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Figge, Using Church-Based Savings Groups for Trauma Healing and Peacebuilding…                                                    166 

 

Using Church-Based Savings Groups for 

Trauma Healing and Peacebuilding: 

A View from the Field in South Sudan 
 

Anne Figge 
 

 
 

This article addresses the role of church-based savings groups in trauma healing and community 

peacebuilding amid ongoing conflict in South Sudan. In partnership with the Episcopal Church of 

South Sudan and Mothers’ Union, Five Talents—a Christian non-governmental organization (NGO)—

has implemented a savings group program that has improved livelihoods for thousands. Since 2018, 

the initiative has integrated trauma healing, acknowledging the link between unresolved trauma and 

cyclical violence. Through peer counseling and everyday peacebuilding practices, participants have 

addressed trauma, fostered interethnic trust, and engaged in local advocacy. Findings indicate 

enhanced household and community relationships, greater economic agency, and progress toward 

reconciliation. The study underscores the interconnection between trauma, livelihoods, and 

peacebuilding, highlighting the potential of localized, faith-based interventions in fostering community-

based positive peace in conflict-affected settings. 

 

 

Introduction 
It is extremely difficult to carry out development 

work in the midst of armed conflict, and many if not 

most international organizations, including Christian 

ones, tend to focus primarily on relief work in those 

contexts. What is lost in this, however, are the ways that 

local actors, including the church, continue to press 

forward in these difficult situations when both 

development and peacebuilding efforts seem necessary. 

One such situation is in South Sudan, where a 

ministry of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan called 

Mothers’ Union partners with Five Talents (FT), an 

international Christian organization that “trains women 

and men to find a sustainable path out of extreme 

poverty through entrepreneurship” (Five Talents n.d.). 

In 2018, they integrated a trauma healing and 

peacebuilding component into their ongoing work with 

literacy and savings groups. 

This article describes the process by which this 

happened and assesses the reasons for the program’s 

success. It begins with a brief history of the situation in 

South Sudan, describes the how and why of the project 

and the ideas behind its implementation, and then 

presents the results to date. The article concludes with 

some ideas about why this program has been so 

effective.   

  

South Sudan Context 
In 2011, South Sudan became the youngest nation 

on earth, born out of civil war in Sudan. In December 

2013, South Sudan fell into its own civil war. Despite 

repeated attempts at peace agreements and cease-fires 

in 2015, 2017, and 2018, political violence and 

instability have persisted between government forces 

and opposition factions (Center for Preventive Action 

2025). In 2018, after nearly five years of civil war, Salva 

Kiir and Riek Machar, the heads of the two main 

opposing political coalitions, participated 

in negotiations and signed the Revitalized Agreement 

on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan 

(Ibid.). This peace deal led to a cease-fire and the 

formation of a unity government in 2020. But as of 

March 2025, the implementation of the agreement has 

been worryingly slow, and extensions to the transitional 

period have been necessary (Security Council Report 

2022).  For example, long-delayed elections scheduled 

for December 2024 have been further postponed to 

December 2026 (Freedom House 2024). 

During the official peace process, the United 

Nations (UN) and multilateral agencies have 

continually remarked upon the ongoing violence across 

the country including “pervasive insecurity and 

particular intercommunal violence” (Security Council 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34066511
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/23/south-sudans-warring-parties-agree-ceasefire-bid-end-four-year-war-machar-kiir
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/world/africa/south-sudan-cease-fire-violated-within-hours.html
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/6/25/south-sudan-rivals-meet-in-khartoum-for-peace-talks
https://docs.pca-cpa.org/2016/02/South-Sudan-Peace-Agreement-September-2018.pdf
https://docs.pca-cpa.org/2016/02/South-Sudan-Peace-Agreement-September-2018.pdf
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/11/1156661


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Figge, Using Church-Based Savings Groups for Trauma Healing and Peacebuilding…                                                    167 

