Mutual aid in crisis situations (phase 2: dissemination of knowledge)

Context of the project

The frequency, intensity and nature of crises is changing. The major, and often interconnected, changes that are happening, whether related to the climate, politics, geopolitics, health, etc., have raised questions about the capacity of traditional aid organisations to take action. The countries who thought they were protected from these crises, or at least prepared for them, are beginning to see that their emergency services and institutions are not ready for the systemic risks that they now face.

At the same time, the affected populations, who often are not prepared or trained to cope with these changes, help each other and self-organise during crises, based on spontaneous, endogenous and informal processes. The COVID pandemic has left a lasting impression, highlighting the potential for citizens and local actors to organise when faced with an unprecedented situation. The same dynamics are regularly observed in crisis contexts, and have been highlighted, for example, in our evaluations, and in the work of several social scientists¹.

However, in our numerous evaluations of humanitarian responses, we have shown that external actors do not always take this potential into account, and as a result, they can weaken local dynamics. This was highlighted by Groupe URD’s real-time evaluations carried out in Lebanon² (2020) and Ukraine³ (2022).

Origins of the project

This project came into being following discussions between the Groupe URD team and Pablo Servigne, at the Autumn School on Humanitarian Aid in 2019 on “Climate change, multiple crises and collapse: what can the aid sector do to anticipate and adapt to the major changes ahead?” and in 2021 on “Local solidarity, mutual assistance and citizenship: the forgotten side of crisis response?”.

The project is at the crossroads of Groupe URD’s long-standing work on crises and vulnerability, the participation of local people in aid programmes and the localisation of aid, and Pablo Servigne’s work on disasters, the risk of collapse and mutual aid.

Phase 2 of the project: disseminating knowledge

The aim of this Education for Citizenship and International Solidarity (ECSI) project is to strengthen people’s ability and willingness to help each other in times of crisis – both current and future – by raising awareness, experimenting with and understanding spontaneous mutual aid phenomena and the ways in which they can be supported by the various local players and residents. As well as sharing knowledge, the aim will be to encourage citizens to get organised, and to facilitate synergies between the many local players, both institutional and non-institutional, thereby strengthening their resilience to crises.

> The target audience in France

Citizens/individuals concerned about future prospects, whether organised within movements or not, in order to strengthen their will and capacity to act.
Those involved in crisis situations (at national and local level): local authorities and networks of local authorities, elected representatives and political decision-makers, social aid and SSE players, civil protection and fire brigades, national NGOs and local associations, the French Red Cross, with the aim of better equipping them to interact with individuals/citizens and making them more likely to develop these synergies.

> Deliverables

To achieve this, a range of diversified activities starts in September 2024 and will be implemented over two and a half years, including: the production of resources (key messages, recommendations, booklets, manuals, educational documents and guidance notes, etc.), the organisation of webinars, a citizen mobilisation campaign,theorganisation of interactive events (role-playing exercises, feedback between local players), the production and broadcasting of a TV documentary for the wider public.

> Partners

To carry out this project, Groupe URD and Pablo Servigne are working with the organisation Tournez S’il Vous Plait ( TSVP) to produce a documentary for television, with the movement On est prêt/Massive impact to raise awareness and mobilise citizens around environmental and social issues, and with the organisations Makesense and Solucracy, which are involved in citizen mobilisation in local areas.

1. See: Revet Sandrine, Anthropologie d’une catastrophe. Les coulées de boue de 1999 au Venezuela, Paris, Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2007 ; Desportes Isabelle, Craindre le politique : la réponse humanitaire aux catastrophes dites « naturelles » en Birmanie (2015), Éthiopie (2016) et au Zimbabwe (2016-2019), Cahiers d’Outre Mer, 2022 ; et Corbet Alice, Les différentes dimensions de la mémoire du séisme de 2010 en Haïti, Entre pratiques du quotidien et tentatives de mises en mémoire officielle, L’Espace Politique (2020
2. https://www.urd.org/en/project/real-time-evaluation-of-the-response-to-the-explosion-in-beirut-on-4-august-2020/
3. https://www.urd.org/en/project/real-time-evaluation-in-ukraine/