Flagship Initiative First Year Learning Report (March 2024)

Lewis Sida, Philip Proudfoot, Mariah Cannon, Mónica Almanza, Manual De Vera, Nyachangkuoth Rambang Tai

In 2023, the Flagship Initiative was launched as a radical shift in humanitarian coordination and response. Its aim was to deliver solutions and build resilience by ensuring the priorities of crisis-affected communities drive humanitarian assistance. Systematically engaging communities by localizing humanitarian decision-making, empowering local partners, and putting community priorities at the heart of humanitarian programming, the initiative seeks to create the space for a more holistic, community-driven, and sustainable humanitarian system, one that is ready to face a new reality of increasingly complex challenges.

Piloted in Colombia, South Sudan, Niger, and the Philippines over an initial three-year period, RC/HCs lead the implementation of innovative approaches that move coordination and response closer to crisis-affected communities, ensure genuine and unfiltered listening of their priorities, and deliver solutions in partnership with local and national actors.

A critical aspect of the initiative is to collect and document practices and exchange perspectives across the four Flagship Initiative countries and with the broader humanitarian community. The intention is to identify promising new approaches to be scaled-up in the four Flagship Initiative countries and replicated in other contexts.