Report 2022). For example, between April to June 

2024, UN Mission to South Sudan (UNMISS) reported 

a 43% increase in incidents involving violence against 

civilians as compared to the same period in 2023 

(“Brief on Violence...” 2024).  Major incidents took 

place in six of the ten states of South Sudan, including 

all four major forms of individual harm experienced by 

victims in the context of the armed conflict (i.e., killings, 

injuries, abductions, and Conflict Related Sexual 

Violence [CRSV]) (Ibid.)  UNMISS has also stated that 

“intra/intercommunal violence involving community-

based militias and/or civil defense groups linked to 

border disputes, cross-border violence, cyclical attacks 

and retaliatory attacks, as well as ethnic polarization, 

continued to be the primary driving factor of violence 

affecting civilians throughout the country” (USAID 

2019). These reports provide a picture of how official 

and unofficial conflicts at local, regional and national 

levels continue to affect communities across the 

country.  Bearing this in mind, it is unsurprising to note 

that a USAID study indicated that 41% of South 

Sudan’s population displayed symptoms of post-

traumatic stress disorder, rising to 51% among 

displaced people and informal settlements (Ibid.).   

 

Episcopal Church of South Sudan and the 

Savings Group Partnership with Five Talents 
Since 2007, eleven dioceses of the Episcopal 

Church of South Sudan (ECSS) have entered into 

partnership with FT around a project to create savings 

groups linked with the church.
1

  The implementing 

ministry of the church is Mothers’ Union of South 

Sudan, the women’s ministry of the ECSS and a 

member of the worldwide Mothers’ Union movement 

affiliated with the Anglican church (“Our Story” n.d.).  

The project uses a method called the Literacy and 

Financial Education Program (LFEP), which provides  

one year of participatory adult literacy and numeracy to  

majority women’s groups in three regions of South 

Sudan. This foundational focus on literacy has been 

necessary because literacy rates in South Sudan are 35% 

overall, and only 20% among adult women aged 25-64 

(UNESCO n.d.). Informal surveys by FT suggest that 

                                                        
1

 FT has been working in South Sudan since 2007. Its current implementing partners include Mothers’ Union South 

Sudan, Episcopal Church of South Sudan as well as World Concern Development Organisation.  This article focuses 

particularly on the work of Mothers’ Union South Sudan and ECSS.  American Friends of the Episcopal Church of 

South Sudan (AFRECS) and Mothers’ Union Worldwide are also strategic partners in this project. AFRECS has 

worked alongside FT to refine and support the trauma healing and peacebuilding curricula relevant to this article.  
2

 This data is from FT’s internal monitoring, evaluation, and learning data. For the purposes of this article, henceforth 

all data will refer to the programs in Juba among internally displaced people from all over the country, in Renk within 

the Upper Nile region on the border with Sudan and South Sudan, and in Terekeka in Central Equatoria.  
3

 Trauma-informed means recognizing the impact of trauma in the lives of all people—in other words, no one is 

immune to this experience. The assumption is that people offering healing from trauma have also experienced trauma 

(see Knight 2019). 

literacy rates among adult women in some rural areas 

might be as low as 10%. Without the capacity to read 

and write, savings group members find it difficult to 

maintain records transparently, and to build the trust 

needed for successful functioning of a savings group. 

After one year of functional literacy, the program moves 

into a phase of savings group formation and 

management and business skills training, during which 

the savings groups are officially formed and launched. 

This project is active in three states of South Sudan and 

has provided literacy and numeracy for 22,075 women 

and men. Along with literacy and numeracy, FT and its 

partners have supported savings groups among 71,434 

women and men in the last 18 years across more than 

2,850 groups.
2

 

 

Integrating a Trauma-Informed 

Peacebuilding Approach 
In 2018, the leaders of Mothers’ Union South 

Sudan and the Episcopal Church recognized that they 

wanted to influence their communities for peace, 

especially with regard to helping people heal from the 

trauma of ongoing conflict and insecurity. They saw this 

as the work of the Church following the model of Jesus’ 

ministry and a contribution towards building peace in 

South Sudan. But the peace they wanted to contribute 

to was not just defined by an absence of violence and 

fighting since they knew that ending violence was not 

enough. Lasting change would come through restored 

relationships and holistic human flourishing. This 

move towards an integrated, “trauma-informed” 

peacebuilding approach was based on two fundamental 

insights.  

