It Takes a Village: Building Community Ownership in Safeguarding as a Path to Peace in Northwest Syria

• In Event: Virtual Roundtable Session 2
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: It Takes a Community: Education, Culture, and Collective Resilience in Conflict and Recovery Settings

Proposal

In conflict-affected Northwest Syria, children face multiple risks including violence, exploitation, and psychosocial distress. With fragmented governance and no fully developed safeguarding framework, schools are often the only stable institutions in children’s lives. Yet without strong safeguarding mechanisms, these very spaces can expose children to harm. In 2018, a baseline survey by Manahel found that 82% of children felt safest within school grounds, but gaps in accountability and protection systems left them vulnerable. The need was clear: safeguarding could not rely solely on top-down policy but required a locally rooted, community-owned approach.
Program Intervention
In response, the UK FCDO-funded Manahel programme, implemented by Chemonics UK, introduced Community Committees for Safeguarding in 2020. These committees, composed of parents, students, teachers, and safeguarding officers, are designed to embed accountability and foster collaboration between schools and communities. Committees are supported with training, WhatsApp-based communication systems, microgrants for locally designed initiatives, and links to safeguarding officers in schools.
Impact and Assessment
The committees have delivered measurable results. Microgrants have enabled over 1,000 community-led projects, improving safety and inclusivity for 335,000 children. Committees have successfully:
• Addressed immediate risks, such as constructing toilet facilities at schools to reduce exposure to unsafe environments.
• Shifted harmful practices, such as reducing corporal punishment through community advocacy with religious leaders and media.
• Responded to emerging challenges, such as rising suicide rates, by partnering with WHO and civil society to raise mental health awareness.
Impact has been assessed through routine monitoring, community feedback, and programme evaluation data. Indicators tracked include numbers of committees established, initiatives implemented, children reached, and qualitative evidence of behaviour change in schools and communities. Teachers report reduced use of corporal punishment, parents describe greater trust in schools, and children express feeling safer.
Lessons Learned and Future Directions
Several lessons emerge from this intervention. First, safeguarding in fragile contexts is most effective when communities take the lead: they are best placed to identify risks early and sustain solutions. Second, flexible mechanisms such as microgrants allow safeguarding responses to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. Third, linking committees to broader governance structures (district and provincial levels) ensures consistency and peer accountability.
At the same time, challenges remain. Committees sometimes struggle with representation, as the most active members are often male community leaders; ensuring women’s and children’s voices are consistently heard is a priority for the future. Sustainability is also a concern: while committees have mobilised additional community resources, longer-term institutionalisation within education directorates is needed.
Contribution to the Field
Manahel’s Community Committee model offers valuable lessons for comparative and international education. It demonstrates how safeguarding can become a vehicle for peacebuilding and social cohesion in divided contexts. By empowering local actors and embedding ownership into the education system, the model addresses both immediate child protection needs and longer-term resilience. The approach has clear relevance for other fragile and conflict-affected settings where safeguarding frameworks are weak and trust in institutions is low.

Authors

• Reham Jabbar, Chemonics International

• Jacob Max Ross, Independent