Promoting Religious Tolerance and Mutual Understanding Within and Between Faiths in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq

Partner

MCC Partner EuropeAid Donor

Target Areas

Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Jordan

Target Audience

Beneficiaries	Target number
CSOs who receive sub-grants and implement sub-projects	18-21 CSOs
CSO leaders and members who receive peacebuilding and programmatic capacity building training, networking and mentoring	200 CSO leaders and members
Religious leaders who build relationships and connections for peace across faiths, sects, or none	240 religious leaders (216 male, 24 female)
Laypeople, prioritizing women and youth, who participate in the subgrant funded projects	8,250 laypeople (4000 male, 4250 female)
Youth	4,500 youth (2,500 female, 2,000 male)

Overall Objective

The overall objective of the project, keeping in mind the needs of the target groups and beneficiaries, is to combat religious intolerance and discrimination among target communities in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq through enhancing mutual understanding and respect between different faiths, sects or none.

Specific Objective

Support local civil society organizations (CSOs), including local NGOs and community-based organizations (CBOs), through sub-grant funds for projects to engage religious leaders and laypeople, including women and youth, to understand, respect, and promote religious tolerance within communities.
Increase the ability of CSOs to cultivate religious tolerance and mutual understanding among the target beneficiaries via peacebuilding training, networking, capacity-building, and mentoring for sub-grantee CSO’s.
Promote inclusive and strategic partnerships, networking and cooperation between religious and civil society leaders of Shi’a, Sunni, Alawi, Druze, Yezidi, Catholic Christian, Maronite Christian, Orthodox Christian, and Evangelical Christian traditions among other minority sects from these countries.

Achievements

Activity Package 1: Support for Peacebuilding CSOs in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq

Peacebuilding training
Project and Programme Management Capacity building
Mentoring
Networking
Publication emphasizing success stories and lessons learned
Sub-grants to implement supported peace projects (financial support to third parties)

Activity Package 2: Activities Implemented Through Sub-grants by the Peacebuilding CSOs

Community-based approaches focused on advancing understanding and tolerance through education, dialogue, and other conflict transformation measures.
Projects focused on creating or advancing strategic partnerships, networking, cooperation and inter-faith peacebuilding between leaders of various faith groups.
Awareness campaigns focused on increasing tolerance, peaceful co-existence and peaceful conflict resolution in communities and at a society-wide level.