Multi-stakeholder “Early Recovery” capacity building project

In simple terms, Early Recovery is the first segment of resilience during a humanitarian crisis. Early Recovery operations aim to reduce the severity and duration of the crisis and to establish the foundations of sustainable recovery and resilience at various levels: individuals, community, society, etc.

Though the majority of stakeholders are convinced of the validity of Resilience approaches to aid, Early Recovery approaches have not yet been properly integrated and there is no shared method for putting them into practice, with the multi-actor coordination that this involves. What is more, demonstrating that recovery activities/programmes have added value is complicated, and there is therefore a need to develop tools to measure the effects of these programmes.

In order to address these issues, UNDP and Groupe URD are working together on a project funded by ECHO which aims to promote the integration and operationnalisation of the Early Recovery concept in the collective response to crises.

An exploratory mission to the Sahel (Senegal, Mali and Niger) was carried out to assess the current situation with regard to this topic. This allowed Groupe URD to establish the two main areas of activity for the project:

• Four awareness-raising workshops bringing together a wide range of stakeholders (UN agencies, state institutions, national and international NGOs, etc.). In each country-context, the participants will be encouraged to reach agreement on guidelines and operational methods for Early Recovery programmes.
• Two seminars for the elaboration of a joint tool for measuring progress in terms of Early Recovery.

The following field visits, in Bangladesh (May-June 2015), in Nepal (September & December), Chad (November) and Niger (September & November2015), led to two awareness-raising and exchange workshops, as well as two seminars to adjust the measurement tool prototype.

During the second semester of 2015, Groupe URD then organised two additional workshops and tested the tool in two other contexts.