COMMUNITY RECONCILIATION
AFF’s Community Reconciliation program supports processes that bring a cross section of a
community together to address community problems, conflicts and injustices in a way that promotes
healthy relationships, transforms power dynamics and otherwise addresses the systems that led to
the original problem, conflict or injustice.
These problems, conflicts and injustices are of particular concern to AFF as they arise in the context of
1) identity-based conflict; 2) police-community conflict; and 3) conservation conflict.
Program Strategies
AFF’s community reconciliation grantees are involved in processes that often reflect the following stages. These stages are cyclical, fluid and inter-related and do not reflect a prescribed or formulaic approach to intervention. AFF acknowledges that each project has its own histories and dynamics and will evolve according to the needs of each particular context.
1. An organizing group identifies a primary conflict or injustice that it wants to address and begins to develop a vision about how to approach it. At this stage, a sense of importance and urgency is communicated.
2. The organizers invite a diverse group of invested parties, particularly those who have been most aggrieved, to participate in the further development of the project. This group designs and initiates a collaborative process for change and reconciliation that addresses the initially, and any subsequently, identified conflict(s).
3. Multiple community partners implement the collaborative process by investigating the historical origin of the conflict(s) and the continued legacy of harm; analyzing the current issues; increasing mutual understanding; supporting parties to transform their perception of themselves, others and the conflict; and identifying changes and related action steps.
4. From these transformed perspectives, an expanding coalition of community members implement the action plans. Ongoing community education about the conflict(s) continues.
AFF funds programs that add to the body of knowledge of how to explicitly use William Bridges’ Transitions Framework in their community reconciliation projects.
We believe that for organizations trying to address community problems, conflicts and injustices, it is imperative to pay attention to the internal emotional processes that enable people to move from the old to the new. Within this program, AFF is exploring whether understanding the Transitions Framework increases the chances of success when bringing together a cross section of a community to address community problems, conflicts and injustices.
To this end, AFF funds community reconciliation projects within the United States that put the Transition Framework to the test in addressing one of AFF's three priority issues.