Refugee Assistance

From 1999 to 2002, ACI assisted a group of 30 refugees from Sierra Leone by providing housing, food and medical assistance under a program created by FARE ( the Fund for African Relief and Education). With ACI’s help, these young men were able to advance their education, or start small businesses. Others were reunited with their families already in exile in the US or relocated in other parts of the world. Many returned to Sierra Leone where FARE helped them to rebuild their lives after the end of the brutal civil war.

Training in Conflict Transformation for Francophone African Peacebuilders

After realizing that most high quality training for peace builders in West Africa was only available in English, ACI, in collaboration with World Education, the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding at the School for International Training and World Learning, decided to explore the possibility of creating a French version of Karuna’s widely acclaimed CONTACT program for peace builders.

With support from the British Embassy in Dakar, ACI organized a consultative workshop in November 2007, with 26 participants and 23 institutional representatives. The workshop brought together actors operating in the area of social justice at the sub-regional level to discuss the usefulness and eventual creation of a francophone course on peace, conflict resolution and social justice. Participants at the meeting, as well as those canvassed by e-mail in the sub-region, enthusiastically confirmed their interest in defining the parameters for a future course designed to facilitate the collection and exchange of information on social justice and conflict transformation issues and to document and respond to the needs of actors engaged in the promotion of peace in Senegal and throughout West Africa. The summary report from this meeting is available in French.

Following the meeting the task force made up of representatives of each of the partners in this endeavor, continued working on the design and planning of the program.

In March of 2009, ACI and the Karuna Center organized a Training of Trainers in Senegal with assistance from USAID and British Embassy in Dakar. Attending the program were 11 trainers (4 women and 7 men) from five different countries (Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Rwanda, Senegal and Togo) to create a pool of trainers for future conflict transformation trainings. A report of this training of trainers is available in French.

In July, 2009, ACI published a Directory of organizations working in social justice and conflict transformation in West Africa with funding from USAID. This directory can be downloaded here(36 Mo). ACI is currently looking for additional funding to hold its first program for 38 peacebuilders from eight countries in December 2010.