PROPOSAL
The game is only the beginning…
March 2016
Contacts:
Shamil Idriss President and CEO Search for Common Ground [email protected] +1 917 945 8455
Jessica Murrey Creative Lead Battle for Humanity [email protected] +1 541 941 6967
Executive Summary
Search for Common Ground (Search) proposes to catalyze an unprecedentedly powerful youth-driven, global peacebuilding movement by launching Battle for Humanity (B4H), a social pervasive game for ending violent conflict. Conceived by an interdisciplinary and international team of experts and steered by a global group of young people, B4H uses a digital platform and global campaign to empower this generation of youth to embrace and lead the cause of rejecting violent conflict as an option. Capitalizing on new technologies and proven gamification principles, B4H will mobilize and equip a global force of young social entrepreneurs to build bridges locally and globally for a more tolerant and accepting world. Children and youth disproportionately suffer from violent conflict, as both victims and perpetrators whose lives are often tragically cut short or irrevocably damaged. Yet, most youth do not participate in violence, and youth often play valuable roles as agents of positive and constructive change. B4H appeals to the camaraderie, significance, purpose, and identity that is key to engaging young people in alternatives to violence.1 The goal is to catalyze youth-led, locally relevant approaches to transforming conflict via a connected global community of millions of young peace leaders. B4H will:
• Mobilize and connect young people across international and local divides as a global community of young peacebuilders.
• Increase the leadership capacity of these young people to act as positive change agents for tolerance and acceptance within their communities.
• Catalyze local, youth-led, intercultural and interfaith dialogue and peacebuilding activities.
B4H’s centerpiece is an innovative online platform to reach and connect young people across differences locally and globally. Urban youth age 13-30 enlist to join the Battle for Humanity on a digital platform. There, they receive ‘missions,’ which are discrete activities carried out online and offline to raise awareness about violence, build their capacity as bridge builders, and empower them to take action. Participants win points, earn badges, and achieve higher ranks with each completed mission. With support from the Alwaleed Philanthropies, Search will develop B4H through critical benchmarks – specifically, we will: 1. Finalize the production of a minimum viable version of the
Battle for Humanity digital application 2. Initiate a controlled soft launch that engages select invited
target populations of young people 3. Implement a rapid-feedback loop through which we
regularly analyze user-behavior and use the data to iteratively improve the functionality, content, branding, and measurement frameworks
4. Prepare Battle for Humanity for public launch, including securing the first round of sponsorships
1 http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2015/04/25/scott-atran-on-youth-violent-extremism-and-promoting-peace/
1. Technical Approach
1.1 Problem and Opportunity Analysis
Increasing global connectivity provides an opportunity both for greater awareness of our common humanity and for deepened polarization. Violence claims 1.6 million lives each year, restricts access to basic human needs, and impedes economic growth. The global economic impact of violence and cost of containing it is 13.4% of our global GDP, U.S. $14.3 trillion a year.2 The 2015 Global Peace Index indicates that the world has become less peaceful over the last eight years.
Children and youth disproportionately suffer from destructive conflict. Not only are they victimized by violence, but they are often perpetrators. The largest cohort in history, this generation of youth is too often pulled into armies, rebel groups, militias, and gangs and are caught in cycles of violence that infiltrate their lives and outlast the wars of their parents. Approximately 27,000 to 31,000 people have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS and other violent groups from at least 86 countries (including 2,500 Saudi fighters - the second largest national group).3 The attraction to violent groups and ideologies is rooted in diverse push and pull factors. A recent study by Mercy Corps highlights the importance of social networks, collective group identity, and improved social standing in recruiting foreign fighters from Jordan, for example.4 Speaking to the UN Security Council, anthropologist Scott Atran explains, “young people unmoored from millennial traditions flail about in search of a social identity that gives personal significance and glory. This is the dark side of globalization. They radicalize to find a firm identity in a flattened world.”5 According to the World Health Organization, “cultures which fail to provide non-violent alternatives for resolving conflicts appear to have higher rates of youth violence.”6
2 http://economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Global-Peace-Index-Report-2015_0.pdf 3 http://soufangroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/TSG_ForeignFightersUpdate_FINAL.pdf 4 https://www.mercycorps.org/research-resources/jordan-jihad-lure-syrias-violent-extremist-groups 5 http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2015/04/25/scott-atran-on-youth-violent-extremism-and-promoting-peace/ 6 http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/global_campaign/en/chap2.pdf
Participation in violent groups is often an outlet for young people’s desire to belong to something bigger, make a difference, and have their voices heard. These are factors Search has proven capable of addressing in the countries in which we work across the world. Battle for Humanity incorporates the lessons we have learned from doing this work with youth from Nigeria to Indonesia, the U.S. to Pakistan, and integrates it into a ground-breaking online platform and mobile application that can multiply this constructive engagement and mobilization on a global scale. Although youth have long been viewed as both victims and agents of violence, there is growing recognition among the international community that youth are often agents of peace. Most youth do not participate in violence.7 In fact, youth all over the world, despite living in conflict contexts, play valuable roles as agents of positive and constructive change.8 But today’s young peacebuilders and youth groups, and their many more sympathetic but not yet activated peers, are typically isolated and unsupported, even threatened.9 In December 2015, the UN Security Council adopted UNSCR 2250 on Youth, Peace, and Security to affirm “the important role youth can play in the prevention and resolution of conflicts.” It urges member states to increase representation of youth in decision-making at all levels, including peace agreements, and to support youth peacebuilding. Thus, understanding the importance of camaraderie, significance, purpose, and identity for engaging young people in alternatives to violence,10 Search is seeking to support youth-led peacebuilding.