The first was the recognition that violence causes 

trauma, which may cause more violence. Thus, 

peacebuilding must be trauma-informed, recognizing 

the impact of trauma on people’s lives and using it as a 

lens.
3

 A key insight to being trauma-informed is that 

people who have been traumatized are more likely to 

hurt people and perpetuate a cycle of violence (USAID 

2019). If trauma is both an effect and a cause of conflict, 

then trauma healing must be part of peacebuilding 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 6(3), Spring 2025  

Figge, Using Church-Based Savings Groups for Trauma Healing and Peacebuilding…                                                    168 

(Ibid.). Without addressing the effect of trauma, 

traumatized people are less able to participate at the 

community level as agents for peace. Furthermore, they 

may actively inflame conflict as a result of their own 

experiences.  

The second insight noted the limitations of trauma 

healing through short-term, one-off interactions. While 

this can be an important introduction, one-off 

workshops can miss the point that trauma healing is an 

ongoing process rather than a specific event. Noting 

this, the vision of Mothers’ Union and ECSS dioceses 

involved in this project proposed an alternative, which 

was to leverage the relationships already forming within 

literacy and saving groups to pilot trauma healing and 

peacebuilding training as part of the established group 

methodology. 

The trauma healing training implemented within 

savings groups consisted of an informal peer-to-peer 

counselling methodology in which members learn 

about the impact of trauma (giving them a language to 

talk about it), recognize and reflect on the 

consequences of trauma in their own lives, and share 

this with other group members. Such peer-to-peer 

counselling is recognized as a valuable component of 

trauma healing (Lane 2003, 116-17), and meets local 

needs given that, realistically, this type of counselling is 

the only kind people can access in a country with a very 

low provision of mental health services (USAID 2019). 

This training helps people connect abstract concepts of 

peace, conflict, trauma, and others with personal 

experience, making possible the skills to do something 

about it in their own lives or the lives of their 

community. It is particularly effective using the 

empowering platform of cohesive relationships in the 

savings groups. For example, the FT team in Renk 

recount a story of a colonel in the army who shared that 

“we learned about traumatic stress, we never knew 

about this thing. But we were forced to do many bad 

things” (SPLA soldier, January 31, 2020). This was the 

first time he and many other soldiers had the 

opportunity to reflect on the many traumatic 

experiences they had gone through and to connect 

them with how they felt and how they lived now.  

The peacebuilding aspect of the training is based 

on the concept of “everyday peace” that has been 

popularized by the work of Roger Mac Ginty (2014) 

and Pamela Firchow (2018). As a new “bottom up” 

approach to peacebuilding, it is defined as 

 

... the practices, norms and stances deployed by 

individuals and groups in deeply divided 

societies to avoid and minimise conflict at both 

the intra and inter-group level. It is a form of 

tactical agency and depends on social awareness, 

an ability to “read” situations and react 

accordingly. It is also logic or a way of thinking. 

It can be both conflict-calming and conflict-

provoking, and often occurs in unthreatening or 

marginal spaces (Mac Ginty 2014, 553). 

 

As this definition suggests, each person in every 

community has the capacity either to inflame or calm 

conflict.  These are strategies that many people living in 

conflict affected areas already have and employ 

naturally in order to “get on with life,” and as seen 

above, they can be deeply impacted by trauma. 

Building everyday peace is an asset-based approach to 

peacebuilding. It starts with the strengths and resources 

already in a community and builds upon those rather 

than externally imposing ideas and structures. This is 

both an approach and a mindset, and in the case of this 

project, 67% of the savings groups participants 

participated in “everyday peacebuilding” activities as a 

result of the trauma training. Topics covered included 

mediating household and community conflict, 

advocating for victims of domestic violence, and 

intentionally building bridges with people from other 

ethnic groups.  

The results of this integrated approach have been 

remarkable. First, according to Mothers’ Union staff, 

participants typically respond to the training by 

empathizing with one another as they grieve and 

experience challenges, providing support for other 

members as well as family and community members. 

