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Kenya Pre-election Simulation Tests Preparedness 2www.ecbproject.org/kira-election-simulation-review

Toward Resilience: A Guide to Disaster Risk Reduction & Climate Change Adaptation 4www.ecbproject.org/toward-resilience-development-launch

Reflections on Joint Needs Assessment Progress in Bangladesh 5www.ecbproject.org/jna-bangladesh-reflections

Launch of two WASH emergencies e-learning courses 7www.ecbproject.org/wash-e-learning-courses

The AIM Standing Team Experiment 9www.ecbproject.org/aim-standing-team-review

Resources to Improve Shelter Sector Accountability Approaches 11www.ecbproject.org/shelter-cluster-accountability-resources-update

Our learning from the Participatory Disaster Risk Assessment (PDRA) and 13 Planning Project in Bolivia, Uganda and Niger www.ecbproject.org/pdra-project-learning

News in Brief 15

ECB E-Newsletter February 2013

Dear Colleague,

Thanks to the efforts of hundreds of ECB agency colleagues and partners we’ve got a multitude of training materials, new guides and interesting learning that we’re delighted to share with you.

After four years of working with a wonderful group of colleagues, from Bangladesh to Bolivia, this is also farewell from me. Thank you for supporting our work and please remember to stay in contact with the ECB Project team as we prepare for an ECB Project Phase III later this year.

As always, we welcome your comments and questions.

Warmest wishes,

Andrea Stewart

ECB Communications & Outreach Manager

PS: Remember to follow us on Twitter @ecbproject and Facebook www.facebook.com/ecbproject

Kenya Pre-election Simulation Tests PreparednessMulti-stakeholder emergency simulations are not only an important preparedness tool that support humanitarian teams to practice responding to an emergency and collaborating with colleagues in an intense disaster context, but also a valuable way to practically test new developments in the humanitarian community. Simulations contribute significantly to the ECB Project’s goal to develop national staff capacity and ensure faster, more effective emergency response programs.

As part of the Kenya Initial Rapid Assessment initiative (KIRA) the ECB Project agencies supported UNICEF, UNOCHA, the Assessment Capacities Project (ACAPS) and the World Food Programme (WFP), to deliver a successful simulation in Nairobi, Kenya, December 5–7, 2012 ahead of the March 2013 national elections.

Testing pre-election emergency preparedness The simulation was designed to test pre-election preparedness at the capital city level (Nairobi) and in other major cities (hubs). This simulation focused on: • Coordination between the Government of Kenya and humanitarian partners• Coordination between national and sub-national coordination structures• Coordination in major city hubs previously identified as potential hot spots

during the last national elections• Needs Assessment training and testing the KIRA methodology in these

pre-identified hubs • Information-sharing and Communication between multiple sectors and

stakeholders

Over 50 people participated in the simulation, including staff from the Office of the Prime Minister, the National Disaster Operations Centre, the National Disaster Management Authority and related ministries. National and regional donors such as the Directorate General for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (DG ECHO), DfID (UKaid), AusAID (Australia) and USAID (USA), the

Simulation participants work together to prepare for the Kenyan national elections in March 2013.Photo: © Kenya pre-election simulation, ECB Project / ACAPS, December 2012

International Committee of the Red Cross / International Federation of the Red Cross and Kenyan Red Cross also joined several INGO colleagues at the event. Around half of the participants represented sub-national coordination support mechanisms in the major hub cities of Eldoret, Nakuru, Coast, Garissa, Isiolo, Turkana and Kisumu.

Learning highlights from the simulationFollowing the simulation, participants reflected on the lessons identified and discussed opportunities to improve preparedness and planning ahead of the March 2013 elections.

Several key issues and recommended next steps were shared by participants, including some of the following actions and gaps: • Operationalize frameworks at all levels and improve understanding of national

response structures• Build capacity on rapid needs assessments at all levels – information capture,

data analysis and response• Strengthen engagement of communities, government colleagues and partners

by improving financial and human resources at the hub city level• Encourage more information-sharing and transparency between stakeholders

– focusing on the need to improve timeliness, accuracy and relevance of the information shared

• Provide additional resources for preparedness measures, including further attention to develop final contingency plans with an operational level of detail.