1.2 Program Background
B4H has the potential to catalyze a global, youth-led peacebuilding movement that we believe is nascent and ready to emerge. Capitalizing on new technologies and proven gamification tactics, B4H will mobilize and equip a global force of youth to build bridges locally and globally for a more tolerant, cooperative, and less violent world. B4H uses a digital platform and global campaign to empower this generation of youth to lead the cause of rejecting violence and embracing non-violent dialogue and collaborative action as the way to deal with differences in their communities.
7 http://www.un.org/en/peacebuilding/pbso/pdf/Practice%20Note%20Youth%20&%20Peacebuilding%20-%20January%202016.pdf 8 Ibid. 9 S. McEvoy-Levy, “Youth as Social and Political Agents: Issues in Post-Settlement Peace Building”, Kroc Institute Occasional Paper, vol. 21, 2001. 10
http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2015/04/25/scott-atran-on-youth-violent-extremism-and-promoting-peace/
Sponsored by the Norwegian NGO Partnership for Change, Search held a Disruptive Innovation Summit focused on youth participation in violence in Oslo, Norway in October 2014. The summit gathered professionals from developed and developing nations who represent diverse disciplines including peacebuilding, academia, finance, engineering, design, information technology, marketing, and entertainment. Together, these experts digested an initial concept for a global youth peacebuilding campaign and reimagined it in the form of a technology-enabled, social pervasive game, which became the basis for Battle for Humanity.
Search then developed the four core innovations of B4H:
1. Blended Realities – A mix between a social network, online training platform, and game, B4H allows young people to connect and learn online and then complete culturally contextualized activities that raise awareness, build capacity, and make an impact in their real-world lives.
2. Peace Gamification - B4H gamifies leadership, constructive problem-solving, and bridge-building on a cutting edge technology platform, so positive reinforcement encourages youth to alter their attitudes and behavior towards compassion and acceptance of others. Underlying the gamification strategy are positive drivers of engagement based on a review of psychological research in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center.
3. Youth Leadership - Search challenges the peacebuilding
field’s status quo by empowering youth-led efforts to change the world. The application focuses on youth-generated content, empowering youth to lead the development of activities for other users to undertake. B4H staff meet regularly with a 12-member Youth Advisory Council representing 8 countries, who provide input on the development of the concept and platform. In addition, Search recruited 61 youth ages 13-30 from Jakarta, Indonesia; Nairobi, Kenya; Karachi, Pakistan; and Baltimore, U.S. to test the beta version of the app. With support from Alwaleed Philanthropies, Search would seek to integrate youth from urban centers in the Arab world – including Saudi Arabia – in the early phases of development and soft launch.
4. Hero Culture - Peacebuilding has often alienated those
who want to advocate forcefully for their beliefs. B4H highlights the active and powerful nature of peacebuilding by drawing on popular hero language and training youth to take increasingly greater action as effective non-violent leaders. Search employed a modern marketing approach,
testing the branding and language with young Facebook users globally and with youth at the Global Forum on Youth Peace and Security in Amman in August 2015, an event that Search co-sponsored together with the United Nations.
Search then developed a demo-version of the application incorporating the feedback from youth leaders and the above core innovations.
