Contributor: Laura Guimond

When Mercy Corps Director-at-Large Landrum Bolling speaks, we all learn. Some years ago, Bolling began to promote the idea of melding the skill sets of two organizations about which he was passionate – Conflict Management Group (CMG) and Mercy Corps.

Bolling knew that CMG’s work extended far beyond the classic archetypes of “conflict” – dealing with presidents, prime ministers and people with guns – to resolving differences of all types, at all levels, in venues ranging from corporate boardrooms to community gatherings. He saw that the conflict transformation and training skills of CMG, combined with the relief and development expertise of Mercy Corps, would create an organization that would be better able to address root causes of poverty and instability and thereby build more just, secure and productive communities.

It has been six months since the merger between Conflict Management Group and Mercy Corps. The merger aimed to significantly leverage CMG Founder and Harvard Law Professor Roger Fisher’s vision that we can build a more peaceful world through conflict transformation.

Our work is already making an impact in areas where we are pilot testing our combined methodologies. We call these our “Petri dishes” – experiments in designing and implementing programs that utilize conflict management tools within relief and development settings.

Mercy Corps CMG staff have been especially active in the following areas:

• In Central Asia, Arthur Martirosyan has worked with the Mercy Corps Tajikistan team to support our conflict prevention programming by developing a pilot tool that will more accurately measure attitudinal change and our impact in enhancing the stability of communities.
• In Indonesia, Peter Brorsen is working in the conflict-affected areas of Maluku Province to increase the ability of local partners to work with communities and the government to identify and implement peaceful solutions to the return and settlement of displaced persons. Enhancing the skills to facilitate fruitful dialogue will result in improved interaction between local government officials and the community. Peter Brorsen, Ted Johnson and Jim Tull have also spent some time discussing the situation in Aceh and possibilities for supporting more peaceful change through our programming in this conflict- and tsunami-affected area.
• In Ethiopia, we are rolling out a new program that underscores the principle that local actors are the most appropriate and effective agents for preventing and resolving conflicts. To this end, we are enhancing the capacity of both formal and informal structures to carry out conflict resolution and prevention initiatives. Ruth Allen has just returned from Ethiopia and will be helping with the design of training modules and ongoing support to the program.
• In the Balkans, David Steele has worked with the Kosovo team to develop proposals for coexistence programming and has submitted several proposals to continue his work with multi-ethnic municipal working groups in Macedonia.
• In Guatemala, Jim Tull spent a week working with our Land Conflict program, which is supporting local mediation structures to resolve local land conflicts.

The period of learning and growth since the merger has not always been easy. The melding of two independent entities embarking on a pioneering new venture presents its own challenges. However, the merged organization's unswerving commitment to our mission of building just, secure and productive communities keeps our eyes on the prize.

Together we will continue to learn – and do – more.

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