Case Study Summary
This case study describes how appropriate support for local civil-society interventions following a rapid-onset emergency can enable very fast and responsive relief at a scale commensurate with needs. After the impact of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar in 2008, local civil-society efforts were found to have greater penetration and much lower costs than conventional direct implementation by international agencies.
A brief period of what might be described as 'creative chaos' after the cyclone eased the normal organisational constraints to risk taking, enabling a number of innovations in the process of aid delivery. In particular, field teams:
1) developed new methodologies for rapid funding and monitoring of proposals submitted by local civil?society organisations (CSOs), at scale
2) designed and delivered options for capacity development relevant to disaster response and subsequent recovery
3) introduced 'do?less?harm' initiatives, to try to minimise the negative side-effects of rapid grant disbursal
4) established mechanisms and structures for communication and linkages between mainstream international responses and local civil-society initiatives.
Although the local ownership of humanitarian response appears to be increasingly considered essential for improving humanitarian performance, there are few practical examples of how to go about it rapidly and at scale while also being mindful and honest about the potential for inadvertently doing harm. This case study describes how real-time, on-the-job innovation which navigated the risks inherent in such work was essential to allow working methodologies to be developed and implemented.
While there is great potential within international strategies to mainstream mechanisms to facilitate such local relief response, exact replication is not feasible or desirable. Instead, similar processes of innovation would be needed for each new emergency context, building on the core principles of finding flexible and responsible ways of supporting local actors. Given that prevailing norms among many aid agencies tend to impede risk-taking, experimentation and learning, a shift in organisational culture may be necessary to allow successful dissemination of these core principles.