1.3 Theory of Change
The theory of change is three-fold: 1. IF youth are involved in meaningful activities which engage their desire to belong, make a difference, and be heard, THEN their likelihood of participating in violence will decrease. B4H utilizes cutting edge digital technology to uniquely connect youth from around the globe as one community with common purpose. The B4H digital platform will be hosted both on a mobile-responsive website and native mobile application with text notifications, enabling youth with varying levels of technological access to participate as equals. A future version of the platform which supports solely mobile SMS-based participation is planned, in order to boost reach even further. Once youth are convened on one digital platform, B4H aims to shift beliefs and attitudes around violence and young people’s capacity to build peace. 2. IF young people 1) Gain greater awareness of “the other’s” common humanity, 2) Reframe their current attitudes and beliefs within conflicts, and 3) Learn constructive responses to conflict through modelling, rehearsing, and doing, THEN they will disrupt violence and use conflict as an opportunity for positive change. Battle for Humanity employs leading models of cognitive and behavior change, as well as Search’s over 30 years of practical experience in youth-led peacebuilding. The platform takes youth on a “hero journey” which incrementally facilitates the following seven self-revelations:
1. I ask “why?” 2. I respect others 3. I have a choice 4. I am a peacebuilder 5. I convene others 6. I transform relationships 7. I transform societal conflicts
Together, the revelations build core competencies necessary to build bridges across difference in culture, religion, class, and ethnicity. Revelations 1 and 2 build empathy or humanization of the ‘other.’ Revelations 3-5 build self-efficacy and empowerment. Finally, 6 and 7 build the capacity for constructive problem solving through transformative action. The
application uses both online training and real-life activities to facilitate these revelations. It will unleash a global social network of youth engaged in training and carrying out activities that incrementally build their understanding of difference and ability to deal with it constructively. 3. IF B4H 1) Appeals to young people’s identity-based motivations and 2) Incentivizes desired behaviors, THEN, young people will repeatedly use the platform as a springboard for social innovation. Forty million people play Call of Duty every month; the Avengers trailer received 50 million YouTube views in the first 12 hours. B4H draws heavily on today’s hero culture, including the structure, language, recruitment, training, and mobilization tools employed by military, sports, and activist organizations as well as the online gaming community. Like a clarion call, the movement adapts this hero language and approach to build and equip an international community of young social entrepreneurs. B4H crafts a new narrative for young people looking for something bigger than themselves to join. In addition to these appeals to identity-based motivators, Search has developed together with the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center a gamification framework that utilizes positive drivers of well-being and engagement to encourage repeat use of the platform as a catalyst for local action. B4H will offer young people global peers, tools, and resources to be heroes in their communities while maintaining the fun and adventure of a video game in real life.
1.4 Goals and Objectives
Battle for Humanity (B4H) empowers this generation to disrupt all types of violence, using conflict as an opportunity to better our world. The goal is to catalyze youth-led, locally relevant approaches to transforming conflict and building bridges via a connected, cohesive global community of millions of young social entrepreneurs for peace. The centerpiece is a digital platform which is part online training program, part social media platform, and part video game that plays out in real life. The major objectives of the next stage of development are as follows:
• Reach - To mobilize and connect an initial, critical mass of young people across international and local divides as a global community of young peacebuilders.
• Resonance - To increase the leadership capacity of these young people to act as positive change agents for tolerance and acceptance within their communities.
• Response - To catalyze local, youth-led, intercultural and interfaith dialogue and peacebuilding activities around the world.
Support from Alwaleed Philanthropies would enable us to achieve these three objectives and set the stage for the public launch of Battle for Humanity. The major activities are as follows:
1) Finalize the production of a minimum viable version of the B4H digital application 2) Initiate a controlled soft launch that engages select invited target populations of young
people 3) Implement a rapid-feedback loop through which we regularly analyze user-behavior and use
the data to iteratively improve the functionality, content, branding, and measurement frameworks
4) Prepare Battle for Humanity for public launch, including securing the first round of sponsorships
1.5 Tool and Methodology
71% of millennials use social media platforms to advocate for issues they care about. B4H leverages such new media technologies to reach and connect young people across differences. The centerpiece is the online platform where the majority of program activities originate. Youth enlist to join; receive mission activities; and win points, badges, and higher ranks with each completion.
When youth enlist, they can connect via their Facebook page, which then creates an individual profile. The profile page will include their picture, rank, friends they have recruited, allies, badges, and more. After their profile is set, they must sign onto rules of engagement for safety purposes. They are then challenged with on-going training and missions that increase in difficulty. Missions tackle a wide range of societal and global divides, including intercultural, interfaith, interethnic and intergenerational tensions. In each area, the mission activities encourage young people to build relationships and take action across lines of difference. Missions are on- and offline, ranging from sharing a video to facilitating dialogue about a controversial topic in their school or community. Three types of missions ensure youth form a well-rounded ability to build bridges and solve problems constructively:
1. Capacity building – These are training and skills-building missions.
2. Awareness raising – These missions encourage youth to spread the word about violence as an issue and young people’s positive role in peacebuilding.
3. Action taking – These missions are concrete activities in which youth increase empathy, encourage dialogue, and build bridges in their communities, both online and in person.
Missions can be ‘multi-player,’ so youth work together with friends to complete them. Youth will also connect with each other globally across faith and culture through our online communities. Every action our participants take will be connected to their social media accounts, advancing the image of youth from troublemakers to change-makers.
1.6 Target Participants
The primary target demographic is urban youth aged 13-30 living in close proximity to violence or increasing inter-communal polarization. B4H will target both youth who have had experience with violent conflict (including former child soldiers, youth emerging from juvenile detention centers or prisons, and former members of violent groups) and youth who have begun demonstrating a commitment to dealing constructively with difference (including alumni from virtual exchange programs, former participants in peacebuilding activities, and leaders of local peace clubs).
