The Philippines’ Enhancing Resilient Communities and Inter-agency Collaboration and Interoperability: Perspectives, Challenges, and Opportunities

Executive Summary
The Enhancing Resilient Communities (ERC) Flagship Initiative (FI), launched by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA) in the Philippines, exemplifies a strategic pivot towards a proactive resilience-building model that recognizes the need to engage more accountably with affected populations and local capacities, respond more effectively and sustainably to their priorities, and thereby contribute to more effective and equitable use ofhumanitarian funding."

As succinctly stated in the ERC FI Brief (February 2023), “for international humanitarian assistance to have the greatest impact on the greatest number of people, the priorities of affected communities must drive humanitarian response. The ERC FI aims to develop an approach for an inclusive humanitarian response system that works with and for affected people, delivers what they need in the way they need it, and reduces risks and vulnerabilities, especially for women, girls, and other communities at risk.”
This initiative is firmly aligned with OCHA’s mandate to coordinate effective and principled humanitarian action in partnership with national and international actors, aiming to strengthen the resilience of vulnerable communities against disasters and climate impacts. The ERC Flagship Initiative's Theory of Change in the Philippines emphasises that investing in community empowerment and prevention enhances people's resilience to shocks.

One of the key pillars of the ERC FI is community engagement, wherein UNOCHA is ‘piloting’ the Resilience-Based Participatory Community Appraisal (ReBPCA), a structured dialogue methodology designed to deepen the understanding of community capacities and vulnerability to disasters and climate change. This approach is crucial in translating sectoral mandates into actionable strategies that empower communities to lead in their recovery and resilience processes. However, stakeholders have expressed a need for a clearer end-state description or direction for the ERC Flagship Initiatives process that is different from existing efforts and experiences generated by many organizations and agencies, including UN development agencies, on community-based and community-driven development. A clearer
appreciation and understanding of the endgame of ERC FI as an approach and strategy will provide other stakeholders and partners with a clear idea of their role and contribution to the goals of the ERC Flagship Initiatives. The EU-ERC Technical Assistance Team (EU TAT) is a continuation of the EU Global Facility for Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC Facility) support to the EU Delegation in the Philippines for an initial scoping exercise on the gaps, needs, and priorities in the field of disaster risk reduction as well as short-term technical assistance (TA) support to the initial stages of the UN’s ERC FI. The EU TAT's overarching objective is to contribute to the implementation of a more coherent, impactful, and strategic approach to DRR in the Philippines, including climate change adaptation, by increasing the ability of international and domestic DRRM, climate and development institutions, and instruments to
work together in complementary and reinforcing ways for enhancing community resilience.

A big part of the EU-ERC TA's task is to work with the UNOCHA regional field coordinators in the ERC FI "pilot" areas in Bicol (Region V) and CARAGA (Region XIII) to find out what the ERC pilot communities think about community resilience and how they plan to build their own resilience development agenda. They also need to know what kind of involvement they need from local agencies and partners, such as LGUs, NGOs, and CSOs, in order to make this happen. The EU TAT, together with UN-OCHA’s national and regional staff, facilitated community resilience exercises in Legaspi and Surigao. These activities involved 89 participants, of whom 48 are females and 41 are males, from six different communities, who highlighted the community description of a resilient community and established pathways towards achieving the community-described resilient end state, validated by 74 community representatives with whom 21 males and 53 females from the six original barangays earlier consulted, plus two barangays who have been engaged for validation of the results.