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Evaluation
Temporary shelters nearing
completion at Tabarre
Roisin Gallagher/Concern, Haiti 2011
Interviews showed they had an astute understanding
of both the resource requirements
that coordination commitments place on the
organisation but also the opportunity this
provides to influence the humanitarian
response far beyond what Concern could
achieve through other means. While some
members of the humanitarian community
may dismiss the value of coordination as
being too time-consuming, it is the way of
doing humanitarian business. In contexts such
as Haiti, it is essential for prioritising assistance
and avoiding duplication. The team has
used the forum that the clusters offer for raising
issues of concern to the wider
humanitarian community such as protection,
shelter design issues and the threat of forced
evictions. Interviews with Cluster
Coordinators highlighted the value they placed
on Concern’s participation, as well as the
important contribution that staff members have
made to the work of the clusters.
Lessons learned
Concern’s response in Haiti has necessitated
interventions that have either been unprecedented
or provide the potential to lead the
organisation in new directions or challenge
current ways of working.
Responding to urban disasters
Humanitarian organisations in Haiti have
struggled to make their earthquake responses
63
Cleaning drains as part
of Cash for Work
Roisin Gallagher/Concern, Haiti 2011
relevant to the urban environment. While
‘camps’ are often administratively more easy
to support, the lack of space and the infiltration
of powerful gangs into the over-crowded
urban environments has created a significant
challenge to agencies who are more used to
working in peri-urban or rural environments.
The lesson here may be to stretch humanitarian
comfort zones and look at methodologies
to support smaller and more decentralised
settlements that focus on the importance of
community, that benefit from strong links with
local authorities and which have strong links
with the private sector to ease the process and
sustainability of handing over services. In
seeking to address these issues directly, the
approach taken by Concern in Tabarre Issa
camps has much to offer. In working with both
resettled and host communities, and in trying
to plan the settlement less as a regimented
camp, Concern’s programme has taken a
‘neighbourhood’ or ‘community’ approach
which is considered as best practice by many in
the cluster.
Innovative approaches to addressing
vulnerability: The Baby Tent Programme
Haiti is the first humanitarian response where
the concept of ‘baby tents’ has been delivered
to scale, in a context where women had
suffered significant trauma and where the use
of infant formula was often prioritised over
breastfeeding practices. The Baby Tents were a
space which offered privacy, care and counselling
and which could advocate for, educate
and support women on breastfeeding. Where
infants were not breastfed, the baby tents
monitored the use of infant formula. Thus they
provided potentially life-saving services for
both breastfed and non-breastfed infants.
A high value placed on an independent
procurement capacity
An important lesson has come from trialling
the United Nations Humanitarian Response
Depot (HRD) which is available for both prepositioning
of stock items and procurement.
Experience from the earthquake response
strongly suggests the need for Concern to
retain an independent procurement capacity
as quotes from the HRD procurement agency
were found to be uncompetitive and lead
times were considered to be lengthy. While the
initial reliance on air freight has a significant
cost attached to it, it did ensure that the
programme could scale-up swiftly and
ensured that minimum quality standards for
procured items were met.
Review of
Integrated
Food Security
Programme
in Malawi
Summary of published review 1
Areview of an Integrated Food
Security Programme (IFSP),
implemented by GTZ 2 in
Malawi from 1997 to 2004, has
recently been published by Tufts
University. The IFSP in Malawi was a
complex, multi-sector activity that sought
to improve food security and nutrition in
one of the country’s most vulnerable,
least-performing regions. The
programme was implemented by GTZ
(now GIZ) 3 on behalf of the German
Federal Ministry for Economic
Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
between 1996 and 2003 (with a 12-month
extension supported by the European
Union).
The IFSP’s end-line evaluation
reported that the intervention had
achieved its objectives. A subsequent
review was undertaken to consider
whether gains made in the past had been
sustained and to draw lessons from this
example that may contribute to new
thinking on models of integrated, multisectoral
programming. The review
highlights that “food security approaches
to nutrition require systemic, multidisciplinary
and inter-sectoral approaches”
(UN Standing Committee on Nutrition,
2009, p. 1). It goes on to argue that the
empirical evidence remains limited of
what actually works on the ground,
where attempts are made to introduce
packages of interventions that address
multiple sectors at once.
This review was conducted over a
period of five months (November 2010
through March 2011) and involved two
field trips. The findings presented in the