Search will access such youth demographics around the world through Search’s:
offices in 36 countries, including many of the most war-torn countries in the world, through which Search prioritizes youth engagement and mobilization, including child-soldier demobilization, prison work, and work with at-risk youth;
virtual exchange programming (the Soliya Connect Program, supported by Alwaleed Philanthropies), with 6,000 alumni in the 18-30 age range;
leadership as a founding co-chair of the UN Inter-agency working group on Youth Participation in Peacebuilding, a joint CSO, youth, and UN group with a membership of 64 organizations worldwide, including co-chair United Network of Young Peacebuilders, representing an additional 70 youth peace organizations in 45 countries, and over 20 other youth organization members;
partner institutions including a prospective partnership with the Alwaleed Philanthropies through which we would be interested to develop a cohort of diverse Saudi youth activists and participants.
2. Program Implementation
2.1 Proposed Activities
Stage 1: Design, development and preparation This proposal is for of the critical pre-launch development of Battle for Humanity (B4H). To-date, Search has developed the demonstration version of the digital platform. With support from the Alwaleed Philanthropies, Search would seek to build the beta version of the platform and initiate an iterative process of rapid response to the real-time activity and demonstrated preferences of youth participants on the platform, incrementally improving the platform to achieve the highest levels of relevance, youth enrollment, and impact. Stage 1 will thus include the rapid finalization of the minimum viable version of the platform through an outside developer and the creation of a dedicated team of existing and new staff to carry out the rapid, iterative improvements. Search will also secure implementation partners and beta tester recruitment for Stage 2. Stage 2: Full-scale beta implementation Stage 2 will entail iterative testing of the beta version of the platform, analysis of the feedback and back-end platform data from the initial testers, and improvements in functionality, content, and branding. The three cities for beta testing will be determined in Stage 1, based on the interest of additional partners and of Search program sites, but will include the three cities from among the following potential group: Jakarta, Indonesia; Nairobi, Kenya; Karachi, Pakistan; Baltimore, U.S.; Oslo, Norway; Beirut, Lebanon; Lagos, Nigeria; and Mexico City, Mexico. In each beta city, Search or its partners will recruit 20 diverse youth, engage them in a participatory conflict analysis, facilitate their testing of the platform online and through execution of missions in their communities, and gather their feedback through online rating pages and focus groups. After the engagement of this core group of participants, who would set the core culture of the platform for future participants, Search will soft launch the platform to additional youth participants, such as the youth participants of Search and its partners’ global programs, the alumni of the Soliya Connect Program (6,000 individuals), and a list of over 300 youth-led organizations around the world. Our internal development team will continue to engage in a process of iterative development, responding to youths’ activity on the platform in order to ensure the most relevant and impactful 1.0 version for launch. In response, Search will develop additional content and platform features. Search will also finalize targets for participant response as well as a measurement framework for monitoring and evaluating increased peacebuilding capacity. Stage 3: Lead up to Public Launch The public launch of Battle for Humanity will mobilize a global network of young social entrepreneurs for a more tolerant world. In preparation for this launch, in Stage 3 we will develop marketing assets for a global launch, including refining the Platform and Event sponsorship options shared previously with the Alwaleed Philanthropies and included in attachment to this proposal . Search will also refine the business plan for B4H’s sustainable growth and will finalize all content and functional capacity of the platform.
Figure 1: Workplan Timeline
Month 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Stage 1: Design, Development, & Preparation
Finalize beta platform with external development firm.
Hire new staff, including internal development team.
Secure partners for beta-testing cities.
Map youth populations in beta cities.
Stage 2: Full-scale Beta Implementation
Recruit vanguard youth in beta cities.
Participatory conflict analysis with beta testers.
Facilitate beta testing on platform.
Focus groups with beta testers; Analyze feedback and data collected from beta testers.
Respond to beta feedback with technical fixes and changed language as needed.
Develop and incorporate additional content, including trainings and other missions.
Develop measurement framework for monitoring and evaluating shifts in attitudes and behaviors.
Develop targets for user engagement.
Soft launch B4H to include other youth not participating in guided beta testing.
Iterative development and technical fixes, responding to youth activity on the platform in order to ensure relevance and impact. Produce version 1.0 of the application.
Stage 3: Lead up to Grand Launch
Develop business plan for sustained funding streams anticipating grand launch growth.
Develop marketing campaign.
Consult legal advice on intellectual property rights and applicable regulations in operating locations.
2.2 Engaging Saudi Youth
We plan to test the platform in those places where we already have a presence on the ground or deep partnerships with those who do. This allows us to recruit and engage a diverse demographic of youth populations crossing socioeconomic, ethnic, and religious lines within the target of urban youth aged 13-30 who experience proximity to violence or inter-communal polarization. Such local diversity is essential both for growing the base of young users and, more fundamentally, for connecting youth across a range of differences in order to advance their bridge-building capacities. Should the Alwaleed Philanthropies be interested in providing the funds needed for the next phase of development, we would be eager to explore a deeper partnership that would enable the engagement of Saudi youth in the beta-testing and soft launch activities. Alwaleed Philanthropies could either serve as the local implementing partner, recruiting beta-testers, facilitating their
engagement, and gathering their feedback, or work with Search to identify a local implementing partner who meets our criteria. In either case, Saudi youth would engage by:
participating in the Youth Advisory Council, which provides regular feedback on development choices (1-2 nominated, influential young Saudi leaders);
engaging in a participatory conflict analysis of Riyadh’s youth, including drivers of polarization (20 beta-tester youth);
testing the beta version of the platform, including individual and group engagement in various missions available on the platform (20 beta-tester youth);
providing feedback through focus groups and in-platform ratings on the content, branding, and functionality of the platform and its relevance to Saudi youth (20 beta-tester youth);
providing continuing leadership on the platform and proposing new missions relevant to the Saudi context (20 beta-tester youth);
participating in the soft launch, which will provide data for the rapid feedback loop of iterative improvements to the platform (unlimited number of youth); and
competing in a recruitment drive in anticipation of B4H’s public launch (beta-tester and soft launch youth, activity is part of the next phase of B4H not covered under this proposal).
