Three years later, given its success in the region, the Peace Development Fund made a strategic decision to target a significant amount of its grants and training resources to the southern part of the country. The Peace Development Fund launched a community organizing funding initiative in South Carolina, providing multiyear grants and training in organizational development, to strengthen the ability of under-organized communities to develop stronger programs and sustainable organizational structures. South Carolina, like many other southern states, suffers from the challenging combination of poverty and political disengagement.
Many southern communities are subject to severe environmental and economic exploitation.
The Peace Development Fund's commitment is to work with grassroots groups in the region, strengthening their organizational capacity to work successfully against these conditions. In the past eleven years, the Exchange Project has trained numerous community organizations all across the Southeast. And the demand for more involvement continues to grow each year. While we are proud of the Peace Development Fund's track record, our understanding of what it takes to build a movement for social change compels us to find ways to institutionalize the body of knowledge, wisdom, and experience it takes to build sustainable organizations. We are convinced that one of the best ways to do this is by creating forums and processes to allow the leadership capacity within a region to emerge spontaneously.