Circumventing the Conflict

Ashoka   
May 26th, 2010

Romina joined Ashoka in 2005 and works for Ashoka’s Youth Venture, primarily supporting and creating a strong global movement of young changemakers around the world. Read all of her posts here.

Ashoka’s very own Ryszard Praskier recently co-authored an article on the role of social entrepreneurship in conflict. The article, Social Entrepreneurs and Constructive Change: The Wisdom of Circumventing Conflict presents new strategies when working in the field of conflict. The article argues that social entrepreneurs have the ability to be much more successful in conflict areas because they are able to use new and creative approaches that shift the focus away from the actual conflict.

Rather than addressing the conflict at hand, they choose to circumvent it by identifying new areas of interest, which the authors refer to as “attractors,” which have the ability to create a more cooperative setting and thus making the conflict less relevant. For example, Ashoka Fellow David Kuria from Kenya avoided focusing on the long-lasting conflict around sanitation between the Nairobi-Kibera slum communities and the authorities, and instead directly engaged all stakeholders to imagine what their “dream toilets” would look like. In doing so, he triggered a commitment by all parties and created a community project in which everyone had a stake. By focusing on community business development, he led the way to cooperation and created an increased openness to new initiatives within the community. The authors present several other strong case studies of social entrepreneurs and their strategies from around the world.

What’s great about this article is that each individual case study is compared with a traditional approach to the conflict, making it easy for the reader to identify the differences between the different approaches and results. The idea of circumventing conflicts isn’t necessarily new and there are a number of similar stories from around the world. For example, in the mid-nineties in Cyprus, peace builders used comparable methods to bring people with common interests together to address common challenges. However, the case studies presented in the article describe how the social entrepreneurs on the ground focus on building strong social capital that in turn allows them to achieve a higher level of trust and cooperation. By circumventing the conflict, they succeed in building a “positive feedback loop” between their initial success and the reinforcement of social capital.

The article is a refreshing new piece and great addition to the field.

This story originally appeared at the Ashoka Peace Blog

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