Staff describe this as members “carrying each other’s 

burdens through prayer and pastoral care.”  Second, 

participants report that they are better able to recognize 

symptoms of trauma in themselves and others and 

speak out against further cycles of violence (and apathy 

to violence) as coping mechanisms within their homes 

and communities. For example, “revenge attacks” or 

retaliatory violence is one way that participants have 

noted people giving expression to their hurt and pain.  

While not everyone may support “revenge killing,” 

many people have become desensitized or numb to 

violence and other people’s suffering. After gaining a 

trauma-informed lens through which participants can 

view their experiences, they are more likely to be 

sensitive to the suffering of others in the community and 

to actively oppose retaliatory violence.  Lastly, savings 

group members have demonstrated that they are willing 

to share in the community about their personal 

journeys and desire for peace as a form of advocacy.  

One community involved in the project provides a 

powerful example. In an interview, the pastor in that 

community recounted an ethnically motivated attack 

which razed their whole village and destroyed their 

church in 2021. Community members lost lives and 

property—cattle were stolen, houses were burned down, 

and food stores were purposefully destroyed. In fear for 

their lives, the community members fled across a 

regional border and remained displaced for more than 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 6(3), Spring 2025  

Figge, Using Church-Based Savings Groups for Trauma Healing and Peacebuilding…                                                    169 

one year. When they returned to their village and began 

to rebuild, many community members became 

involved in the savings group program. As the pastor 

shared: 

 

Many had lost their faith in God as a result of 

what happened, but it was restored in this 

[program].  It was as if people were born again. 

When we received this training, we decided that 

we wanted to invite those who had harmed us to 

come and reconcile with us. We wanted to tell 

them that they were forgiven so that we could live 

in peace together. Even we began to talk about 

how—as we began to hope again--that we wanted 

to rebuild the church. These people—those who 

burned the church—have already contributed 

more than 70 poles (for constructing the tukul 

and roof).  Even some of them will come to 

church and we can pray together (June 5, 2024). 

 

Such attitudinal and behavioral changes can also be 

seen in the measurable differences that members 

reported experiencing as a result of the trainings. 

Members reported that as their personal capacity to 

cope with trauma has improved, so too have their 

household and community relationships. For example, 

from a December 2023 sample of 2,568 participants 

from 3 regions, 74% of members reported improved 

household relationships as a result of their participation 

in the trauma healing training and their improved 

coping mechanisms. Moreover, 1,983 (77%) 

participants also reported improved community 

relationships as a result of trauma healing and 

peacebuilding training. This had much to do with the 

ability to forgive: “Their relatives were killed. Their 

properties were looted. But they have learned that they 

can forgive and start a new life,” remarked a Juba 

program trainer (July 30, 2021). “They have been able 

to forgive those who have hurt them, and this has freed 

them to pursue opportunities beyond dwelling on their 

pain,” observed another (April 27, 2022). These 

responses to the training constitute positive 

contributions towards building everyday peace—

recognizing and using the strategies that are available to 

support peace in their communities and to address 

conflicts before they arise. This continues in spite of 

lack of progress in the formal peace process. 

 

The Key Dimensions of Improved 

Livelihoods and Trust Building 
Why has this project has been so successful in the  

                                                        
4

 C. R. Snyder et al. proposed that hope is a cognitive behavioural process versus an emotion. That hope came from 

having a goal, a pathway to achieve that goal and a sense of agency or “I can do this” (1991). Savings groups meet these 

criteria for creating hope.  

midst of the continuing violence in South Sudan? In 

analyzing the results of this locally led endeavor, two 

insights take shape that might inform peacebuilding in 

other contexts: the trauma-informed dimensions of 

improved livelihoods and trust-building.  

 
Improved Livelihoods 

First, the improved livelihoods and development 

dimension of savings group promotion may have 

played a key role in the success around trauma healing 

and peacebuilding. There may be three reasons for this. 

First, there will always be people who profit from war, 

but in large part, war destroys property and prosperity, 

stalling and reversing economic development. The 

economic despair that comes from having one’s 

livelihood destroyed is traumatizing and can fuel further 

conflict and cycles of fighting and destruction. 

