Community Building

The organizational community building aspect relates to the principle of an organization that represents. This process will entail a number of actions to be conducted in the period of three years. This strand of activities can be considered an engagement strategy of key constituents of the organization. Activities conducted under this strand will be marked, in terms of methodology, by largely non-public convening and engagement conversations, discussions, debates, workshops, lectures, panels, seminars and training, conducted online and offline. In terms of target groups, they will largely approach and engage youth and young adults (18-35), while ensuring representation of groups such as: university students in Afghanistan, Afghan nationals who study abroad, community activists and leaders in various fields of relevance to peace-building and democracy promotion, public servants, local staff in international organizations working in Afghanistan, entrepreneurs and small business owners or workers in family businesses, journalists and media workers, academics, arts and culture creatives, etc.

In line with our values, we will ensure that special attention in program design and implementation is paid to ensuring diversity in representation, taking into account gender, ethnic and religious identities, urban and rural populations, students in local and foreign universities, as well as various language groups. To enable diverse participation, as well as to create a safe space for open sharing of opinions, NCPDO will ensure accommodations such as translation (to avoid participation by only English-speaking youth, as well as translation to multiple languages spoken in Afghanistan), anonymous participation in online events (possibility of no-video participation, translators, self-assigned names) with pre-event engagement with the representatives of NCPDO.

In terms of thematic areas, they will generally relate to topics of relevance for peace and development, but will also tackle skill-development that underpins active society. They will also ensure that NCPDO can maximize on its people as resources (both its leadership members and supporters) to provide Afghan youth with interesting perspectives they can engage with, learn from and help inform. These events will not be one-way in the meaning of passive participants receiving and lecturers providing. Rather, they will be conceived as exchanges, as opportunities for exchange of perspectives and convenings conducive to mutual learning. We are also committed to always providing pre-event conversations to address any concerns regarding participation principles and models that we might have failed to consider and follow-up engagements to ensure they actually contribute to community building.

In terms of outcomes of this strand of activities, we expect (a) NCPDO to build its organizational community to inform its operations (methodologies and approaches) and programs by the perspectives of its key constituents, and build up its context knowledge from the diverse perspectives of Afghan youths and young adults; and (b) engaged youths and young adults to increase their key skills related to active citizenship, widen their network of like-minded peers, and build up their knowledge through engagement with experts from Afghanistan and from around the world.