Do No Harm Approach: Impacting Partners and Beneficiaries

Mrs. E. Gbellay Harris is the Planning, Monitoring, and Evaluation Officer at the Lutheran Churches in Liberia Trauma Healing and Reconciliation Program (LCL-THRP), a partner organization of the Civil Peace Service Liberia Network.  LCL-THRP provides psycho-social rehabilitation and other interventions to returning migrants, drug users, and their families in various communities across Liberia. Mrs. Harris participated in the Do No Harm Trainings in Liberia, organized by Bread for the World and Civil Peace Service.

She is working in conflict-sensitive environments, which include the disabled, marginalized, and vulnerable men, women, and children. She says the training is helping her in working with her target groups. Mrs. Harris also works in peacebuilding, trauma counseling, and advocacy. She says the knowledge acquired on the Do No Harm Approach, has adequately prepared her for engagements with communities, partners, and stakeholders, ensuring that she and her colleagues can identify unintended negative or positive impacts of humanitarian and development interventions, where there is conflict or risk of conflict, while they work to achieve their objectives and to prevent an escalation of violence, and ensure that the aim of the program remains a humanitarian or development objective.

Her job responsibilities she says, “are field supervision, keeping staff together in harmony, providing monitoring for the intended and unintended activities to avoid contributing instability or violence in their communities and work environments, and other settings, providing capacity building training to males and females and young people, physically challenged group of people -PCGP to keep everyone peaceful.

The LCL-THRP’s three main pillars include psycho-social counseling, peacebuilding, and advocacy involving town hall dialogue meetings, training, visual aids and awareness in communities, circle discussions, and engagements with communities to keep the peace and avoid violence.

Mrs Harris says, “The Do No Harm training is paramount in all professions, therefore, the training will be applied in all areas of conflict resolution.”

She also says the Do No Harm training tool will be used to help her analyze her work in conflict-sensitive projects and program planning and implementation of the LCL-THRP project areas.

She recalls in late 2023, before the October elections in Liberia, the Lutheran Church Trauma Healing and Reconciliation Program engaged vulnerable groups, political actors stakeholders, and the media through training, awareness, and voters’ education across communities on violent free elections, the role of the media in elections reporting. 

During these engagements, Mrs. Harris recalled that she and her team held a workshop with some Liberian Journalists on their roles and responsibilities in the dissemination of information before, during, and after the 2023 elections in Liberia using the Do No Harm Approach..  She says, the Do No Harm training prepared her for the engagements with the media on the essentials of accurate reporting, using the Do No Harm Approach.

“Our engagements with the media provided the forum to create the awareness that while implementing programs in a conflict-sensitive time and environment (2023 Liberia Elections) it was important to make a positive impact on the population through their reporting and ensuring that there is no conflict or violence during the elections.

She describes the training as being very useful in all settings and professions. “It is impacting, knowledge acquiring, creative, and most of all, used as a sensitive tool in identifying the connectors and dividers.