We catch people doing the right thing, then “name and fame” them for it, all on the assumption that telling the stories of do-gooders is contagious and encourages others to do the same. After 14 years, and 15 locations, we added Integrity Icon Somaliland as the 16th to spread the stories of public servants who go above and beyond to serve their communities. Later rebranded as the Good Governance Heroes Campaign – the campaign’s premise is that making integrity visible, aspirational, and socially celebrated could shift how citizens think and talk about public life. Five years on, the evidence is compelling.

Launched in January 2021, the campaign is a citizen-led, values-based alternative to punitive approaches to corruption. Rather than naming and shaming, it set out to find and celebrate the public servants and community leaders whose quiet, principled work too often goes unrecognised. The campaign’s theory of change rested on four interconnected assumptions: that citizens engage more readily with governance through real people than abstract institutions; that public recognition strengthens the intrinsic motivation of those doing good work; that youth-led storytelling can translate complex governance concepts into narratives that resonate locally; and that  sustained engagement with governance institutions, when carefully managed, can reinforce independence while enabling institutional learning. 

Through a combination of nominations, storytelling, community engagement, youth volunteering, and institutional dialogue, the campaign sought to contribute to gradual norm shifts around integrity, public service, and civic responsibility.

A powerful start

Despite administrative delays and the challenges of introducing a new concept in a politically sensitive environment, citizens responded with enthusiasm. Over a thousand nominations poured in within a compressed timeframe, and more than eighty thousand people voted for their preferred Icon in the inaugural cycle. The first awards ceremony in Hargeisa drew wide public attention, and the cohort of Icons recognised in that first year reflected the geographic, sectoral, and gender diversity the campaign had always aspired to represent. The appetite for recognising integrity – far from needing to be manufactured – was already there.

The team also expanded the programme’s reach across seven regions and introduced the Film Fellowship, which gave five young Somalilanders practical training in documentary filmmaking as a governance tool. Community activation events and direct engagements between recognised Icons and citizens, particularly young people, reinforced that governance is shaped by everyday actions and not distant institutions.

WATCH: Get to know our Good Governance Heroes 2023

Running parallel to these successes were challenges to the independence of the campaign.   The Civil Service Commission, the government entity attached to the campaign, showed interest in having a greater position of influence in the campaign. The Commission repeatedly sought financial control and a more central role in implementation to a point where the team, after careful analysis and extensive consultation with partners, made the difficult decision to end the collaboration entirely. 

While disruptive in the short term as the program required a full strategic redesign, this ending preserved arguably the most foundational aspect of the campaign, citizen-led credibility.

The redesign surfaced the Good Governance Heroes model. The scope was broadened to include civil society change-makers alongside public servants, and the traditional awards ceremony was replaced by a Good Governance Heroes Summit, creating space for dialogue, reflection, and shared learning rather than a single moment of recognition. In September 2023, a new memorandum of understanding was signed with the Good Governance Commission – a partner whose mandate aligned more naturally with the campaign’s ethos. This was followed closely by an October campaign launch, the Summit in February, and community engagement events and film screenings across Hargeisa, Gabiley, Borama, Berbera, Burao, and Erigavo. The engagements reached 270 participants, more than half of whom were women, and laid the foundation for the momentum that would carry the programme through to its close.

WATCH: Get to know our Good Governance Heroes 2024

Building something durable

The final phase of the programme, running through 2025, focused on consolidating what had been built. A tailor-made training programme was delivered to the Good Governance Commission. It was developed from a detailed needs assessment conducted the previous year and covered strategy formulation, operations, staff development, and outreach. A second Film Fellowship cohort of thirteen young people completed training in September 2025, with one participant showcasing her short film at the December Summit. The programme coordinator began incorporating heroes’ stories into the ethics curriculum at the University of Hargeisa’s School of Governance – a significant step toward the kind of norm change the campaign had always sought.

The December 2025 Summit brought the programme full circle. Over two days, 230 participants gathered – among them Icons from 2021, Heroes from 2023 and 2024, representatives of government, civil society, academia, and the private sector, and eleven persons with disabilities. Icons and Heroes from across the programme’s entire lifespan attended together, embodying the campaign’s vision of a growing cohort of change-makers who could support and learn from one another. Dr. Gudoon Adan Abdi, recognised in the very first cohort, spoke about how the campaign had inspired her to keep doing the work and how much it had meant to find others who shared her values.

Across the five years, twenty-one stories of inspirational individuals were captured from every region of Somaliland. Twenty-one volunteers engaged with the programme over its lifetime, with half maintaining involvement from the first year through to the last. Eighty thousand citizens cast votes in the inaugural cycle. 

What the theory proved

Citizens did engage more readily with real people than with abstract governance frameworks. Recognition did appear to strengthen the resolve of those doing principled work in difficult conditions. Youth-led storytelling did make governance tangible and locally resonant in ways that institutional communication rarely achieves. And engagement with government institutions did produce learning, but only because the campaign was willing to walk away when the terms of that engagement became incompatible with its independence.

The former Chairman of the Good Governance Commission, Liban Burale, captured the spirit of the programme’s impact in a message after the December 2025 event: 

This campaign “strengthened the foundation of integrity in our country and empowered citizens with the knowledge and courage to hold their leaders accountable. These contributions are not only institutional achievements but moral investments that will continue to benefit generations to come.”

The volunteers who drove the public face of the campaign in its final year also reflected on what the experience had meant to them. They appreciated the sense of organized community, which they said made the campaign successful. Many reflected on how happy and grateful they were to be part of a community that supports one another, stands together, and works towards a shared goal. 

As their final reflection noted:

“The campaign has never been just about one person or one hero. It is about a collective effort. It is about the volunteers, the organizers, the coordinators, and the communities that stand behind them. It is about everyone who believes in contributing to a national cause and in providing services and innovations that truly matter to the people.”

The campaign concludes this phase having contributed to narrative change, youth empowerment, and institutional reflection across Somaliland. And while the campaign changed over time, its core values remained intact – laying a foundation for future governance efforts beyond the lifespan of the campaign.