SEARCH: Banking on the Currency of Trust, Integrity and Honesty 16 Years and Counting

It is a pleasing honour to offer the key note remarks at this event that marks the 16^thanniversary since the founding of the Special Emergency Activity to Restore Children’sHope (SEARCH).

SEARCH started in Sanniquellie, Nimba County as an idea bore out of courage and a deep sense of conviction during a difficult period in Liberia’s history.

More than a decade and a half ago, working for an international charity, I was part of a team of trainers involved with training community based leaders and members about children’s rights. The theory of change was that improved understanding of children’s human rights amongst members of society would lead to less violation and abuse in an environment of ongoing conflict, where these abuses and rights violations were widespread. Many children were recruited as soldiers into fighting forces, were separated from families and faced deprivation from basic needs and services.

Ms. Sondah Geepea Wilson approached our team with her idea to organize a community based intervention which she coined Liberian United for Children’s Rights. Ms. Sondah Geepea Wilson pursued her ideas, with support from others, in the process overcoming many barriers – to achieve today, an organization with an established track record of success and field activities in multiple locations including Montserado, Nimba, Maryland and Cape Mount Counties of Liberia.

 

Sondah’s experience and the success of SEARCH  as an organization is an answer to the question of lack of  or limited local capacity.To this question, SEARCH has shown that local capacities exist. Efforts must be made to meet local actors and their actions where they are and to support them develop and achieve their fullest potential.

I would like to pay tribute to Sondah and her team. In today’s Liberia, Sondah’s effort is an answer to another question – the question of leadership needed across all levels of society to transform problems into opportunities and solutions. SEARCH has contributed a new meaning to leadership. Through their example, leadership can be described as translating ideas into concrete sustainable actions through the mobilization of people and resources to achieving results.

From this experience, there are number of lessons that can be learnt for development actors, both local and international.

When positive ideas are given the chance to form and develop into concrete positive actions, they can transform lives. Undoubtedly, there are countless stories of children, communities and adults that are the direct beneficiaries of the activities of SEARCH.

Yet, ideas start small. They take a life of their own and with supportive environment, determined leadership, ideas can transform society. A society advances if it gives possibilities for good ideas to be nurtured and to flourish. Ideas regardless of the age, ethnic origin, gender, geographical region of their bearers, must be given a chance to flourish.

Too often, many positive ideas are not given the least chance to start.

When a society kills most of its positive ideas, it keeps searching, often from outside for what it thinks it does not have. Yet a society would advance much further if it utilizes the collective sum of its good ideas.

I would like to offer few suggestions as you move forward in the coming years, in pursuit of your organization’s development.

·        It is important that SEARCH remains relevant to the needs of the stakeholders in an ever changing context. Never separate from your core purpose. Success must challenge you to achieve even much more.

·        Develop your niche and through constant track record of success be known and defined by it. SEARCH should be defined as an organization designed to succeed because it commits resources and learning to the areas of its strategic focus and direction.

·        SEARCH should develop new and innovative partnerships. This may require veering outside the traditional type of partnerships to explore for example partnerships with private sector, academia and networks in and outside Liberia.

·        SEARCH should pursue financial sustainability through exploration of diverse financing modalities. While this is important, SEARCH should continue to bank also on the currency of trust, integrity, honesty that has been its hallmark.

I would like to conclude by congratulating you on your success, and to wish you all the best in the years ahead.

 

Charles Lawrence lives and works in Liberia and writes in his personal capacity.