United Nations Development Programme

PROJECT LESSONS-LEARNED REPORT

Total length of report: 2-3 pages.
Please refer to the Deliverable Description for more information on the purpose and use of this report

Project Title: Innovation

Country: Cyprus

Related CPAP Outcome

Project Description and Key Lessons-Learned
Brief description of context Please give a brief description of the country context.
Historically, it has been challenging to involve ordinary citizens in the
Cyprus peace process. UNDP’s projects over the past 15 years have had a
transformative effect on the role of organized civil society, by creating
opportunities for organisations in both communities to work together
towards inter-communal cooperation. However, this approach has still
been weak in going beyond “the usual suspects“, and embracing a much
broader and inclusive constituency, especially at the local community
level. Faced with this challenge, UNDP-ACT decided to capitalise on the
opportunities that the rapidly changing technological landscape presents
and to utilise the smart technologies which play such an important role in
the everyday lives of most people in Cyprus.
Brief description of project A short description of the project should be provided here.
The project used two innovation tools to address this problem.
A. The Mahallae digital headquarters, facilitates the exchange of
knowledge and experience in civic engagement, social cohesion, and the
creation of a peaceful society. Mahallae is designed for use by not only
NGO practitioners, researchers and businesses but also the everyday
citizen. Rooted in the perspective that empowering citizens to contribute
their unique perspectives and expertise will open up spaces for
transforming today’s conflicts and challenges, Mahallae is an innovation
platform designed around 3 main digital spaces. i) civic mapping ii)
Challenges iii) Interactive tools.
B. The Social Cohesion and reconciliation Index (SCORE) index is
designed to assess two components of peace in society. The first of these
is social cohesion which refers to the quality of coexistence between
individuals within their own group and the institutions that surround
them. The second component is reconciliation which refers to an on-
going effort for establishing peace between groups that were previously
engaged in an event of dispute or conflict. SCORE provides data-driven
conflict analysis and uses a methodology which can provide predictive
assessments for a given political outcome.
Key project successes Please describe what has worked well.
A. Mahallae: Since its launch in 2014 the Mahallae platform has already
changed the way UNDP-ACT does business with civil society
organisations in Cyprus. This has shifted the emphasis from grant giving
to the tried and tested NGOs, to an approach which has democratised the
range of Cypriot organisations wishing to be involved in reconciliation
projects. It has allowed UNDP-ACT to engage directly with citizens and
provide them opportunities to be part of the peace process. This user-
centred approach has successfully identified new partners with new
perspectives and has enabled citizens to become not only beneficiaries,
but also contributors to peacebuilding efforts and co-creators of
UNDP POPP – Project Management Lessons Learned Report

innovative solutions to social problems which affect all communities in

Cyprus.

Key results include:

• The platform has run a series of “challenges” which sought to
address a number of development issues in a fast, innovative and
transparent way. Thematic areas include women and dialogue, shaping a
common vision for the future and inclusion through diversity. The
challenges process has solicited over 100 locally owned solutions from a
broad range of citizen experts and has enabled UNDP to expand the circle
of people wishing to contribute to rapprochement across the Green Line,
including young people who had never previously engaged with any form
of peace building activities.

• Mahallae has attracted significant interest on an international

level. In April 2014 the team presented Mahallae to an audience of over
250 people from more than 30 countries at the Build Peace through
technology conference at the MIT Media Lab in Boston. This led to the
formation of a new partnership with Build Up, the organizers of the Build
Peace conference and UNDP-ACT was selected as the hosts for Build
Peace 2015. By welcoming some of the most prolific global thinkers in
this field to Nicosia in April 2015 the Cyprus team will be in key position to
attract other new partners and potential donors.

• The Mahallae platform was scaled up to became the vehicle for a

cross-regional competition in RBAS and RBEC in the context of UNDP’s
work in the area of governance and peacebuilding. The tech for Citizen
Engagement challenge attracted 73 submissions from 20 countries across
the Arab States and ECIS regions – demonstrating a need and appetite for
these types of open innovation processes. 10 shortlisted ideas are
currently on the Mahallae platform where they are open to community
feedback and endorsements. This new way of doing business has
enabled UNDP to quickly “take the pulse “of emerging and current issues
on the ground and to source out new potential partners to address those
issues. In addition this cross-regional challenge will followed by a Global
Challenge which will be launched shortly after the Build Peace
Conference.