Read the complete ECB Kenya Consortium Simulation report, including Annexes A and B.

Other simulation benefits The simulation strengthened the buy-in to the KIRA rapid assessment initiative and highlighted the necessity of delivering a joint needs assessments approach in response to potential election violence or other emergencies. From an ECB Project perspective the simulation also strengthened relations with key government and UN staff from multiple offices, departments and ministries. Opportunities for further multi-stakeholder simulations are under consideration both within government structures and at the hub city level.

Visit the KIRA website to learn more about the assessment partners and our latest training activities. You can also read about the other ECB Project initiatives in the ECB Horn of Africa Consortium or find out about our other needs assessment field activities in Indonesia and Bangladesh, in partnership with ACAPS.

If you’d like to know more about this Simulation or future projects, please contact ECB Horn of Africa Consortium Manager Massimo Nicoletti Altimari via email: Massimo_Altimari@wvi.org

View this information at: www.ecbproject.org/kira-election-simulation-review

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Toward Resilience: A Guide to Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation After more than two years of fundraising, workshops, writing and peer review our new resource Toward Resilience: A Guide to Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation is available to download (free) and buy. This introductory resource is for development and humanitarian teams; it is intended for practical use in the field and special training to use the guide is not needed. The guide is a resource for program managers, project coordinators, community mobilizers, technical specialists and others to understand and apply an integrated, rights-based approach to disaster risk reduction (DRR)and climate change adaptation (CCA).

Toward Resilience highlights the needs of key vulnerable groups such as women, children, and high-risk communities in DRR and CCA programs. It also includes how DRR and CCA can be integrated into program cycle management. It focuses on DRR and CCA approaches and principles in key sectors, such as food security, natural resource management and education, as well as key contexts, such as conflict, early recovery, and urban areas. The guide includes a chapter on DRR and CCA governance and advocacy and offers practical case studies, a glossary and website links to recommended resources and tools.

To develop this comprehensive guide the Emergency Capacity Building (ECB) Project agencies worked closely with field teams from five ECB Consortia countries and received technical support from an editorial committee of DRR and CCA specialists from academia and other INGOs. Toward Resilience benefited from field-testing and review from multiple teams working in different contexts and communities.

Toward Resilience: A Guide to Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation is available as a free PDF and to buy from Practical Action Publishing (£11.66 / $19.95). You can find

the free PDF version in English, Spanish and French; we encourage you to share the guide with colleagues and contacts. Launched by ECB agencies in the USA, Bolivia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Niger and Kenya with short interactive workshops, ECB Project teams are starting to introduce the guide to national partners and our colleagues from INGOs, government and UN offices.

Further events are planned in the UK and at the 2013 UNISDR Global Platform for Disaster Reduction in Geneva. If you are interested in hosting an event or training workshop with this guide, please contact us for support and to share your ideas.

Purchase your copy.

Download a free PDF in English, Spanish and French.

View this information at: www.ecbproject.org/toward-resilience-development-launch

Send your feedback and questions to info@ecbproject.org

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Photo: © CRS / ECB Project, 2012.

Editorial committee member Nick Hall from Save the

Children said of the guide, “This is an easy-to-use resource that provides guidance for multiple stakeholders to tackle the issues of disaster and climate change.”

Reflections on Joint Needs Assessment Progress in Bangladesh As disasters increase in frequency and severity, and more and more stakeholders are becoming involved in disaster response activities, there is an ongoing impetus to consider how we work together to assess community needs following a disaster and improve our coordination efforts to capture, analyze and utilize the results. A “coordinated or joint approach” to assessments is being championed in partnership with the Assessment Capacities Project (ACAPS), national governments and UN institutions in ECB Project Consortia in Kenya, Indonesia and Bangladesh.

The joint needs assessment (JNA) work emphasizes the need to:

• Make better use of existing information (secondary data)

• Raise the voice of disaster affected communities

• Strengthen preparedness and training in communities

• Maintain the commitment to provide the most appropriate emergency response support based on an understanding of the disaster and community context.

This joint approach is now officially adopted by the humanitarian community in Bangladesh, including the UN, IFRC, (I)NGOs and, most significantly, the Government (GoB). Early in 2012 the approach was endorsed by the country’s key disaster management coordination body1.