This proposed partnership, if successful in the view of both Search and Alwaleed Philanthropies, could evolve beyond the current phase of development into a deeper partnership for subsequent stages, including the recruitment drive, public launch, and roll-out of the platform in certain regions including, but not limited to, the Middle East and North Africa region.
2.3 Gender Integration
B4H’s online platform designed to engage both young women and young men. Built into the back-end metrics is the ability to track activities by gender, even within certain locations. Thus, through ongoing monitoring, Search will be able to identify those missions most attractive to young women and to young men and ensure there is an appropriate balance. 40% of the Youth Advisory Council to the project is female, including one of the two youth co-leaders of the council. Young women also comprise 38% of the pilot youth identified to-date, with just over half of participants in Kenya being female. These key female participants are leaders in the project by nature of their positions from the beginning and will help not only ensure B4H develops in a way that is attractive and relevant to the issues of young women but also that future, interested young women immediately see other females participating and feel welcome. After review by Search staff in Pakistan and Kenya, the branding of B4H was overhauled away from male-dominated imagery. For example, the platform now features a young woman as the face of the movement instead of the original male face. This is especially important since technology and social media often disproportionately engage young men. The pilot and beta testing of the platform will provide further feedback on the relevance of the branding and language to each gender. With regard to function, the platform is designed in such a way that young women who sometimes
have limited social access or ability to gain peacebuilding skills because their lives are centered on the home have an opportunity to participate and gain empowerment. Many missions can be carried out solely online or with family members, enabling such young women to increase tolerance, learn bridge-building competencies, and expand their social support network locally and globally. Concerning content, a series of missions, including some at every rank on the platform, will focus on gender issues, such as female employment, women’s rights, and gender-based violence.
3. Impact and Sustainability
3.1 Monitoring and Evaluation
As an online platform, B4H will provide Search with a significant volume of data to track outcomes and promote continuous learning and improvement. This requires careful attention at the outset to
both the structure of the young user’s journey on the platform as well as the back-end metrics built into the platform in order for Search to track data far beyond demographics, such as user activity. On the front end, for example, one intended outcome is that young people take the missions, lessons, and support they receive from the virtual platform and apply them to their real lives. In order to track and measure this, Search will build a gamified culture of visibility and sharing into the application, so young people are encouraged to share stories of their efforts through journal entries, short videos, and photos. Through the uploading of these documents, participants will mark each mission they complete, and Search will verify the quality of users’ responses as well as incentivize youth to hold each other accountable. On the back-end, Search can track completion statistics for each mission by gender, location, and age, as well as intersections of these demographics, in order to respond to the demonstrated preferences of the youth participants around types of missions
and issues that are relevant to them. This is especially important for adapting the missions available in each language used on the platform and for encouraging a diversity of gender, ages, and locations. Because this is an innovative project, targets for outcomes, such as number of users, diversity of users, anticipated impact on peacebuilding capacities, and amount of user engagement on the platform cannot be easily anticipated. Thus, target-outputs for the period to be covered by this proposed grant include the development of user and engagement targets, a peacebuilding evaluation framework, and a refined gamification framework. Targets will be determined in response to initial usage data from beta testing and soft launch participants.
Figure 2: Monitoring and Evaluation Plan
Objectives Activities Outputs Outcomes Indicators with Definitions Means of
Verification
Reach To mobilize and connect an initial, critical mass of young people across international and local divides as a global community of young peace entrepreneurs.
Iterative development of beta and 1.0 version of B4H application
Version 1.0 B4H built and available on at least 1 operating system
Breadth Critical mass of young people engaged as platform users necessary to secure sustainable growth of B4H
# of users Current estimate: 50,000 youth from at least 7 countries. * User is any participant who downloads and/or signs on to the application
Application downloads and/or website sign ins
Facilitate beta testing and soft launch of the platform to additional populations
140 beta testers engaged on the platform
Prepare for Phase III, grand launch of B4H, which will exponentially expand reach
1 marketing campaign created # of engaged users Current estimate: 17,000 youth (based on industry standard conversion and attrition rates) * Engaged user is any participant who uses the application 10 or more times
Back-end activity data metrics
Develop business plan to sustain growth in Phase III
1 business plan
Facilitate beta testing and soft launch of the platform to additional populations
Version 1.0 available in at least 3 countries
Depth Diverse participants, with special attention to ensure inclusion of female users and younger users
% of users and engaged users by age, gender, and location * Younger users are those under 18 years of age.