• The Mahallae platform has attracted a significant number of users

when compared with other corporate online tools. In just 1 year Mahallae
has attracted a total number of 400,000 page views by more than 13,000
unique visitors. Young people aged 25-34 represent the largest visitor
group at 48%. Over 2,500 people have created user profiles and although
based in Cyprus, Mahallae also attracts users from the region and
beyond.

B. SCORE: What emerged is a tool which can help predict the specific
types of interventions that could leverage political accommodation and
the peaceful settlement of disputes. Thus SCORE uses statistical
modelling techniques to a) map social cohesion and reconciliation in
society, b) monitor over time the levels of these two indicators, and c)
make predictions on how the levels of the two could be affected in
different hypothetical situations. In Cyprus and Bosnia, where the SCORE
has been implemented the tool has attempted to identify those areas
which could potentially transform a community’s understanding and
perception of conflict and trigger the process of reconciliation.
In February 2015 the SCORE index was presented to a meeting of Cypriot
decision-makers, foreign diplomats and peacebuilding NGOs in Cyprus.
The mapping of social cohesion and reconciliation by various

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UNDP POPP – Project Management Lessons Learned Report

demographic indicators such as geographical district and gender, can

provide a useful basis for targeting interventions. In Cyprus the SCORE
results show that greater civic representation and guaranteed political
stability are positive drivers for a political settlement, which social and
cultural distance are the main negative drivers. SCORE results can
identify the most impactful entry points for programme development, as
well as produce the basis for evidenced policy recommendations. The
project has also created an interactive data-visualisation web-based
platform for the SCORE results: http://www.scoreforpeace.org/. An
international SCORE conference will take place on 24 April 2015 as part of
the Build Peace conference which is being jointly organised by UNDP-
ACT and the international NGO Build Up.
After presenting the SCORE to the UN Good Offices, the SASG indicated
the need to use the findings to inform the UN’s strategy for managing the
negotiations, with a hint that he would like to see the Cyprus SCORE run
again in 2015 and 2016. Both Chief negotiators have told me that they will
also use the SCORE results in formulating their negotiation positions.
The SCORE has been implemented in Cyprus, Bosnia and Nepal. The
USAID office in Sarajevo wishes to run the SCORE over a 5-year period as
a major monitoring exercise of USAID interventions. Interest has been
expressed by donors to run the SCORE in several countries including
Syria, Mali, Tunisia and Ukraine.
Project shortcomings and Please describe what have been the main challenges of this project?
solutions The project results were fully achieved and expectations were exceeded.
The main challenge of the project was the research and development
phase which took time, while building the capacity of the local Cypriot
implementing organisation.
Lessons learned Please think about and describe the key lesson(s) learned from this project.
The main lesson learned was the need to find a strong technical partner
that could be relied upon to build the technological infrastructure for the
innovation tools. Problems with the supplier of technical expertise proved
to be a major problem in getting both innovation tools completed on time.
Follow-up Actions Based on the Final Project Review, include a brief record of decisions and
conclusions related to follow-up actions
A. Mahallae has been donated to the University of Cyprus, who will utilise
it for knowledge management projects based on reconciliation and inter-
communal cooperation.
B. UNDP is currently engaged in a corporate discussion about the wider
use of the SCORE Index inside the organisation and replication by
country offices. The rights to use and replicate the index has been given
to the Cypriot NGO, the Centre for Sustainable Peace and Democratic
Development (SeeD).

Project Information
Award ID: 00076232
CO Focal Points: Christopher Louise
Partners: Centre for Sustainable Peace and Democratic Development (SeeD).
Project resources: www.scoreforpeace.org www.mahallae.org
Report prepared by: Christopher Louise
Date: 9 December 2015