When does size matter?Global guidance on multi-sector assessments2 focuses on emergencies which are large enough to trigger cluster activation and a formal application for funding mechanisms. In Bangladesh disaster events take place frequently and often unfold in very different time frames, subsequently these formal emergency mechanisms are not always activated at the start or at all. Yet the Bangladesh context, and perhaps many others, requires preparedness and coordination for major emergencies and for frequent lower profile disasters. Severe weather events in the last 14 months are estimated to have affected approximately 4,725,000 people in Bangladesh alone3.

Joint Needs Assessment teams speak with communities in Bangladesh to understand their needs during water-logging (flooding).Photo: © Sandie Walton-Ellery, ACAPS Bangladesh, 2011

1 The LCG-DER manages all aspects of the disaster management cycle in Bangladesh. LCG stands for the Local Consultative Group (LCG). Visit http://www.lcgbangladesh.org/HCTT.php 2 For example the Transformative Agenda and global good practice initiatives, such as the Multi-Cluster/Sector Initial Rapid Assessment (MIRA) Manual.3 Figures estimated from numbers released by the Government of Bangladesh and the National Disaster Relief Coordination Centre (NDRCC) in the last 14 months.

These low profile disasters include water-logging, monsoon flooding, flash flooding and landslides. None of these events resulted in the declaration of an official emergency or a formal appeal, but they affect the lives of millions and still require an appropriate response from government ministries, the UN, INGOs and NGOs.

Sandie Walton-Ellery, ACAPS and ECB Project focal point for joint needs assessments suggests, “A stronger evidence base for decision-making needs to be pursued for disasters that do not evoke formal activation of international processes, but which still have a severe impact on communities already dealing with deteriorating resilience in the face of multiple disasters. In Bangladesh the work initiated by the ECB Project consortium in partnership with many others highlights the need to adapt the principles of good assessment practice for both large and small-scale disasters4.”

What are we learning about JNAs in Bangladesh?Lessons captured so far demonstrate that building capacity at the country level to respond appropriately to these kinds of events requires a needs assessment approach that:

• Builds a knowledge platform over time (creating an evidence base of “what we already know” about the likely impact of particular kinds of events to support fast, appropriate decision- making)

• Utilizes this existing information and applies it to the next emergency

• Avoids over burdening stakeholders or raising expectations of affected communities

• Is adequately resourced to ensure expertise, partnerships and linkages to national and international coordination structures.

The sustainability of this strategy clearly relies on its inclusion in national coordination mechanisms and ongoing support by government ministries.

Gerson Brandao, Humanitarian Affairs Advisor, Office of the UN Resident Coordinator, Dhaka, Bangladesh commented, “Coordinated Needs Assessment requires commitment and while we have seen this requirement met by the ECB project in order to continue moving in the right direction, the same commitment has to be shown by other stakeholders too.”

Multi-stakeholder, multi-sector assessments have succeeded in Bangladesh over the past 12 months and similar approaches are being developed in Kenya (under the auspices of the KIRA) and Indonesia. The “learning-by-doing” approach is adapting global guidance to the country context and, in spite of challenges, it has shown that joint assessments in the initial days and weeks of a crisis can be achieved by national staff teams.

The ECB Project and ACAPS are working on A Good Enough Guide to Needs Assessments which will include a chapter on Joint Needs Assessments as well as helpful tools and resources to build field level understanding of assessment protocols and best practice. Visit our site in a few months time to find out more.

View the full Bangladesh Needs Assessment Learning workshop Report (2012) and find out more about the Bangladesh needs assessment work on the the Local Consultative Group (LCG) official Humanitarian Coordination Task Team (HCTT) website.

The ECB Project Agencies also support ACAPS with their Disaster Needs Analysis work. Download the latest ACAPS Disaster Analysis from Syria (December 2012).

View this information at: www.ecbproject.org/jna-bangladesh-reflections

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4 As outlined in the IASC Needs Assessment Task Force Operational Guidance and the MIRA. The ongoing work on assessments in Bangladesh, supported by ACAPS and the ECB Bangladesh consortium, is governed by the multi-stakeholder coordination body the Humanitarian Coordination Task Team (HCTT).

