Empowering Syrian Civil Society

Over the past four months, the thirty civil society organizations (CSOs) participating in CCSD’s Empowering Syrian Civil Society program have made significant progress and are well on their way to finalizing their locally-led interventions. Following conversations and needs assessments from their local communities, the participants developed initiatives to address vital humanitarian and developmental challenges their communities face. Organizations are providing skills-based training to women and youth, improving the condition of the schools in refugee camps, and addressing infrastructure concerns that spur conflict. One of the organizations built on the work they started in the program's first year and is restoring the Youth Development Center in their city. They have renovated rooms and provided different skills-based classes to the youth in the area. These activities work to promote youth development and provide them with opportunities to contribute positively to their communities. All the interventions are contributing to peacebuilding and social cohesion on the local level. 

In addition to the local intervention, CCSD successfully completed their training workshops and organized six dialogue forums to exchange ideas and establish collaboration. The dialogue forums, which cover topics on identifying local humanitarian needs and challenges CSOs have faced, created space for the organizations to learn from one another and deepen their connections. Communication between the different regions inside Syria is often limited, but the dialogue provided space for the CSOs to learn about each other. One of the participants said, “for the first time, I actually got to know some of the rural areas, and I got to know their needs that are somewhat different from the needs of our regions.” CCSD hopes that through these conversations, the CSOs can develop programs and memorandums of understanding to address country-wide issues.

CCSD continues to explore resource opportunities and partnerships that will enhance the capacity of our participating CSOs, allow us to expand our support to our current cohorts, and support more CSOs in Syria.

Links:

• CCSD Website