IRD is providing programmatic, administrative, and logistical support for USAID’s SERASI strategic grants and technical assistance program to mitigate social conflict and support peacebuilding initiatives across Indonesia. The SERASI program — the word means harmony in many of the country’s languages — helps local civil society organizations, public institutions, and other partners target the causes and consequences of violent conflict through community-based and community-driven activities, training, monitoring, and networking.
Children like these will benefit from an environment free of conflict.

IRD uses participatory decentralized development planning to determine the most strategic use of grants for local, provincial, and national projects that promote respect for human rights and improved inter-group relations; institutionalize a legitimate peace process in Aceh; increase capacity to manage conflict; and support a democratic and transparent security sector. The SERASI National Knowledge Management System helps IRD fine-tune the projects from village to village, district to district, and province to province, ensuring that issues tackled at the national level directly reflect real grassroots concerns.

SERASI has programs in two regions—Aceh and Central Sulawesi—has plans to expand to two more—the Malukus and Papua—and will also develop and maintain a crisis-rapid response capability that will stand ready to help USAID and its partners respond to natural or human-made crises throughout Indonesia. Activities at the national level include providing support to the development of a law on conflict management, providing training on conflict mapping to stakeholders, bringing together the themes of the SERASI program from target provinces for a series of study tours and seminars, and promoting exceptional women from the present day and history as positive role models.

SERASI is scheduled to last for three years (2008-2011), with two one-year extensions possible.

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