Launch of two WASH Emergencies E-learning CoursesWhy the e-learning approach?Face-to-face training workshops, while extremely valuable, only reach a limited number of emergency staff. Teams from country programs are less likely to have the opportunity to attend workshops, yet they are critical to the success of a humanitarian response. E-learning on the other hand can reach a wide audience, is sustainable and cheaper in the long-term, and has a lower environmental impact than a one-off workshop. In addition, an e-learning course allows the learner to progress at their own speed and pause for reflection as they learn.

What are the WASH courses about?In response to the need for a more comprehensive and wide-reaching approach to capacity building, Oxfam developed two Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH) e-learning courses on behalf of the ECB Project agencies.

Technical Project Management (TPM) in WASH emergencies is about planning, resourcing, and implementing a technical WASH engineering project. This course introduces and familiarises staff with standard project management stages and tools in a creative, practical and innovative way. It covers key areas such as logistics processes, risk management and quality control.

Information, Education and Communication (IEC) in WASH emergencies is about health and hygiene promotion. It helps the learner practice critical reflection throughout the simulated project, with reference to the context they are working in, the population affected by the crisis and the decisions to be made.

Both courses will place the learner into simulated emergency contexts that require them to respond and solve realistic challenges. The courses test participants’ planning and decision-making skills during simulated emergencies, such as drought, flooding and earthquake, set in both rural and urban contexts. The courses take about 4-6 hours to complete but they do not have to be completed in one sitting; the bookmark facility ensures that you can exit at any time and return to the same place you finished, even if there is a power cut.

Who should try these courses?These courses were designed for country-based WASH teams. The TPM course is intended for national field engineering staff deployed to technical WASH programs, and the IEC course is for health and hygiene promotion staff who contribute to WASH program design at the field level, and / or other field staff involved in IEC interventions. At present the courses are only available in English.

Front pages of the Technical Project Management (above)and Information, Education and Communication websites (below). Photos: © ECB Project and Oxfam 2012.

Feedback from the pilot phaseThese courses were developed with input from a wide range of technical experts across multiple organizations. The courses were piloted for 3 months (July to September 2012), during which time they were accessed by 288 staff from 52 different agencies and partners in 49 countries. A total of 116 staff completed the entire courses during the pilot phase.

Participant feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. In addition to a post-course evaluation, a number of participants were contacted for follow-up interviews 3-6 months after completing the courses. 59% of respondents have already applied their learning in their current role and 78% have shared their learning with others.

“I think all engineers should have some induction into hygiene promotion as well, to understand the software, not just the hardware we are working on. Program Managers, and Logistics staff, they should all do these courses to understand where they come in the process.” Information, Education and Communication course participant and WASH Engineer, Kenya

“This course was excellent. It appears as if one is in a real classroom, reading and having lecture with a professor. It is almost like a real life scenario.” Technical Project Management course participant and Procurement Officer, Liberia

How can you access these courses?The six ECB agencies are uploading the courses onto their internal e-learning sites, which will give their staff access to the courses from anywhere in the world. An offline (CD) version is currently being produced and will be available on request by the end of March. We are also finalising an e-learning platform that will allow the courses to be freely accessed by other (I)NGO and partner staff.

If you’re interested in sharing your WASH program learning and / or accessing the courses please contact us. Remember to revisit our WASH tools pages again soon to find out more about these great courses.

View this information at: www.ecbproject.org/wash-e-learning-courses

Send your feedback and questions to info@ecbproject.org

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I have now a very different approach to IEC and information dissemination. I am really appreciating the cultural aspects to consider in a WASH project. I have never thought about this before.

So now I can design appropriate communications materials. Recently we did a “clean-up” campaign using banners and poetry... the messages came from the community first, so they were more appropriate.” Project Officer, Zimbabwe

I feel I understand better what my manager is doing,

and what he needs from me to be able to manage WASH projects. I like the medium (e-learning) a lot.” WASH Assistant, Haiti

This training has enabled me to contribute more to

the discussion around cholera in our office and especially around prevention, responses and flooding.” WASH Officer, Somalia

The AIM Standing Team ExperimentIn 2011, the ECB Project agencies created a new Accountability and Impact Measurement (AIM) Standing Team initiative designed to train national staff from multiple agencies to support accountability to disaster affected communities and find ways to implement accountability in a practical and sustainable way across their own agency programs.

