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What We Are Doing

Liberia: Hope for a better Future: Building Collaborative Resilience with Youth

Hope for a better Future is a 5-year USAID-funded locally led peacebuilding and capacity strengthening program designed to boost the resilience of individuals, their families and friends, and their communities to address prolonged social trauma that has inhibited peace and progress in Liberia for more than four decades. Designed to be implemented in three counties and nine locations, Hope for a better Future has three distinct priorities:

 

  1. Peacebuilding – community residents and stakeholders create an environment in which conflict resolution initiatives can flourish.
  2. Conflict Resolution – participants work together to address problems they face.
  3. Psychosocial Health – individuals learn to build emotional control, create dreams for their lives and address psychosocial challenges. Ideally, they then share those skills with others in their communities. 

 

For this 5-year, USAID funded research and capacity strengthening program, TRENDS Global partners with Kennesaw State University, the Kofi Annan Institute for Conflict Transformation (KAICT), the National Coalition for Justice, Peace and Caritas (NCJPC), and Sovereignty Firstis a 5-year USAID-funded locally led peacebuilding and capacity strengthening program designed to boost the resilience of individuals, their families and friends, and their communities to address prolonged social trauma in Liberia.

Download the HOPE Fact Sheet.

Read the Annual Report, October 2023.

Read Biannual Report 1, May 2023.

 

 

Afghanistan: Community Dialogue on Peace and Reconciliation (CDPR)

Funded by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), TRENDS Global, in collaboration with Global Impact Management Consulting (GIMC), conducted a 10-month adaptive peacebuilding project in Afghanistan that effectively brought together conflicting parties to resolve community-level conflicts that, given the public focus on the national-level peace process, had largely been ignored. Our project focus was not to build new local practices but to protect existing ones and to create space for hybrid practices where parties can safely share grievances and collaboratively develop locally tailored roadmaps for reconciliation. Grounded in trauma-informed research and research identifying the conditions necessary for sustainable multiparty agreements, the purpose of the CDPR project was to address tensions at the local level in 10 communities in Bamyan, Herat, Nangarhar, and Parwan provinces of Afghanistan.

 

Read about the Solution Accelerator in Afghanistan.

 

From the Bottom Up: Building Community Resilience and Racial Equity

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation celebrates its 90th Anniversary with Racial Equity 2030, a bold grant challenge to reimagine and build a future where racial equity is realized. TRENDS Global is the lead partner in an innovative proposal to pilot a racial equity project in key cities starting in Atlanta, together with support from Kennesaw State University, the Institute of Multi-Track Diplomacy and Sovereignty First. Peace begins with those living with conflict. Our approach accelerates the capacity of diverse communities to chart their own path to racial equity. [read more]

 

 

Community Dynamics in Clarkston: A Photovoice Project

Led by Birthe Reimers, members of the Clarkston community used Photovoice and took on the roles of photographers and researchers documenting life and relationships in their community, discussing impressions and experiences in a group setting, and developing action strategies.

Until the end of 2015, some of the Photovoice results are being shown at the David J. Sencer CDC Museum currently on display in the "Resettling in America: Georgia's Refugee Communities" exhibit. We strongly encourage you to visit!

Find Out More!

We’re All Together Sensitivity and Inclusion Training
TRENDS Global offers sensitivity and inclusion training to promote interpersonal relations at work, school, home, or anywhere people interact. The best way to manage conflict is to stop it before it starts. One way to achieve this is to work on better understanding ourselves and how we relate to others. Poor communication, ignorance and bias are all problems that affect our ability to interact with people, particularly those who are different than ourselves.
[read more]

Refugee Crisis Simulation
This role-play simulation is designed to develop an understanding of the complexities of global migration and, more specifically, the current refugee crisis in Europe. Since Germany is destination to the largest number of refugees within the European Union, the simulation is set in a small fictional German town where several national and local scenarios unfold. The simulation encourages critical thinking about current policy dilemmas by placing participants in the roles of refugees, public officials, administrators, and concerned citizens. Participants experience some of the strategic and tactical challenges involved in managing and resolving complex policy decisions with impact at the local, national and global levels. [read more]

