Case Study: THE START DEPP LPRR WORKSHOP
By Florence Nassali
florence.nassali@kcl.ac.uk
The Start DEPP workshop took place on 21/01/16 at Help age International. It brought together members from the LPRR consortium to introduce the MEL framework and give an update on project implementation activities especially the recent Ketsana Case study. LPRR is a START DEPP DfID funded 3 year, consortium led project which is aimed at strengthening humanitarian programming for more resilient communities. The consortium is led by Christian Aid and includes Action Aid, Concern Worldwide, Help Age, Kings College London, Muslim Aid, Oxfam, Safer world and World Vision. The countries of focus include Kenya, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Democratic Republic Congo, Colombia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
The first session involved taking the team through a new approach to M&E; outcome mapping presented by Ms. Natalia Burgos (Christian Aid). Outcome mapping is a project progress measurement system which was first developed by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). It measures changes in behaviour, actions or relationships that could be influenced by the project or programme. The aim is to enhance understanding of processes of change, improve the efficiency of achieving results, and promote reporting practices that are both realistic and accountable. The approach also seeks to reflect on outcomes and enables strategy changes throughout the project or programme cycle. Members present actively took part in the learning process and proposed to upgrade learning expectations to include measures to ensure accountability across all consortium members.
The second and last session unpacked the results from the Ketsana pilot case study that has informed the Ketsana Report. This session was led by Ms. Rebecca Murphy (LPRR Learning and Capacity Building Officer, Christian Aid). She outlined the guiding theoretical framework for resilience and the main research aims which included; exploring the Christian Aid & partner’s Ketsana (Ondoy) intervention, including both the response & rehabilitation to capture lessons learnt, recommendations and challenges of smoothly aligning resilience informed response and rehabilitation phases to strengthen community resilience and the over-all project aim of developing recommendations for global resilience informed humanitarian response. The pilot provided the opportunity to trial and refine research methods used. As a result, resilience principles were condensed and cut them down from 10 to 5. Major recommendations from the study suggested it is important to recognise and understand the different timescales of resilience building and for interventions to link up to the governments’ existing bottom up programme which funds local enterprises. There should be a greater diversity of livelihood choices so as to ensure it is as inclusive as possible and outlined the need to support market access and understanding of the local economy.
For more information about the workshop please contact Florence at: florence.nassali@kcl.ac.uk and for more information about the LPRR project please contact Becky Murphy and rmurphy@christian-aid.org