The team of specialists come from 18 countries and speak a number of languages. As accountability advisors, M&E experts and humanitarians they now share a common understanding of the key elements of accountability, can train colleagues on how to use key tools and approaches and understand how to implement good accountability practice in emergency programs.

How did the Standing Team develop?The AIM Standing Team deployments were the core component of the AIM Standing Team program. In 2012, team members deployed to Niger, Indonesia, Nepal, Kenya, and twice to Bangladesh and Bolivia. Their goal: to lead accountability trainings (based on the Good Enough Guide to Impact Measurement and Accountability) and accountability assessments. Time spent with multi-agency country teams often led to action plans that outlined the steps required to improve practice across each organization and created a local community of practice with connections between agencies. In some countries, the deploying team also held joint needs assessment training and supported UN clusters, particularly the Shelter Cluster, in their efforts to become more accountable.

When team members were not deployed, they used the Standing Team blog to share learning, organize virtual accountability discussions on key topics such as complaints response mechanisms; they also spoke with team members from other agencies to understand different approaches and experiences. Team members attended Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP) trainings and supported Sphere Standards project work, whilst continually championing accountability tools and approaches within their organizations and throughout the ECB Project agencies.

Key AIM tools:• The Good Enough Guide, Accountability Training of Trainers module and Communications Materials are designed to be interactive and participatory. They present AIM concepts, explain the purpose of different tools and describe how to put theory into practice. The training materials are available in English, Spanish, French, Bahasa Indonesian and Hindi.

• The Standing Team toolkit contains advice, lessons, and tools for Standing Team members. It includes topics such as accountability reviews and trainings templates, guidelines on after action reviews, joint needs assessment trainings, accountability best practice examples and much more. The toolkit is available in English, Spanish and French.

• Joint Evaluation Guidelines also provide case studies, tools and “how to” support.

In December 2012, the AIM Standing Team members, country office staff and agency accountability and impact

Standing Team members gather to share their learning and experiences following eight field deployments.Photo: © ECB Project, Kathmandu, Nepal, 2012

View this information at: www.ecbproject.org/aim-standing-team-review

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measurement technical advisers came together in Nepal to review their individual, organizational and peer-to-peer learning. The workshop reviewed the original AIM Standing Team mandate and the deployment model. Together the group was able to build a shared understanding of the achievements and limitations of the deployments and training approaches experienced in 2011-2012. They looked at the broader potential of this approach within the sector, considered how to engage more closely with the cluster system and identified other opportunities where they could work together in the future. In addition, training on accountability support to clusters was provided by the ECB Shelter Accountability Coordinator Hugh Earp.

The learning from this initiative is helping to build a body of evidence to make decisions about the future of the AIM Standing Team approach and further funding requirements. While the team is not currently deployable, this pilot has led to the development of skilled accountability champions in multiple agencies across five countries.

Read more our other Accountability initiatives and resources. Discover who was part of the AIM Standing Team in 2011-2012. If you’re interested in replicating this approach, receiving a copy of the learning workshop report, or sharing your experiences, please contact us.

Special thanks to the Steering Committee comprised of CARE, World Vision and CRS Accountability Specialists who oversaw the AIM Standing Team and to all those who supported and delivered this collaborative initiative including the Standing Team Coordinators Katy Love and Sarah Arnason.

Resources to Improve Shelter Sector Accountability Approaches Over the past eighteen months, the ECB Project agencies have worked with the IASC Shelter Cluster to improve accountability to affected communities within emergency shelter programs. This was achieved through the provision of shelter training workshops and Shelter Accountability Resources to support shelter teams in the field.

The collaboration with the Shelter Cluster builds on the work that Oxfam previously undertook with the WASH Cluster. These first WASH Accountability Resources were successfully developed and piloted which created the demand for a similar set of tools for shelter teams.

Training deployments to the Ivory Coast, Bolivia, Madagascar, Bangladesh, Nepal and Indonesia from 2011-2012 provided a space for shelter technical specialists, from multiple organizations, to talk about their program approaches and how they work together with communities in emergencies. The field visits and shelter training workshops also provided the input and scope to then create a new set of Shelter Accountability Resources that respond to the specific needs and gaps identified by field-based emergency response teams.