Demographic data from user profiles
Resonance To increase the leadership capacity of these young people to act as
Build back-end metrics for heavy reporting capability into the platform
Reports on activity (most popular missions by location, gender, and age) easily accessible to staff
Relevance Functionality and content are responsive to young people’s demonstrated preferences through their activity on the platform
% increase in average rating of missions, disaggregated by location, age, and gender * Missions are discrete activities users can accomplish on and
After mission online rating page required for participants to complete each
Conduct focus groups with initial beta testers
14 focus groups with beta testers transcribed and translated into English
positive change agents for tolerance and acceptance within their communities.
Regular analysis of the preferences of youth participants according to their activity and ratings of missions on the platform
Regular reports and documented learning
offline, which typically require uploaded means of completion verification
mission
Content developed for the platform
100 missions for youth to participate in, including beta tester and user-generated missions
Iterative development and technical fixes, responding to youth activity on the platform
Multiple, improved versions of the application released
Framework for measuring and evaluating peacebuilding and bridge-building capacity to be created based on beta testing participants’ usage data.
1 peacebuilding capacity evaluation framework
Impact Shifts in beliefs, skills, attitudes, and behavior among engaged users, leading to 3 core competencies: 1) Empathy, 2) Self-efficacy, and 3) Constructive problem-solving
Progress made by engaged users on: • Peace index of skills, attitudes,
and behaviors necessary to build bridges across difference
• 7 incremental revelations in the hero journey
Each mission is scored by the top 3 relevant capacities from the peace index and the most relevant revelation
Response To catalyze local, youth-led, intercultural and interfaith dialogue and peacebuilding activities around the world.
Refine gamification framework based on psychological principles through real world testing during soft launch
Gamification framework that incentivizes desired behaviors, such as: repeat engagement, completion of tasks, social sharing, recruitment, supporting and keeping accountable others.
Quantity Average amount of youth participation in the platform is high
# of visits per participant, average visit length, # of missions completed, rewards gained, privileges achieved, # of groups created so friends can complete tasks together, and drop-off points
Back-end activity data metrics
Content developed for the platform
100 missions available in 3 types: 1) Capacity building, 2) Awareness raising, and 3) Action taking in order to catalyze well-rounded youth-led activities.
Quality High quality of youth engagement on the platform including actions taken in real life and reported on the platform
General depth of participant response, low levels of mal-use and cheating * Mal-use includes trolling and other negative use of the platform * Cheating is any action taken to receive points with completing the required task as it was intended.
Uploaded documents (photos, videos, journal entries) demonstrating completion of each mission
3.2 Next Phase Planning
The requested grant would lead up to the public launch of B4H, which will seek to trigger global engagement and contribute powerfully to a nascent youth-led peacebuilding movement. Activities include:
• Search and its partners will develop a short launch video as a centerpiece to the marketing campaign to be developed with the support requested.
• Search will translate all content on the B4H application into 3 languages in addition to English.
• Up to launch, the initial youth in beta-cities will compete in a user recruitment drive. • The launch marketing campaign will be executed, gaining global movement status and
sustainable organic growth of the platform. This will include mainly social media advertising but may also include traditional advertising in key locations.
• Search and its partners will organize simultaneous launch events in the respective launch cities around the world. Youth participating in the soft launch will be incentivized to recruit and help increase attendance at these launch events.
• The version 1.0 of B4H will be launched for public access in four languages. • As the user base grows, Search will continue to develop measurement frameworks to
increase the relevance of missions to various demographics, including adding new languages and accepting user-generated missions for general consumption.
• On gaining a critical mass of users, Search will be better positioned to achieve sustainable user growth and to pursue funding that is self-sustaining, including corporate sponsorship through multiple sponsorship options already developed and to be refined over the period to be covered by the requested grant.
• Search will then pursue in-person leadership summits and seed grants for the highest ranked participants to launch social enterprises in their communities.
3.3 Sustainability
Platform While the B4H platform will always require back-end support to ensure quality and functionality, Search intends for the majority of content on the platform to eventually be user-generated, making B4H a truly youth-led platform feeding and supporting a youth-led peacebuilding movement. Youth who gain access to advanced ranks will have the ability to submit their own mission ideas for consideration to be used on the platform, highlighting them as the authors. They will also eventually gain the privilege, which is incentivized by rewards, to either approve or disapprove other user’s photos, videos, or other documents used to prove their completion of a task. Thus, leaders on the platform have the responsibility for ensuring the users’ accountability to the community. This way, Search hopes the content in the long-term
will be mainly user-generated as youth feel increasing ownership over the missions, the community, and the movement. Content As the content becomes increasingly user-generated, it will naturally adapt to changing cultural trends and issues, both locally and globally. Content is able to adapt to multiple local contexts simultaneously because at each level, youth can choose from a pool of activities to accept those which are most relevant to them. In this way B4H becomes sustainable by adapting over time to remain relevant to young people’s interests, concerns, and needs. This adaptation, while enabled in great part by user-generated content with no assistance, will also be supported by partnerships with research centers, such as universities who are interested in studying large and available data sets for various purposes. Once we attain a critical mass of active users, we can initiate research partnerships that explore the question “What most attracts and supports young people to engage constructively and non-violently?” This contrasts significantly with the now overwhelming resources devoted to and ubiquitous inquiries into “What makes youth turn violent?” In this way, rather than continuing to treat youth as a problem to be solved, for whom our highest goal is to dissuade from violence, B4H will help drive a research agenda that promotes a more accurate view of the majority of youth as positive actors in their communities and encourages governments, foundations, and civil-society organizations to support and engage youth as such.
