Search for Common Ground

From its website:

Founded in 1982, Search for Common Ground works to transform the way the world deals with conflict - away from adversarial approaches and towards collaborative problem solving. We work with local partners to find culturally appropriate means to strengthen societies' capacity to deal with conflicts constructively: to understand the differences and act on the commonalities.[1]

Operations

Angolan elections

On 24 July 2006, Paul Bonicelli, deputy assistant administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance, discussed the upcoming Angolan elections in front of a US Congressional panel:

Bonicelli said the Bush administration is supporting the electoral process with a $3 million grant, in addition to the close to $8 million already devoted to supporting democracy programs in the southern African nation since 2001.
In Angola, he explained, USAID works through American nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), such as the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), IFES (formerly the International Foundation for Election Systems) and Search for Common Ground, which partner with local NGOs to train election workers.
They have provided technical and project management training, as well as voter education materials, to six civil-society electoral networks in the provinces of Luanda, Benguela, Huambo, Bie, Uige and Lund-Sul, emphasizing voter registration, democratic principles and citizen rights and "promoting political dialogue." They also are providing training to Angolan political parties on codes of conduct and dispute resolution techniques, Bonicelli said.[2]

Murky chapter

Helena Cobban is a journalist with the Christian Science Monitor, and someone who Prof. Juan Cole regards as an important analyst of the Middle East. Cobban relates:

In 1991, when I was working at a Washington DC-based conflict-resolution organization called Search for Common Ground, helping them set up their first project in the Middle East, Ze'ev was one of the first people I invited to join the project; and he was immediately eager to do so. I had already, sometime before that, introduced him to Ziad Abu Amr, the serious Palestinian political scientist and public intellectual who was the Foreign Minister in the Palestinians' recent unity government (and prior to that, Culture Minister in the government that Mahmoud Abbas headed as PM, back in 2003.) Ze'ev and Ziad proved to be two very important pillars of the project as it became launched.
In spring 1993, I felt obliged to leave SCG because of a serious breach of trust committed against me and the integrity of our project by the organization's president. (This, in an organization in which trust-building was the essence of our work...)^[3]

Principals

• John Marks -- President and Founder

Funds

A list of the funding organizations can be found here

In the list one finds:

• National Democratic Institute
• National Endowment for Democracy
• US Agency for International Development

Contact

Washington DC office

Search for Common Ground (Washington DC)

1601 Connecticut Ave. NW, #200

Washington, DC 20009-1035

Phone: (+1 202)265-4300

Fax: (+1 202)232-6718

E-mail: search@sfcg.org

website: www.sfcg.org

Brussels office

Search for Common Ground (Brussels)

Rue Belliard 205 bte 13

B-1040 Brussels, Belgium

Phone: (+32 2) 736 7262:Fax: (+32 2) 732 3033

E-mail: brussels@sfcg.be

Resources

• ^ Helena Cobban, Ze'ev Schiff, RIP, Just World News (Cobban's blog), 22 June 2007.