Economic despair is one reason to include practical 

avenues for improved livelihoods in a community-

based peacebuilding approach. 

In this case, the scope and nature of the economic 

results of the savings groups were typical of what is 

reported in the associated literature. 15-25 participants 

create economic and social assets by saving together and 

borrowing from one another (creating member owned 

financial services). After one year of saving together, the 

group refunds individual savings back to its individual 

members plus a proportional percentage of earned 

interest. Either through accumulation of savings or 

through access to loans, participants have the capital to 

start new businesses. To facilitate enterprise 

development, participants also receive training in micro 

and small enterprise development, thus providing a way 

for families both to provide for themselves and to invest 

further. In this project, initial baseline surveys indicated 

that 55% of respondents had an income generation 

activity.  Furthermore, only 8% of respondents reported 

having any kind of productive asset (something reusable 

to help them generate an income).  Roughly three years 

later, 90% of the 2,568 survey respondents reported 

starting or expanding a business as a result of 

participation in a savings group—an increase of 45%. A 

further 55% of the 2,568 participants reported owning 

a productive asset—an increase of 47%. As is standard 

practice for savings groups, financing for the business or 

asset acquisition could come either from borrowing 

from the group or using the lump sum provided at the 

group share-out. 

Importantly for people in conflict situations, 

economic recovery permits them to support themselves 

through their own efforts, thus providing hope and a 

counter narrative to economic despair.
4

 As one 



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Figge, Using Church-Based Savings Groups for Trauma Healing and Peacebuilding…                                                    170 

displaced member from Bor, who now lives in the 

Shirkat community outside of Juba said,  

 

All of us, we have come from Bor in 2020 when 

the floods were terrible. We came to Juba with 

nothing. All of my things were swallowed by 

water—my clothes, all of the food in our granary, 

my house. It is only because of this (savings) box 

where we save our money that we have coped. 

We have come together and through one 

another’s support is how I have paid school fees 

for my children and survived. I took a small loan 

of 200,000 SSP and I used it to start a small 

business making mandazi. I don’t even know 

how this small business pays for our needs, but 

we manage day by day and have rebuilt our lives 

(Savings Group member, June 6, 2024). 

 

Additionally, individual potential for economic 

agency and prosperity is clearly affected by war and 

trauma. People who are traumatized often feel 

overwhelmed by their pain, whether expressed through 

hopelessness, helplessness, anger, withdrawal, and 

apathy. Responses like these affect one’s capacity to 

make changes in their own lives, including the ability to 

provide for their families. Being trauma-informed 

means recognizing that people may need new 

livelihood opportunities to grow into community-based 

peacebuilding activities. In this sense, consideration 

needs to be given to how traumatic events affect 

people’s economic agency and entrepreneurialism but 

also how leveraging agency through entrepreneurialism 

helps people to experience hope and even healing from 

trauma. 

 

Building Trust 
Second, trust in communities is severely affected 

by war and conflict. Mistrust is a commonly cited 

impact of trauma in South Sudan, one that works on 

and shapes people’s perceptions and understanding of 

others’ motivations (USAID 2019).  In the context of 

widespread mistrust, being trauma-informed means 

recognizing that small misunderstandings can grow into 

violent conflict, and this is especially true when 

members of a community have been victimized by 

others in the community. If groups are mobilized out of 

this context of mistrust for any economic or 

developmental purpose—such as group farming 

initiatives, microenterprise development, or 

community-based microfinance—the problems with 

trust and people’s inability to collaborate, can spill over 

                                                        
5

 This idea also links with John Paul Lederach’s idea of creating platforms or social spaces for peace and social change 

to take place once peace accords have been signed in post conflict areas (see Lederach 2005, 47-49). 
6

 A similar positive impact of savings group on reducing conflict and increasing peacebuilding in South Sudan was 

noted in a recent report by CARE Netherland (Whipkey 2021). 

into groups and their dynamics. Rather than try to bury 

what is uncomfortable or divisive, the group platform 

provides opportunities for positive interaction and 

healing required for real cooperation.
5

 This is also how 

groups exercise everyday peace. 