Participants The gamification component of B4H will motivate repeat engagement, ensuring youth continue to participate beyond the timeframe of the grant. Youth who gain access to the third rank have the ability to form squads, encouraging them to recruit their friends to join, so they can accomplish missions together and gain greater incentives. Through the opportunity for youth to choose their own missions in their local communities, create their own squads with friends, and ultimately generate their own missions, they will become the leaders of the movement, embedded in their local context, adapting the platform to address the key issues driving polarization and youth participation in violence in their communities. For this reason pilot and beta-testing youth undergo a participatory conflict analysis to increase their capacity for identifying key drivers, as they will become the initial leaders of the movement. B4H will also have global challenges, opportunities to challenge people in different countries to accomplish the same mission during the same day or week and compete for points, and so B4H
will mobilize youth on a global scale with a sense of unified community. Financial We have developed a plan for seeking self-sustaining streams of funding to develop and maintain B4H through corporate sponsors. The business plan will help ensure financial sustainability is considered from the perspective of multiple potential outcomes, including overshooting or undershooting our participant goals.
Search has made brief, introductory presentations of Battle for Humanity to representatives of 29 corporations. Common responses among corporate representatives included that initiative was “inspiring,” “I think this could be the next big thing,” and “I can't wait to show this to my kids.” These initial presentations have led to follow up conversations with several high level corporate representatives. The most advanced conversations include:
Jesse Schultz from the Social Innovation Team at Warby Parker to discuss potential sponsorship through B4H branded product development;
AT&T representative Marvy Moore, Vice President, Market Development, which led to a meeting with LaTara Harris, Regional Director – External & Legislative Affairs to discuss potential sponsorship as well as product giveaways;
John Rego, Vice President of Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility, Sony Entertainment who asked to schedule a meeting with Search about Battle for Humanity after an organization-wide restructuring.
Notwithstanding these positive inquiries, Search leadership determined that seeking corporate sponsorship at this stage, before a core community of youth have been engaged on the platform, would make it much more difficult to develop the community engagement and ownership of the platform that is ultimately critical to its success and which will make it much more attractive to sponsors at a later stage, i.e. in 12-18 months. Thus, we have scaled back our outreach to prospective corporate sponsors while we seek the necessary support for the next stage of development which will prepare B4H for public launch.
4. Institutional Capacity
4.1 Organizational Capacity
Founded in 1982, Search for Common Ground’s vision is a more just world marked by greater collaboration and less violence. To that end, our mission is to transform the way the world deals with conflict, away from adversarial approaches, toward cooperative solutions. Search for Common Ground (Search) has more than thirty years of experience transforming social and interpersonal conflicts from destructive to constructive. Using innovative tools and working at different levels of society, Search engages in pragmatic long-term processes of conflict transformation. Our toolbox includes media production – radio, TV, film and print – as well as mediation and facilitation, training, community organizing, sports, theatre and music. Search promotes both individual and institutional change and is committed to measuring the results of our work and increasing our effectiveness through monitoring and evaluation. Search maintains headquarters in Brussels, Belgium and Washington, DC, with field operations currently out of 59 offices in 36 countries across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Search’s approximately 615 staff and about 70 consultants and interns worldwide are mainly national staff working in their home countries (89%), with approximately 11% ex-patriates. Search makes long term commitments to the countries in which we work, to prevent violent conflict and foster the culture and institutions that facilitate inclusive problem-solving and decision-making. Search has established organizational capacity in developing youth as leaders for peacebuilding throughout the world. Search’s leadership in engaging children and youth extends from our Co-
Chairmanship of the UN Working Group on Children and Youth in Armed Conflict to our on-the-ground training and mobilization. Our Children and Youth Programs employ an innovative, multi-pronged approach, incorporating elements of education, voice, action, partnerships, and policy. In all of our youth projects, Search helps young people show the world that they are leaders for positive social change. Since its inception, Search has also consistently been at the cutting edge of using new technologies and cultural innovations for peacebuilding. For example, Search pioneered the use of call-in radio shows in the 1980’s to increase objectivity in media, manage rumors, and reduce reprisal violence. After decades of drama television production, Search facilitated the first reality TV shows for peace in the last five years, spanning the political process, by having Palestinian youth vote for their next ‘President,’ and economic issues, through an entrepreneur competition in Rwanda. Recently, Search has incorporated SMS into early warning systems, crowd-mapping of violence prior to elections in Nigeria, and social media facilitated forums for youth throughout the Middle East.