This works is part of a larger cross-sector effort amongst ECB Project agencies and partners to improve accountability and impact management and is harmonised with the goals outlined in the IASC Transformative agenda (2005).

Benefits and challenges The benefits of working through the clusters, and across multiple agencies, are numerous:

• Reach: more INGOs, NGOs, UN organizations and shelter specialists are now engaged with the approaches and tools developed to improve accountability.

• Sharing: peer-to-peer learning is captured and shared amongst shelter field staff during emergencies and is based on the reality of emergency contexts. The learning from different countries can also be shared with participants.

• Impetus: Cluster Coordinators can use the knowledge that they acquired during the training to develop and monitor strategies and ensure that accountability to affected population approaches are integrated throughout the emergency program.

• Feedback: multiple perspectives can be captured to create the Shelter Accountability Resources. These tools and approaches can be used and adapted by the whole community e.g. shelter teams and other specialist field teams.

Hugh Earp, ECB Shelter Program Coordinator at CARE reflects on the challenges, “The number of stakeholders in this ECB Project Cluster Accountability initiative means that getting consensus can be difficult. Through supporting the Shelter Cluster, the number of stakeholders increased significantly. It became a challenge, particularly during deployments, to meet the expectations of everyone involved. But the effort was worth it in the end as more people supported the process and felt part of the joint approach.”

In addition, the commitment to improving accountability across the humanitarian community, and particularly through clusters, comes at a point when resources and funding at a global level are not always available to INGOs, NGO, agencies and Clusters.

A deployment to Bangladesh pilots the Shelter Accountability approaches with communities.Photo: © Hugh Earp / ECB Project, Bangladesh, 2012

So where do we go from here?From the ECB Project agency perspective, the shelter accountability work is not finished. The Shelter Accountability Resources can still be improved, particularly through capturing additional examples from other contexts and organizations. Further training is needed in order to build a consistent and common understanding of the importance of putting accountability principles into practice. Much more work can be done to share learning across agencies, countries and through the new IASC Task Force on Accountability. Lastly, great progress continues to be made in the shelter sector, but more resources could also help to support other sectors and clusters in a similar way; within ECB Project agencies and partners there is likely to be the interest and the need to support further cluster work if funding and human resources can be secured.

Find out more about the Shelter Accountability Resources and our work with the IASC Clusters – please also share this news with your shelter colleagues so they can disseminate these materials more widely with partners and contacts.

Thanks to Hugh Earp, ECB Shelter Accountability Coordinator, who supported this multi-agency initiative on behalf of the ECB Project agencies and the Shelter Cluster. Thanks also to the Shelter Cluster co-leads at the IFRC and UNHCR for their support with this initiative.

Contact us with your suggestions and experiences or if you need some advice on how to use these tools and resources.

View this information at: www.ecbproject.org/shelter-cluster-accountability-resources-update

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Our learning from the Participatory Disaster Risk Assessment (PDRA) and Planning Project in Bolivia, Uganda and NigerThe ECB Project’s Participatory Disaster Risk Assessment (PDRA) and Planning Project is an initiative that seeks to harmonize existing and new approaches to Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). It encourages humanitarian staff and community members to identify community needs, recognize threats faced, and prepare risk reduction measures in partnership.

The program began in the ECB Project Bolivia consortium in 2009, and thereafter developed in the ECB Niger and Uganda Consortia in 2011 and 2012. The project involved multi-agency teams working together to review all existing participatory risk assessment tools in country. Once complete, the analysis of the approaches led to further training and field testing on how to implement the best and most appropriate approaches in each country context. Different tools and approaches were reviewed to identify best practice, innovation and practical obstacles and opportunities so that teams could then pilot approaches together with communities.

After a year of joint activities, a global project learning event brought together both field and global level program participants in order to:

• Review progress to date on the program approaches undertaken and tools used in Bolivia, Niger and Uganda

• Discuss recommendations for further collaboration and community-level activities

• Share knowledge with others who might be interested in developing similar participatory approaches in other countries.

