Abstract for: Approaching Resilience for Displaced People in the Congo

A multi-organization consortium is engaged in a project to improve resilience among people affected by multiple displacement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the project includes humanitarian, peacebuilding, and data collection organizations. System dynamics modeling is an important innovation of this three year project, along with field research and policy advocacy; all leading to pilot interventions on the village scale. While the research phase is ongoing, the SD approach has already yielded insights that build on humanitarian and development mental models, such as short term versus long term trade-offs, and how conditions before displacement and in potential host villages can affect the recovery of the displaced community.