CDA Collaborative Learning Projects

06/16/2025

HAPPENING TODAY ~ BOOK LAUNCH: Conflict Sensitivity in Development, Humanitarian & Peacebuilding Practice

Moderated by CDA’s Rhoads Allen

This timely new volume offers hard-won insights from the past 25+ years, plus future-focused perspectives for today’s challenges.

Register here 👉https://ow.ly/64N750W8yPW
to join swisspeace, ConnexUs, CDA, the co-editors and contributors, and share your thoughts and questions.

We promise an insightful and engaging exchange for practitioners, researchers, and policy makers alike.

Can’t join? Click the registration link to share your questions or reflections and receive the event recording.

06/13/2025

BOOK LAUNCH: Conflict Sensitivity in Development, Humanitarian & Peacebuilding Practice

Moderated by CDA’s Rhoads Allen

This timely new volume offers hard-won insights from the past 25+ years, plus future-focused perspectives for today’s challenges.

Register here 👉https://ow.ly/8geR50W8yHE
to join swisspeace, ConnexUs, CDA, the co-editors and contributors, and share your thoughts and questions.

We promise an insightful and engaging exchange for practitioners, researchers, and policy makers alike.

Can’t join on 16 June? Click the registration link to share your questions or reflections and receive the event recording.

06/12/2025

BOOK LAUNCH: Conflict Sensitivity in Development, Humanitarian & Peacebuilding Practice

Moderated by CDA’s Rhoads Allen

This timely new volume offers hard-won insights from the past 25+ years, plus future-focused perspectives for today’s challenges.

Register here 👉https://ow.ly/sor350W8yCe
to join swisspeace, ConnexUs, CDA, the co-editors and contributors, and share your thoughts and questions.

We promise an insightful and engaging exchange for practitioners, researchers, and policy makers alike.

Can’t join on 16 June? Click the registration link to share your questions or reflections and receive the event recording.

06/12/2025

📬 Our latest newsletter is out!

This month, we're reflecting on hope, solidarity, and learning through change.

In a fractured world, it's easy to mistake hope for naivety. But as Václav Havel wrote, hope "transcends the world that is immediately experienced" — it's not dependent on probability calculations, but on our unwavering commitment to each other's humanity.

Read the full news letter 👉

“Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons."  - Vaclav Havel, Czech poet, playwright, president

04/25/2025

TWO YEARS OF WAR IN SUDAN: The world's largest humanitarian crisis continues with 25 million facing acute hunger and famine declared in 10 areas.

While international aid remains hampered, Sudanese emergency response rooms and mutual aid networks have become the backbone of relief efforts—running communal kitchens, supporting clinics, and evacuating civilians from danger zones.

These community-led initiatives have reached millions despite chronic funding shortages and threats from warring parties. As one volunteer said, "We survive together."

This article by the New Humanitarian shares how local communities are responding when the world has largely looked away: https://ow.ly/nuly50VFQCE

The list highlights the scope of local volunteers’ work and the many challenges they face.

04/25/2025

Friday: Ann Hendrix-Jenkins reflects on how the narrative surrounding Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs can help explain international development's power imbalances and offers suggestions on how to upend the pyramid by authentically partnering with people and communities in the spirit of global solidarity.

📖https://ow.ly/15n750VE2B3

–
CDA’s From Where I Stand blog is a virtual learning platform to amplify the voices of those leading humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding efforts in their own contexts. We're nearing our milestone 50th blog. Help us get there by contributing written or oral pieces in any language!"

In this blog, Ann Hendrix-Jenkins reflects on how the narrative surrounding Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs can help explain international development's power imbalances and offers suggestions on how to upend the pyramid by authentically partnering with people and communities in the spirit of global sol...

04/24/2025

ICYM: NEW BLOG 📖Bridgebuilding Effectiveness: Tools for Program Strategy and Design

Excited to share this insightful piece by Dr Dr. Allison K. Ralph and Dr Michelle Garred exploring how US pro-democracy practitioners can leverage global peacebuilding tools to address polarization across identity differences.

Read more 👉https://ow.ly/wKUb50VFQvF

04/23/2025

All of CDA’s resources and publications are open-source and free to use. Use the filters on our website to find helpful guidance, tools, training manuals, original case studies, full-length books, and more on topics ranging from humanitarian action and local leadership to climate change and land rights.

🔗

Resources All of CDA’s resources and publications are open-source and free to use. Use the filters below to find helpful guidance, tools, training manuals, original case studies, full-length books, and more on topics ranging from humanitarian action and local leadership to climate change and land ...

04/23/2025

🌍 Earth Day 2025: Honoring Indigenous Women as Stewards of Biodiversity and Environmental Peacebuilding 🌿

On this Earth Day, CDA is highlighting the indispensable role of Indigenous women in conserving our planet's biodiversity and stewarding peaceful futures for people and planet.

CDA's publication, Biodiversity’s Sisters: The Essential Role and Challenges of Indigenous Women in Biodiversity Strategy Processes, is the result of learning with Peruvian women about their leadership roles and Traditional Knowledge, as well as the systemic barriers they face in policy arenas. Lessons are relevant to national and global processes and are being shared with the Peace@COP coalition in preparation for this year.

📖 Read the full March 2025 publication here: https://bit.ly/444muaU

This case exploration highlights the critical role of Indigenous women in biodiversity conservation and their invaluable contributions to the muti-stakeholder process of updating Peru's National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) through 2050.

04/22/2025

🔥NEW BLOG: Bridgebuilding Effectiveness: Tools for Program Strategy and Design

📰https://ow.ly/k46K50VFQfp

Excited to share this insightful piece by Dr Dr. Allison K. Ralph and Dr Michelle Garred, exploring how US pro-democracy practitioners can leverage global peacebuilding tools to address polarization across identity differences.

Key insights:
• Contact between different groups can decrease prejudice, but effectiveness depends on conditions of equal status
• Two powerful tools from global peacebuilding—"Do No Harm" and the "Reflecting on Peace Practice Matrix"—offer practical frameworks for US bridgebuilding efforts
• Bridgebuilding is necessary but not sufficient for cohesive unity; programs must create linkages to socio-political levels for lasting impact

This blog provides concrete recommendations for funders and practitioners seeking to maximize effectiveness in this critical work. There truly "is no better moment to work together toward a just, cohesive unity in the United States."

04/18/2025

Friday: Oheneba Boateng and Claudia Meier propose the development of a Localization Index as a way to hold international actors accountable to localization metrics that homegrown and local organizations set for themselves.
📖https://ow.ly/z2K450VCUfj

–
CDA’s From Where I Stand blog is a virtual learning platform to amplify the voices of those leading humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding efforts in their own contexts. We're nearing our milestone 50th blog. Help us get there by contributing written or oral pieces in any language!

04/09/2025

Follow us on Instagram at .learning for a whole new way to explore our work! 🔗 https://www.instagram.com/cda.learning/