Case Study Development
TRENDS Global case studies are developed as interactive learning tools that “force” readers into the problem and make them wrestle with the complexities, and uncertainties confronted by the real or fictional decision-makers. A case tells a story and places readers at the center of difficult decisions to illustrate how theory can be useful in addressing real world policy and decision dilemmas. TRENDS Global offers a ran range of training workshops related to case writing, case teaching and simulation or role play exercise development.

Projects in Development

Community Empowerment in Syria
Partnering with the Syria Advisory Center, Sovereignty First and Dumas & Associates, TRENDS Global is developing a Community Empowerment Program (CEP) for Syria designed to prepare trusted leaders from local government, the security and education sectors, academia and civil society for life after conflict. Our CEP training targets individuals with a vested interest to rebuild their country while the conflict is still ongoing, so they can be ready to step in and take responsibility for creating or restoring governance and business structures that will benefit society as a whole and lay the foundation for sustainable conflict transformation, lasting peace and inclusive, wide-ranging development. [read more]

TRENDS Global International Engagement and Study Abroad Program (IESAP)
Internationalization and global engagement are becoming hallmarks for quality education at colleges and universities in the 21st century. TRENDS Global's International Engagement and Study Abroad Program (IESAP) assists colleges and universities in expanding their global footprint and enhancing their portfolio of international experiences. IESAP aims to facilitate international and intercultural encounters with a diverse range of institutions, groups and individuals and provide true immersion experiences for students even during short study abroad programs.

Using TRENDS Global’s demand sensitive engagement approach, all our study abroad programs are based on a comprehensive needs assessment that considers each participating college’s curricular goals and relevance to a specific academic major or college mission as well as job market demands and employment benefits, student interest and partnering capacities. TRENDS Global strives to help colleges and universities develop international programs tailored to their needs and bring together different academic institutions to build programs that attract sustainable student interest across institutions and academic disciplines.

The Clarkston Peacebuilding Project
We are working on establishing a Center for Peacebuilding in Clarkston, GA, a major refugee resettlement hub in metropolitan Atlanta.

Governance and Agricultural Leadership (GOAL) in Africa
We are working to design a program in Eastern Ghana that enables us to build a self-sufficient center teaching Governance and Leadership for the better long-term development of this agriculturally minded region in West Africa.

Refugees, Religion, and Resistance: A Mass Migration Crisis Simulation
We are currently developing a Refugee Simulation Model as a result of the world's major violent conflicts. The role play simulation is designed to develop an understanding of the complexities of global migration and the current refugee crisis enveloping Europe. The simulation encourages critical thinking about current policy dilemmas by placing participants in the roles of refugees, public officials, administrators, and concerned citizens. Participants will experience some of the strategic and tactical challenges involved in managing and resolving complex policy decisions with impact at the local, national and global levels.

Conflict Management Skills & Study Abroad Experiences
With the help of our Global Partnerships, we are working to build study abroad programs that instill the teachings of conflict management all over the world.

TRENDS Global Lecture Series and Symposiums
We invite experts from all specialties to engage in conversations on future conflicts and innovative methods to relieve big and small conflicts globally.

Conflict Management Skill Development
Workshops and training to help spread awareness about alternative dispute resolution and equipt groups with the skills to live and work peacefully.

Project Profile


Governance and Agricultural Leadership

Status: In Development
Principal Investigator: Dr. Volker Franke

Pilot Project for a Research and Training Center for Leadership in the nation of Ghana to strengthen democratic governance and economic self-sufficiency in rural communities in West Africa.

We hope that by funding this project, we can have an immediate impact in an under developed agricultural microeconomy and gain success that can be modeled for similar societies worldwide.

 

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