Arigatou International – End Child Poverty in collaboration with the Uzalendo Afrika Initiative and Elim Fellowship Church, Nyali – Mombasa organised a community dialogue between 28th – 29th November; bringing together over 50 diverse participants/stakeholders in the community. They included; youth, women, religious leaders and government officials. Community dialogues is a critical lifeline to promoting peace as they provide the perfect avenues for partnerships between different actors within the community.

Acknowledging that peacebuilding out- comes do not follow a linear pathway of change, the community dialogue was positioned to provide an opportunity for to not only contextualize drivers of conflict but assess the levels of conflict, review and monitor some of the emerging new dynamics around Preventing, Countering Violent Extremism (PCVE), faith, and elections.

“We need to look at Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) within the context of communities. Religious leaders need to help communities in understanding and proper interpretation of religious texts” Gerald Acho, Regional Peace Programme Lead; Arigatou International – End Child Poverty. The community conversations revealed that in order to build social cohesion, some tenets towards sustainable social cohesion were identified as collaboration with different stakeholders, em- powering others to give feedback on work done on social cohesion and inclusion of leaders at different levels. While meaningful and consistent dialogue sessions were lauded as effective ways to building stronger and cohesive communities, youth and women were called upon to take up available opportunities and initiatives in communities and within government to empower themselves and help build more cohesive communities.

Read on the community dialogue