Bridging the Gap South Sudan

Bridging the Gap: the role of local faith actors in humanitarian response

New project is launched in South Sudan

• A new 12 month project (1/10/18 - 30/09/19) in South Sudan funded by the Belgian Government for Development Cooperation.
• The project brings together a consortium of 6 agencies to engage faith actors, including faith-based organisations (FBOs), faith leaders, faith communities and places of worship, within the humanitarian sector.
• The project seeks to bridge the gap in localisation dialogues by practically facilitating the engagement of faith actors in first line humanitarian response by bringing together faith actors and non-faith actors to increase understanding, trust, coordination and collaboration.
• The main part of the project consists of capacity building for local faith actors, coupled with the provision of grants that will allow them to build organizational skills and start to apply for more and diversified funding, as well as increase their coordination with other humanitarian actors. The project also has a component to increase knowledge and awareness of local faith actors among the broader humanitarian system.
• There is a strong research element ensuring existing learning is incorporated into the approach and new evidence and learning is captured and incorporated into a model for engaging local faith actors in humanitarian response, which will be disseminated among the international humanitarian community.
• It will provide a conduit to capture valuable input and learning from faith actors about the way forward on the World Humanitarian Summit and Charter4Change commitments, thus progressing the localisation of aid agenda.

For further information about the project as a whole contact:

Paul Johnston, Tearfund UK: paul.johnston@tearfund.org

For further information about the research contact:

Professor Emma Tomalin, University of Leeds: e.tomalin@leeds.ac.uk

Dr Olivia Wilkinson, JLI: olivia@jliflc.com