Abstract
The present thesis investigated, using intensive fieldwork, three projects that were implemented by an international non-governmental organization (NGO) named the International Rescue Committee (IRC) to promote personal and social development for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Khartoum State, Sudan.The projects pioneered in the country where almost all projects by NGOs had been extended for emergency relief and rehabilitation, not for long-term development.
In the first project named the Capacity Building and Organizational Capacity Assessment Project, the IRC provided workshops in which staff of national NGOs, i.e., Sudanese NGOs, participated to improve their capacities that were required to extend better services to IDPs.In the second project, named the FAIR project, the IRC focused on university graduates among IDPs and trained them to be leaders who were expected to perform educational functions in capacity building, peace building, and gender awareness in IDP communities.In the third project, named the Sudanese Youth Peace Building Initiative, the IRC attempted to transform the culture of war into a culture of peace by providing training sessions in which young people, including IDPs, participated to learn how problems, in politics or in everyday life, could be solved in a collaborative, not antagonistic, way.
Analyzing each project from the viewpoints of adapting learning, we suggested that the IRC evolved to better the IDPs' life, a practical necessity.The path of evolution was demonstrated by an increase of participation of IDPs in the implementation process of a project.Evolution was also observed in the way in which the IRC expanded their scope of view to reach a point where long-term and large-scale cultural transformations could be pursued in the third project.It was expected (and hoped) that this collaborative relationship, grown among international NGOs, national NGOs, IDPs, and, Sudanese people, might change distrust into trust between international NGOs and the Sudanese government.
