Search for Common Ground
Project Title
For a project to amplify the expertise of African peacebuilding practitioners and scholars
Date
Sep. 11, 2025
Duration
0 months
Description
Search for Common Ground (Search) proposes an initiative to strengthen African-led responses to two rising conflict drivers: unregulated mineral extraction and the rapidly expanding influence of digital technologies. The project will support African peacebuilding experts to generate research, convene diverse stakeholders, and engage in policy dialogue around responsible mineral governance and digital harms such as disinformation and online polarization. It will also expand the Bamako Forum, a platform created to address the impact of digital technologies on conflict and governance in the Sahel region, by strengthening its role in cross-continental learning and promoting coordination among local actors, policymakers, and the private sector. Overall, the project aims to elevate African perspectives in shaping solutions to these complex challenges, build networks for sustained collaboration, and strengthen the ability of African-led institutions to influence international norms and practices.
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Project Title
For one time funding for a project to develop social digital twin simulations for nuclear risk reduction as part of a Request for Proposals for the Consortium to Reduce Nuclear Dangers
Date
Dec. 11, 2025
Duration
24 months
Description
As nuclear threats become more complex, traditional nuclear deterrence and escalation models are increasingly ill equipped to understand modern political, social, and behavioral drivers of nuclear dangers. To address this gap, Search for Common Ground, in partnership with CulturePulse, will launch the Modeling the Reduction of Nuclear Dangers (MODRN) initiative. The project will design and deploy a next-generation simulation platform using social digital twinning and multi-agent artificial intelligence capabilities to model escalation dynamics, test de-escalation pathways, and generate evidence-based options for reducing nuclear dangers. MODRN will engage intermediary actors, including governmental actors, to provide them with actionable tools to inform policy and dialogues that reduce nuclear dangers. MODRN’s goal is to give policymakers pathways for restraint and de-escalation during a nuclear crisis.
Website
Project Title
For a project to amplify the expertise of African peacebuilding practitioners and scholars
Date
Sep. 15, 2022
Duration
36 months
Description
Despite an increase in knowledge generated by scholars and practitioners, their ability to influence national, regional, and global policy responses to fast-moving emerging crises in Africa remains a challenge. Valuable experience residing within the practitioner community is rarely fully analyzed and presented in formats that are useful to policymakers. Search for Common Ground, a leading operational peacebuilding organization, has developed a model for forming scholar-practitioner networks that co-produceknowledge and recommend paths out of conflict to policymakers and practitioners. With further support, this project will build on its successful experiences by applying the scholar-practitioner network model to other pressing peacebuilding issues on the continent, namely, social media in Mali and urban violence in Nigeria. The outputs will include joint analyses, research, and policy recommendations.
Website
Project Title
For general support
Date
Jun. 04, 2020
Duration
18 months
Description
Challenges to global peace and security are expanding today, even as the threat posed by intensifying and prolonged conflicts persists. Search for Common Ground (SFCG) is a leading operational peacebuilding organization with programs in thirtycountries. In the coming years, SFCG will support governments and communities in order to generate conflict-sensitive responses, spread peacebuilding approaches beyond their current scope, and launch a program that enables colleges across the United States to form healthy, cohesive campus communities. Corporation support will contribute to core operations of the organization.
Website
Project Title
For a project to amplify the expertise of African peacebuilding practitioners and scholars
Date
Sep. 10, 2020
Duration
24 months
Description
Despite an increase in knowledge generated by scholars and practitioners, their ability to influence national, regional, and global policy responses to fast-moving emerging crises in Africa remains a challenge. Valuable experience residing within the practitioner community is rarely fully analyzed and presented in formats that are useful to policymakers. Search for Common Ground, a leading operational peacebuilding organization, has developed a model for forming scholar-practitioner networks that co-construct knowledge and recommend paths out of conflict to policymakers and practitioners. With support, the project will build on its successful experiences to date, focusing on the sustainability of the Forum on Farmer and Herder Relations in Nigeria and identifying and applying the scholar-practitioner network model to another pressing peacebuilding issue in the continent.
Website
Project Title
For a project to convene and amplify the expertise of African peacebuilding practitioners and scholars
Date
Sep. 13, 2018
Duration
24 months
Description
Despite an increase in knowledge generated by scholars and practitioners, influencing global policy responses to fast-moving emerging crises in Africa remains a challenge. Valuable knowledge residing within the practitioner community is rarely fully analyzed and presented in formats that are useful to policymakers. Search for Common Ground (SFCG), a leading operational peacebuilding organization, will build on its successful experiences in Nigeria to continue supporting practitioner-scholar networks in Nigeria, and the Western Sahel more broadly, to engage on farmer-herder conflicts across the region. With support, the project will bring scholars and practitioners together in selected conflict areas to combine knowledge derived from research and practice, and to use this knowledge to recommend paths out of conflict to policymakers and practitioners.
Website
Project Title
For engaging African peacebuilding practitioners in research and dissemination aimed at policymakers
Date
Sep. 08, 2016
Duration
24 months
Description
Despite an increase in knowledge generated by scholars and practitioners, the peacebuilding community has not yet been able to influence global policy responses to fast-moving emerging crises in Africa. Valuable knowledge residing within the practitioner community is rarely fully analyzed through research and presented in formats that are useful to policymakers. Search for Common Ground (SFCG), a leading operational peacebuilding organization with programs in nineteen African countries, proposes a pilot project that will explore ways to bridge these gaps. Through a consultative process, SFCG will select up to six “critical cases”—active conflicts in Africa or situations where conflict appears to be highly likely—and will link practitioners and researchers to develop white papers relaying recommendations for action, help disseminate them to relevant policymakers, and provide basic research training for practitioners.
Website
Project Title
Toward polling of Iranians and Americans on identity, attitudes, and policy
Date
Mar. 01, 2007
Duration
12 months