As Gordon Allport points out, if well-facilitated, 

contact among different groups of people can have 

positive effects on the respective group members by 

breaking down negative perceptions and stereotypes of 

the other group (as cited in Pettigrew and Tropp 2005). 

Indeed, International Alert notes that “Bringing people 

face-to-face, within and across communities to jointly 

plan, design and implement processes [intergroup 

contact] is the cornerstone of peacebuilding” (2020, 5). 

Savings groups in South Sudan apply this idea by 

bringing people together as equals within a group; they 

have a common, practical goal that they are cooperating 

towards—savings group management and livelihood 

development—and they are supported by the local 

church and Mothers’ Union as respected local 

institutions in their efforts. In Renk, for example, 70.8% 

of savings groups had more than one ethnic group 

represented and interacting within the group-based 

platform. In Juba, among savings groups composed of 

displaced people, there is an average of more than four 

ethnic groups represented in one savings group.  

At a minimum, this means that groups meeting 

together on a regular basis is a form of building 

everyday peace for the individual members. This 

happens through exposure to the other, breaking down 

barriers of mistrust and prejudice, and creating a 

platform for trusted engagement, reconciliation, 

healing, and solidarity to take place. This building of 

trust is relationally and economically significant for 

group members themselves as trust and peaceful 

cooperation is the foundation of savings groups. 

Members, for example, are not likely to provide loan 

capital to one another if they cannot trust each other to 

repay. As one Renk program trainer remarked, “the 

members will not trust each other unless we do 

something to bring people together.” Cooperation in 

groups also demonstrates to others in the community 

that it is possible and productive to work together, even 

among those who may formerly have been in conflict. 

Membership in a savings group is then an example of 

everyday peacebuilding in a group and at the 

community level as it incentivizes a group’s capacity to 

calm conflict and provides an example of the value of 

doing so to others in a community.
6

  

 



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Conclusion: Conflict, Peace, and Trauma-

Informed Savings Groups 
How we define peace and conflict matters. Our 

working definitions influence how and in what ways we 

work with conflict and towards peace (Brock-Utne 

1989). In peacebuilding literature, there is a 

longstanding differentiation made between negative and 

positive peace. Negative peace is the absence of physical 

violence, but structural and cultural violence in different 

forms such as poverty, racism and sexism may very well 

still be present (Galtung 1969). If peace is defined as an 

absence of armed conflict brokered by the international 

community and multilateral actors, then peace 

becomes something external and one dimensional that 

is imposed or received. While recognizing that there is 

good motivation in working towards peace with the 

support of the multilateral community, this definition 

can feel disempowering and inaccessible to many 

because there is a service provision element to it. Some 

people get it and maintain it, while others do not.  

Positive peace, on the other hand, is the absence of 

physical violence in the presence of increasing social 

justice (Galtung 1969). Positive peace considers the 

attitudes, institutions, and structures that create and 

sustain peaceful societies (Institute for Economics and 

Peace 2020). As a concept, the idea of positive peace is 

holistic and seems similar to biblical shalom. Nicholas 

Wolterstoff says that 

 

In shalom, each person enjoys justice, enjoys his 

or her rights. There is no shalom without justice. 

But shalom goes beyond justice. Shalom is the 

human being dwelling at peace in all his or her 

relationships… But the peace which is shalom is 

not merely the absence of hostility, not merely 

being in right relationship. Shalom at its highest 

is enjoyment in one’s relationships… To dwell 

in shalom is to enjoy living before God, 

to enjoy living in one’s physical surroundings, 

to enjoy living with one’s fellows, to enjoy life 

with oneself (1983, 69). 

 

The Mothers’ Union and ECSS provide an 

example of how the local church in South Sudan is not 

satisfied with the limitations and fragility of top-down 

negative peace. It recognises that shalom, likened to 

positive peace, has a highly practical and experiential 

element to it. While pursuing shalom does not exclude 

the cessation of violence that comes through high-level 

negotiations, it also includes personal relationships, 

meeting physical needs as well as emotional and 

spiritual needs. In addition to ending violence, moving 

towards shalom as a peacebuilding ministry of the local 

church points toward long term social, economic, and 

spiritual wellbeing of all God’s image bearers. 