Lessons from the field During the learning workshop, representatives from the Bolivia Consortium – who developed, tested and rolled out a PDRA planning tool and training approach (or Análisis de Riesgos y Planificación Participativa, ARPP) – were able to share some of their most important program implementation activities. Bolivian participants highlighted the importance of repeatedly investing in relationships within the ECB Consortium agencies, relevant government agencies and local communities as well as at the global and regional office levels. They found that initial consultations, while taking time, enabled stakeholders to develop a common language and consultative approaches to develop shared risk assessment concepts. Several field pilots with community groups also provided opportunities to revise and improve resources and to ground staff learning in practical application.

In Uganda, reviewing and piloting different tools highlighted the importance of getting multiple stakeholders to consider different organizational perspectives and buy-in to the idea of adapting their own risk assessment approaches. Similarly PDRA project participants emphasized the importance of high level engagement and involvement of the appropriate government agencies to ensure success and sustainability of activities piloted in local communities.

Piloting PDRA and Planning risk assessment approaches with children in communities in Bolivia.Photo: © Isabelle Bremaud, Oxfam, 2012

Whilst in the ECB Niger Consortium, due to the plethora of equally good PDRA tools available within the ECB Project agencies, the process of arriving at a harmonized approach, and an agreement of the application of the tool, was both a challenge and a valuable learning opportunity for participating agencies.

Despite the PDRA and Planning Project drawing to a close, attention is still focused within these countries on developing strategies for ensuring the sustainable use of these tools and approaches inside and across all partnering agencies.

As one workshop Ugandan participant shared, “It remains on the ECB Project Consortium agencies to influence full implementation of this harmonized tool and…marshal its endorsement and usage.”

Various strategies are being adopted or considered for linking the tools and products developed in each country to promote their sustainable use across the region.

Ideas include:

• Wider dissemination of the harmonized tools amongst non-ECB agencies and partners alongside translation (where appropriate) of the materials and learning

• Further training of staff and piloting in different contexts and communities

• Joint efforts to mainstream these harmonized approaches into relevant government and agency policy frameworks and planning processes at local, provincial and national levels.

To receive a copy of the PDRA country tools and project reports, please contact us.

Special thanks to all the ECB agencies that coordinated and supported these efforts in Bolivia, Uganda and Niger. Thanks also to Kemi Seesink, ECB PDRA Program Coordinator, and her colleagues from CARE Netherlands.

View this information at:www.ecbproject.org/pdra-project-learning

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As one participant from the global PDRA learning workshop summarised, “To increase the likelihood of success it is important to create a general consensus around the activity. The consensus

has to be at country, regional and global level, among the ECB Project agencies and external stakeholders and partners.”

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News in BriefWe’ve recently launched our new Shelter Training Module to help field teams understand the key shelter program principles in emergencies. Thanks to CARE for leading this ECB Project initiative and to the teams who supported the pilots in Indonesia and India.

Support the Joint Standards Initiative (Sphere Project, HAP International and People in Aid) by completing the JSI Stakeholder Consultation survey.

ECB Project agencies are planning to develop a proposal for a PHASE III. Recent meetings at the HPG / HPN’s offices at the Overseas Development Institute in London discussed current activities, needs and gaps in urban disaster research and programming. If you’d like a copy of the meeting summary or to find out more, please contact Linda Poteat, ECB Project Director.

Funding & SupportThese ECB Project joint initiatives and resources were developed thanks to funding support from numerous donors including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Directorate General for Humanitarian Aid & Civil Protection (DG ECHO). The ECB Project agencies received support and staff resources to develop Toward Resilience from Catholic Relief Services, Save the Children and Mercy Corps. Additional funding for Toward Resilience also came from USAID’s Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and Fidelity Charitable Trustees’ Philanthropy Fund. For the WASH e-learning courses the ECB Project agencies received extensive staff support and funds from Oxfam. World Vision funding helped ECB Project teams deploy the AIM Standing Team, supported Asia regional activities and covered costs for delivering the ECB Inter-active learning events and developing ECB resources online. CARE provided resource support for the Shelter Accountability, PDRA & Planning Project, Shelter module training course development, and also contributed funds for the ECB Inter-active learning events.

Each ECB Project joint initiative is coordinated and supported by a multi-agency Steering Committee at the global and national level. Thanks to all those agencies that supported these joint efforts with their time and expertise.

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