Part II: Community Building: To Make, Build, and Maintain Peace

Being a social leader and carrying out community work is a high-risk activity, especially in societies with vast social inequities, fragile democracies, marked clientelism, corruption, and violence as a mechanism of social control to preserve power by elites allied with hegemonic power and at times with crime.

In this section, we will explore how community work can be an enduringly transformative force contributing to a virtuous circle: making, building, and maintaining peace. We will explore the importance of leadership and followership for community building.

With esteemed contributors from many different disciplines, each of the ensuing chapters explores from different perspectives critical aspects of this crucial virtuous circle. This section includes four regionally diverse case studies of community building to identify how leadership and followership can better contribute to building and sustaining peace. From essential reflections on the youth role and perspectives on reconciliation in the aftermath of the genocide against the Tutsi, to the always necessary and robust voice and leadership of women in reconstruction of the social fabric in Uganda and Sri Lanka to an institutional work of leadership and followers of young African students committed and prepared to promote social and peacebuilding social justice.