Creating civilian space for strengthened community-based protection in Western Bahr El Ghazal, South Sudan The project seeks to support community-based protection mechanisms in Raja county. NP is committing to address communities’ protection risks by enhancing coping mechanisms, community preparedness and organisation. Proposed activities are designed to respond to immediate security needs of civilians, while supporting resilience, adaptive capacity and recovery of communities from violence and insecurity. This project focuses on development of local capacities, of local civil society, CBOs or other existing or nascent community protection mechanisms in Raja. Raja’s protection profile combines issues arising out of the national level conflict and inter-community conflict. NP has conducted a recent assessment mission to Raja, and has existing field presence in Wau that can act in a support function. Training workshops on protection will be specifically tailored to each CBO or community group’s needs and protection profile of the locations they are working in. Emphasised focus on community structures and CBOs aims to leverage existing capacity and further develop to meet contextual demands, while enhancing linkage across demographics. This explicitly targets developing and enhancing locally sustainable protection mechanisms, building on and complementing local knowledge and mechanisms with skill-based trainings, workshops and contingency planning. The range of activities may include trainings and workshops that cover but are not limited to the following: risk and vulnerability mapping, basic violence prevention activities, understanding conflict, nonviolence, UCP, protection mainstreaming including community-led facilitation of access to services. Workshops will be designed with specific lens that seek durable solutions and establish sustainable mechanisms within community structures, based on joint assessment and analysis of their needs. These will equip community members with skills and abilities necessary for self-protection and also to promote and catalyze collective action that strengthen the space traditionally held by civil society between the community and local authorities and duty bearers. Overall activities will be implemented in all locations static and roving and aim to strengthen, re-build social capital, promote collective action and catalyze positive social change through protection efforts, all in an environment of divisions due to perceived power differentials with an ethnic bias. Provision of EWER assessments and trainings with community members specifically seek to ensure communities are able to react to conflict situations in a methodical way that reduces consequences and potential severity of forced displacement through preparedness but also through improved conflict mitigation. The intervention will be NP’s endeavor to identify and strengthen EWER mechanisms that can prevent escalation of violence through stronger dialogue and mediation practices. Activities are participatory and conducted jointly with community-based structures and will seek to address inherent vulnerabilities of specific groups of the population as well as gaps or risks faced by such community-based mechanisms in the conduct of relevant protection activity. Target groups of this joint activity with civil society and CBOs will play a key participating role in community consultations to ensure their needs and concerns are addressed effectively. NP has a wealth of experience in community-based programming and has been implementing protection programming in WBeG with static presence in Wau town and 3 IPMT missions to Raja in 2017 amp 2018. The proposed project will be static in Raja town, comprised of 4 local staff and 3 international staff, and monthly roving missions to surrounding areas e.g. Deim Zubir. Given the shifting context and dynamic in Raja county, NP will adopt a light-touch approach and presence in delivering the community protection programme with the capacity building strand of this project focusing on Raja town to maximise impa