HIWAR - Advocators

Mercy Corps is implementing Hiwar program in Heet, Fallujah and Ramadi districts of Anbar Governorate to contribute to the overall project objective: Administration and population in selected communities have increased trust and are able to jointly meet community needs. To do so, Mercy Corps will bring its strong experience in social cohesion and conflict management to strengthen ties between community members and government/administrative employees and empower them to collaborate on identifying and ameliorating critical community basic services.

Through the course of the proposed 12- month project, Mercy Corps will establish Community Committees in each district to establish linkages between community members and government/administrative structures. In turn, Mercy Corps will strengthen administrative employees' capacity for good governance and provision of basic services through a variety of training. Together, targeted administrative employees and Community Committee Members will identify priority basic services needs in targeted areas. Mercy Corps would conduct training for selected community member participants on Advocacy and participation methods. Furthermore, Mercy Corps aimed to train the selected community members on the Risk Communication Community Engagement (RCCE) approach. Mercy Corps would target a minimum of 150 and a maximum of 180 individuals with a female participation with minimum female participation of 35 percent.

Mercy Corps worked with the Exploration for Research, Training, and Development (ERD) Firm to take the lead in providing capacity building to selected Anbar Government community members on ‘advocacy and participation methods’. ERD has used its extensive expertise in the Social cohesion aspects to train participants on how to effectively advocate for selected community issues through formal/informal channels, as well as ensuring that participants are adequately taught on the community participation methods/civic engagement. The training was held in Van Royal Hotel in Erbil for ten days from August 21 to August 31, 2022. Based on the district and number of participants, the training was separated into several rounds. The first round was held between 21-23 August for Ramadi District participants. The second round was held between 25-27 August for Fallujah District participants. And the third round was held between 29-31 August for Heet District participants. The total number of trainees who fully attended all the training sessions was 174.

Mercy Corps