause more friction?

[00:24:32] And then I would like to know if generally you know, when people participate in these peace bubbles, are they generally coming with the, you know, the disposition of, okay, we, we just want this thing to work out? Or do you, do you tend to find more hostile approach? The, the experiences vary.

[00:24:50] Prince Charles Dickson: Like our organization interestingly bears a local name ta, which loosely means to dialogue at the round table. And we, we, we give, the first impression is it’s not a win win and it’s. Like our MOTU says, Voices, connection and action. First of all, we want people to talk. And in in them talking, they’re gonna say very tough stuff, the hard stuff.

[00:25:18] That it’s not like a political conversation where there are no go areas. No. We allow them talk, we allow them vent. In some of our conversations we have we have psychosocial experts that deal with trauma. We have religious experts in terms of interfaith dialogue, so they sit to talk about it and.

[00:25:40] The idea is to talk and talk and talk and talk again. If we don’t get it right the first time, there’s nothing that says we can try again. And there is no imposition. And I think this is, this is understandable given the spectrum of the peacebuilding- development sector, where every report and output input.

[00:26:02] Or get towards successes? No. For us, the idea between shared learning and sharing is we’re not afraid to fail. So on a lighter note, we’ve seen where someone picks up a, a chair at, at, at an intervention and says, No, no, no, no. That that’s not correct. He didn’t like the way he was addressed. I, I I’ll give a very quick one.

[00:26:25] I’m already smiling. We had an intervention, an interfaith intervention in a bubble, and the Christians were complaining that the Muslims had prayed three times already and it was disrupting the program, you know, and the Muslims were like, but they had to pray five times. And then the Christians were like, Okay, tell us why you had to pray five times.

[00:26:50] And then one of the Christians now said, Okay, we all listen. Now, that wasn’t a comfortable conversation, but the idea was to listen and learn because I, What we’ve discovered is there’s a lot of information out there in this, in some of the safer, for example, in this case, an interfaith conflict that you can’t verify.

[00:27:11] These are information that. Become almost naturally true to everybody when it’s not true. So you are asking a, a follow Muslim. Is it true that when I kill, I get a virgin and they’re like, No, it’s not anywhere. So there’s a lot of ignorance and so if you don’t have conversations around the tough topic topics, then you probably wouldn’t be achieving much.

[00:27:34] So yes, we do. We do. And like I said, These are conversations that are pushed by the community themselves, so they’re not just led to it.

[00:27:46] Victor: I would like to, I would just like to ask how, if somebody, how can somebody say, Participate. How can someone help like an individual, I’m not an organization or anything.

[00:27:56] How can I help participate? You know, encourage or support the peace bubbles? What are the available opportunities?

[00:28:04] Prince Charles Dickson: Now what we do, what we do is we often tell people that, of course, the piece. Building community is one large community that has become so much about donor funding and donor. So what we normally do is we say to people, You don’t have to be that big donor.

[00:28:23] Sometimes you’re providing. Say, for example, technology and how do you provide technology in a community? All you could probably do is provide data for that community to have an effective early warning, early response system in a community. All we’re saying is, Could you help us get books, children to be in school?

[00:28:42] And then you use the conflict to the various menu. That’s what asking. You know, so, and then through our, our social handles, through our our website, you are able to look at what we do and say, Okay, I can be part of this. For example, we have we have movie, we have movie showings where in our last movie showings, we, we brought a community together and we showed them Hotel Rwanda and they, and after that we had a conversation around the implication of ethnic.

[00:29:12] Now, for example, in that, in that intervention, all we probably needed was just logistics. A piece of cake, a drink for all the community. So we try to do it at that very local level. So we’re not, we’re not asking for 50 billion or million dollars. No, not at all. Not at.

[00:29:31] Zander Willoughby: Thank you Victor and Dr. Prince Charles Wani I’ll give you the last question. If you’d like to unmute Wani from South Sudan.

[00:29:39] Wani: Yeah, thank you Doctor, for the presentation. I think this is a very, You know creative idea in terms of contributing to this building work the way I look at it, I don’t know if there are any maybe report. Mean, what I could get from your side cause. Maybe certain things can work here in South Sudan. Yeah, no worries. I’m really, really happy to see this working out in the area. Thank you so much.

[00:30:08] Prince Charles Dickson: Thank you very, very much.

[00:30:10] Zander Willoughby: Actually, we have two more questions on the chat, so I think we’ll, we’ll have them both. Ask questions and then well, if you can put the, the answer together to both of them. Afeefa do you wanna ask your question?

[00:30:22] Afeefa: Sure. Thank you. This is really, really interesting. I, I have a question about the role of women in these peace bubbles.

[00:30:29] I’ve just been looking at the pictures and been noticing. It’s been primarily sort of a male space, at least from the pictures themselves. And I understand the, the gender dynamics in, in certain, you know, certain areas in Nigeria. But I wanted to see if you could talk more about the women and women’s leadership with, and, and how are women centered in these conversations, especially in conversations that are not, You know, not parti that are not focused on issues that are traditionally, and I have, I’m doing air quotes right now, women’s issues, also air quotes.