Taking this into account, it is clear that South 

Sudan is in a state of negative peace, and even that 

continues to break down. A peace agreement was 

brokered and signed in partnership with the 

international and multilateral communities. Yet there 

has been no real reconciliation between people. There 

is little trust between ethnic groups and the threat of 

violence is ongoing—in response to even the smallest 

stimuli. So, while the peace agreement has brought 

periods of reduced violence over the last nine years, it 

is impossible to say that South Sudan is at peace.  

Conflict, on the other hand, can be understood as 

“…an expressed struggle between at least two 

interdependent parties who perceive incompatible 

goals, scarce resources, and interference from others in 

achieving their goals” (Hocker and Wilmot 2018, 3). 

This is a purposefully broad definition because there 

are many forms of conflict. Conflicts may be inter-

personal, intra-group, inter-group, intra-national, inter-

national, or a combination of these. In the above 

definition, the words “expressed,” “perceive,” and 

“incompatible” are emphasized. How people perceive 

each other, including their character and intentions, as 

well as the degree to which they believe their goals are 

compatible can shape how they understand conflict. 

Moreover, looking through a community lens reveals 

inconsistencies in common assumptions about peace 

and conflict. At the community level, people’s lived 

experiences show that peace and conflict do not exist in 

absolute states (Boulding 2000); rather, they co-exist all 

the time. The goal of peacebuilding is not to eradicate 

conflict and experience only peace, as such a goal is not 

possible or even productive.  

This is particularly true in South Sudan, and it is 

exemplified in the project of Mothers’ Union of the 

Episcopal Church of South Sudan in partnership with 

Five Talents. Their trauma-informed peacebuilding 

and savings group methodology shows how addressing 

conflict and trauma can contribute to the pursuit of 

shalom and/or “everyday peace” even amid ongoing 

conflict. I suggest four reasons for this: 

 

1. It connects personal reflection on traumatic 

experiences with agency and action, leading 

to community-level advocacy and 

opportunities for everyday peace. 

2. It helps participants learn to identify and 

cope with their trauma through integrated 

trauma healing and peer to peer counselling.   

3. It builds trust through intergroup contact. 

4. It provides a counternarrative to economic 

despair through new livelihood 

opportunities.  

 

In sum, the work of building positive peace in both 

South Sudan and other countries in similar situations is 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 6(3), Spring 2025  

Figge, Using Church-Based Savings Groups for Trauma Healing and Peacebuilding…                                                    172 

ongoing, and actors at local, regional, national, and 

international levels, especially those connected with the 

local church, are leading the way in looking for the best 

ways to do that. May the international community pay 

close attention to and learn from their experiences, 

supporting local efforts instead of imposing top-down 

negative peace. 

 

References 

 
Boulding, Elise. 2000. Cultures of Peace: The Hidden 

Side of History. Syracuse: Syracuse University 

Press. 

“Brief on Violence Affecting Civilians.” 2024 

(April/June). Human Rights Division, United 

Nations Mission in South Sudan. 

https://unmiss.unmissions.org/sites/default/files/q

uarterly_brief_on_violence_affecting_civilians_ap

ril_-_june_2024.pdf 

Brock-Utne, Birgit. 1989. Feminist Perspectives on 
Peace and Peace Education. Oxford: Pergamon 

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Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 6(3), Spring 2025  

Figge, Using Church-Based Savings Groups for Trauma Healing and Peacebuilding…                                                    173 

Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 1983. Until Justice and Peace 
Embrace. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans 

Publishing. 
 

 

Anne Figge is a technical advisor with fifteen years of 

experience in micro-enterprise development. She has 

worked in South Sudan since 2013 and currently 

supports Five Talents programme partners across the 

country. Anne is passionate about how savings groups 

contribute to community empowerment and 

peacebuilding in conflict-affected areas. 

 
Author email: annefigge@fivetalents.org 
 

 
 

mailto:annefigge@fivetalents.org