4.2 Partners
Founding partners for Battle for Humanity include:
• B4H Youth Advisory Council is composed of 12 youth ages 17-29 representing 8 countries from U.S., Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. One female and one male youth leader help organize the group. All members are influential in their communities and passionate about positive youth leadership. The Youth Council meets regularly to provide guidance and feedback on the direction of Battle for Humanity, including branding, content, and functionality of the platform.
• Partnership for Change is a Norwegian NGO aiming to contribute to socially, environmentally, and financially sustainable local communities. Their mission is to empower individuals, in particular women and youth, through education and job creation to build socially, environmentally, and financially sustainable communities.
• Cure Violence reduces violence globally using disease control and behavior change methods. Cure Violence launched in one of the most violent communities in Chicago and was quick to produce results reducing shootings by 67% in its first year. Cure Violence primarily provides communities the training and technical assistance to implement violence prevention.
• The Global Brain is a creative innovation agency dedicated to purpose-driven work. They are an assembly of strategic, creative thinkers and change-makers. They work collectively to promote brands, causes and NGOs towards a common goal of a sustainable and socially responsible future.
• Games for Change facilitates the creation of social impact games to serve as critical tools in humanitarian and educational efforts. They aim to leverage entertainment and engagement for social good.
In addition, partners likely to participate in soft launch of platform include: • United States Institute of Peace • United Network of Young Peacebuilders, and its 70 participating youth organizations • Over 200 additional, mapped youth-led organizations around the world • Organizations in which beta-testing youth also participate, such as Karachi Youth
Support Network, the Rotaract Club, and Karachi Empowering Youth in Pakistan
5. Budget
5.1 Base Budget
Requested
Funds SAR
3.75SAR
1 Project Director $9,780.00 36,675.00SAR
2 Senior Program Manager $60,000.00 225,000.00SAR
3 Finance, Logistics, and Research Coordinator $45,833.33 171,875.00SAR
4 Monitoring & Evaluation Support $9,360.00 35,100.00SAR
5 Senior Creative Manager $60,000.00 225,000.00SAR
6 Communications Support $6,240.00 23,400.00SAR
7 Back-end Developer $91,666.67 343,750.00SAR
8 Front-end Developers $165,000.00 618,750.00SAR
9 UX Designer $67,500.00 253,125.00SAR
10 Information Technology Support $8,760.00 32,850.00SAR
Subtotal $524,140.00 SAR 1,965,525.00
Fringe benefits @22% $115,310.80 SAR 432,415.50
Subtotal Personnel $639,450.80 SAR 2,397,940.50
II. Activities
1 Content Development $7,250.00 SAR 27,187.50
2 Beta Testing $84,000.00 SAR 315,000.00
3 Marketing Campaign Consultant $20,000.00 SAR 75,000.00
4 Site Development $25,000.00 SAR 93,750.00
Subtotal Activities $136,250.00 SAR 510,937.50
III. Travel
1 Airfare $15,300.00 SAR 57,375.00
2 Ground Travel $1,800.00 SAR 6,750.00
3 PerDiem $2,000.00 SAR 7,500.00
4 Accomodations $3,500.00 SAR 13,125.00
Subtotal Travel $22,600.00 SAR 84,750.00
IV. Equipment
1 Digital Platform Site Hosting $9,000.00 SAR 33,750.00
2 Computers and other office equipment $8,000.00 SAR 30,000.00
3 Office Space $12,000.00 SAR 45,000.00
Subtotal Equipment $29,000.00 SAR 108,750.00
I.Requested
Funds USDPersonnel
5.2 Saudi Engagement Supplemental Budget
V. Contracts
1 Development Firm $100,000.00 SAR 375,000.00
2 Legal Services $20,000.00 SAR 75,000.00
Subtotal Contracts $120,000.00 SAR 450,000.00
Subtotal $947,300.80 3,552,378.00SAR
VI. Overhead $210,490.24 SAR 789,338.39
Total $1,157,791.04 4,341,716.39SAR
VII. Saudi Youth Engagement
1 Local Staff Salaries $19,500.00 SAR 73,125.00
2 Youth mapping & recruitment $750.00 SAR 2,812.50
3 Participatory Analysis $1,000.00 SAR 3,750.00
4 Beta Testing and Focus Groups $2,000.00 SAR 7,500.00
5 Soft Launch recruitment $1,000.00 SAR 3,750.00
6 Meetings - local partner & B4H leadership $13,000.00 SAR 48,750.00
Subtotal Contract $37,250.00 SAR 139,687.50
Subtotal $984,550.80 3,692,065.50SAR
VIII. Overhead $218,767.19 SAR 820,376.95
Total $1,203,317.99 4,512,442.45SAR
