This article, published in Intervention, describes a participative ranking methodology for identifying local understanding of reintegration and adjustment of potential value in program planning and evaluation. It was applied in the context of girls formerly associated with fighting forces in Sierra Leone. Fourteen discussion groups, utilizing spontaneous listing and participative ranking activities, within a focus group framework, were conducted in 10 communities. Discussions served to identify family support, marriage, involvement in communal activities and income generating activities as locally seen indicators of a girl’s successful reintegration after the war.

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Starting in 2012, the Inter-Agency Learning Initiative on Strengthening Community-Based Child Protection Mechanisms and Child Protection Systems established a community-owned and driven intervention to reduce teenage pregnancy in the Moyamba and Bombali Districts in Sierra Leone.  Two clusters of three intervention communities elected to address the problem of teenage pregnancy through a mixture of family planning, sexual and reproductive health education, and life skills. This action research uses a quasi-experimental design to test the effectiveness of this intervention in reducing teenage pregnancy. A year after community members received trainings, a participatory evaluation workshop was held to learn community perspectives on what happened in the first full year of the intervention implementation. Findings reveal that across all three communities, a major reduction in teenage pregnancies had occurred. In addition, greater supportive linkages between the communities and the formal health system were established. Overall, while the findings are not final, they suggest the intervention is on its way to achieving intermediate results that will ultimately help reduce teenage pregnancy and contribute to the evidence base on community-based child protection programming.

Webinar: 

Change that Counts: Results from a Community Driven Intervention to Reduce Teenage Pregnancy in Sierra Leone (October 15, 2014)

Presenter: Lindsay Stark
Respondent: Sarah Lilley

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Phase One: Ethnographic study to understand how communities in Sierra Leone approach child protection

Phase Two: Developing culturally relevant indicators of child protection outcomes

Phase Three: Community participation in action research: developing an intervention to reduce teenage pregnancy

Phase Four: Baseline Studies

Phase Five: Midline Evaluations

Additional resources: 

Wessells, M., Lamin, D., King, D., Kostelny, K., Stark, L., Lilley, S. The limits of top-down approaches to managing diversity: Lessons from the case of child protection and child rights in Sierra Leone. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology (in press). 

Wessells, M., Lamin, D., King, D., Kostelny, K., Stark, L., Lilley, S. (2012) The disconnect between community-based child protection mechanisms and the formal child protection system in rural Sierra Leone: Challenges to building an effective national child protection system. Vulnerable Children and Youth Studies: An International Interdisciplinary Journal for Research, Policy and Care, 7(3):211-227.

This book chapter from Toward a Global Psychology: Theory, Research, Intervention, and Pedagogy shows how psychology has the potential to address system challenges (armed conflict, HIV/AIDS pandemic, etc.) at the macro-level through macro-level approaches associated with social policies and societal influence processes. It first lays the conceptual foundation and provides a critical lens for thinking about how psychology can inform our approach to macro-level problems. An examination of social policy work and mass scale psychosocial interventions as two kinds of macro-level intervention follow. For both categories, examples of psychologically informed interventions are provided, and their role, impact, and challenges are discussed.

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The purpose of this book chapter in Fear of Persecution: Global Human Rights, International Law and Human Well-Being is to expand the discourse on psychosocial assistance to refugees and displaced people beyond the trauma frame toward more holistic approaches that enable movement toward peace, conceived systemically to include nonviolence and social justice at multiple levels. Drawing on work from the field, it argues that narrow, clinical approaches are less well suited than are community-based approaches to the tasks of sustainable healing on a wide scale and toward building peace. Examining community-based work in Angola, it illustrates the potential power of healing based on social mobilization that builds local capacities, uses local resources, and activates communities for economic development and social action on behalf of peace and the well-being of future generations.

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The purpose of this chapter is to examine diverse methods of community reconciliation and peacebuilding following armed conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa. Three case studies from Angola, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, respectively, emphasize reconciling formerly recruited young people, defined as people under 25 years of age, with communities in rural areas. Although the case studies emphasize the importance of community empowerment and reliance on local cultural understandings and practices, they also point out the value of constructive partnerships between Western psychology and local practices.

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This paper examines the case of girls’ recruitment in Angola, which has received relatively little attention. The Angolan case is particularly interesting because it reveals that girls’ recruitment is neither incidental nor driven by convenience but owes to commanders’ desire to exploit girls as resources in particularized ways that are tailored to the local context and are aimed to procure the resources needed to fight in an effective manner.

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This paper outlines key issues and widespread violations of the “do no harm” imperative in emergency contexts. Prominent issues include contextual insensitivity to issues such as security, humanitarian coordination, and the inappropriate use of various methods; the use of an individualistic orientation that does not fit the context and culture; an excessive focus on deficits and victimhood that can undermine empowerment and resilience; the use of unsustainable, short-term approaches that breed dependency, create poorly trained psychosocial workers, and lack appropriate emphasis on prevention; and the imposition of outsider approaches. 

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