Attachments
Executive Summary
Building resilience requires a long-term commitment and an integrated approach to strengthen the capacities of individuals, households, and communities to respond to, recover from, and prevent (where possible) shocks and stresses. This report synthesizes the experiences of two programs implemented by Mercy Corps: USAID’s Office for Food for Peace-funded Promoting Agriculture, Health and Alternative Livelihoods (PAHAL) and Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies-funded Managing Risk through Economic Development-II (M-RED II), which both sought to facilitate resilience of rural communities in Nepal through their integrated resilience programming. While these two programs employed different sectors and approaches in their resilience programming and integration, evaluations of PAHAL and M-RED II both highlight the benefit of investing the time and effort to design, implement, and manage integrated resilience programming. On this basis, these programs are selected as case studies for this report.
In this report, resilience program integration is defined as the intentional layering and sequencing of multi-sectoral interventions and the coordination of actors, in order to prevent or reduce the drivers and effects of shocks and stresses that undermine the program and the long-term wellbeing of the target populations. Resilience program layering is understood as the strategic coordination of interventions across the different sectors and stakeholders in order to determine which activities and actors are linked. Finally, resilience program sequencing is defined as the intentional organization of program interventions, to coordinate the order in which activities are implemented and actors are engaged, to maximize program impact.