[00:31:01] Because there’s always that tendency to be like, Oh, you wanna talk about health, or you wanna talk about family planning, or you wanna talk about, you know you know, schooling those are issues that women. You know, quote unquote be involved in versus the hard, the hard questions. The political issues.

[00:31:17] The ethnic issues. So I was wondering if you could talk a bit about that. Thank you.

[00:31:21] Prince Charles Dickson: Yeah. What we’ve done and, and a very quick apologize about the, the, the slides you get to see, it wasn’t intentional. We’re, we’re, we’re currently working with the UN women. On the phase two of the program and women peace and security in Nigeria and what we’ve done is to scale that and put it at the local level into this community bubbles.

[00:31:42] And quite interestingly, we’ve also delved into what you consider and maybe considered the hard questions. So in the last few, in fact, two, three years, we’ve had for the first time in a place called bci, a state called bci. We have a woman. In the traditional cancel that that couldn’t have happened. That wouldn’t have happened.

[00:32:04] And even when it happened, it was a silent voice. So what we’ve now done is to have ha a woman part of that traditional cancel. That’s an improvement. That has also seen a replication in plot states. States precisely about three cases now. Now at the heart of the economic sustainable livelihood programs, interestingly are.

[00:32:28] Men are not part, are hardly part of the livelihood programs because we found out in these bubbles the women play a very strong role different from the men because the, the youths that are often than not, the instruments of this conflict tend to actually listen to either their mothers, their aunties. So the women play a strong role.

[00:32:53] So what we’ve done is. Create a small spectrum of W Ps that has CSOs, NGOs within the Women P security architecture, working solely in that dynamics. And when we say community peace bubbles, we also try to understand the level of economic holds in those communities. And we’ve come to discover that women actually have a whole lot of economic strengths from their pet trade.

[00:33:21] And so there is nohow to a large extent that these bubbles are successful without the input of those women. In fact in, in being examine laia, it was only an all women piece intervention group was used to build the bubbles.

[00:33:37] Afeefa: Thank you. Thank you for that. That’s very, very helpful.

[00:33:40] Zander Willoughby: Thank you for the question. All of the questions that everybody has submitted throughout the session. Prince Charles, I’ll, I’ll give you the last word, but there are a few more questions in the chat about how marginalized communities are able to enter and participate. The, the peace bubbles. So if you could touch on that and then sort of give us your, your, your parting thoughts.

[00:33:59] Prince Charles Dickson: What we’ve done increasingly marginalized communities are, are often than not, almost not taught about from experience we’ve seen that programs are created, for example, not just speaking about the community bubbles, but beyond that, where people. Have to be reminded that there are people with disabilities to take into cognizance.

[00:34:23] You just create a program and nobody’s talking about it. In these communities as a result of conflict centered around natural resources, we’re forced to. As a matter of policy to discuss, say for example, equitable assets to affordable clean energy, sustainable food systems, resilience to climate change and disasters, inclusive and equitable human development across these so displaced societies, these displaced communities.

[00:34:53] These displaced sections of the public in this peace bubbles. And the reason we do that is again, these bubbles don’t exist outside either normative policy and institutional frameworks. So you can create the best framework to have this peace bubbles work. But if they don’t sit within the ambi of adequate laws and policies in.

[00:35:15] Either at state level, at national level to, for example, maybe promote gender equality and empowerment of women and girls. The peace bubbles ultimately collapses because you don’t have such, there’s, you don’t have such legal and policy framework or their gaps in those policy and, and legal frameworks.

[00:35:34] So it’s, it’s pretty much very important. And then our programmatic actions. Plays a very strong role. You know, we look at what are the key challenges and opportunities in, say, for example, promoting women’s effective participation in leadership and politics and governance in the community spaces.

[00:35:54] And like one of the question asked, where’s the place of a woman? So, so, so if you’re creating a community leadership system where there are no women, then you don’t actually have the buy-in of that gender and how do you breach these gaps in terms of there’s a fallout of conflict. So there’s a lot of sensitivity in the conversation and we keep wanting to learn. We’re not afraid to fail. These are ongoing conversations and ongoing learning. And in the context of this conversation, it’s about learning also for us.

[00:36:26] Zander Willoughby: Perfect. Thank you Prince Charles Dickinson for especially ending on a note about shared learning as we sit on a ConnexUs Thursday talk in the midst of the Evidence and Impact Summit. It was really great to have you. We look forward to continuing to engage to further Thursday talks to continuing this conversation and learning more about these projects.

[00:36:46] Thanks again for joining.

[00:36:47] Prince Charles Dickson: Thank you very much, Zander. Thank you everybody.

[00:36:49] Zander Willoughby: Thank you.