Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre Internship Program
by Sierra Gladfelter
Zambia, July 2016
In Zambia, Sierra is supporting the monitoring and evaluation component of the ‘City Learning Lab processes’ Zambia Red Cross Society program. This includes supporting the facilitation and documentation of the First Lusaka Learning Lab for the Future Resilience for African Cities and Lands (FRACTAL) project, including contribution to the development of a learning framework and establishing a learning baseline, researching background materials and preparing reading materials in collaboration with the FRACTAL team and documenting learning during the Learning Lab interactions and compiling a learning report.
From June 30th to July 1st, 2016, I had the honor of participating in a two-day meeting hosted by the Zambia Relief and Development Foundation to share the findings from a study to assess the feasibility establishing a non-state actor’s humanitarian platform in Zambia. Such a network would allow for the activities of humanitarian actors to be more strategically coordinated while also providing a space for exchanging best practices. In addition to consultants from the University of Zambia responsible for conducting the study, representatives from more than a dozen organizations and local institutions working in the humanitarian sector across Zambia were invited to play a key role in defining the next steps forward in establishing a platform for coordinating relief activities and leveraging the organizations’ collective expertise to influence policy. The goal by the end of the two-day meeting was to collectively develop a vision, mission, objectives, governance structure and work plan for formally establishing the Zambia Humanitarian Actors Platform (ZHAP). The shared learning generated through this meeting was hoped to serve as a model to facilitate similar processes in the creation of national platforms for humanitarian actors in other parts of Africa.
The formal establishment of the ZHAP was inspired by remarks made by non-state humanitarian organizations interviewed during the initial feasibility study. Many institutions with rich histories of working in communities on the ground across Zambia lamented how most organizations within the humanitarian sector tend to work “as islands,” with individual voices too weak to be recognized by national policy makers. Instead, humanitarian organizations usually find themselves called upon by the government only in the wake of a disaster, but in a way that is explicitly prescriptive. In other words, many humanitarian actors seem to feel that while asked to assist in cleaning up after natural and human disasters, they have little support in preventative projects or ongoing work to build resilience in communities. Frustrated with feeling as if their recommendations are disregarded and not taken seriously during recovery, many organizations interviewed in the scoping study by faculty at the University of Zambia suggested that a common space was needed for non-governmental and humanitarian organizations to convene and share their collective expertise with one another as well as to strategically lobby for more proactive and socially just policies around disaster prevention, relief, and recovery.
Another recurring comment made by participating institutions during the meeting was concern that the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit (DMMU), with a mandate under the 2010 Disaster Management Act to coordinate all relief activities in Zambia, does not currently place enough emphasis on disaster risk reduction, community preparedness, and resilience in its long-term recovery activities.
““We need to act before the disaster!” one workshop participant asserted. “We cannot afford to sit around waiting for the event to occur.””
This conviction, which seemed to resonate among all of the representatives at the planning meeting, became central in ZHAP’s vision statement, which was later articulated in the work groups: to proactively promote a culture of disaster mitigation, management and sustainable recovery across all scales in Zambia. Read more …
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Notes from the Field: Zambia Humanitarian Actors Platform – Establishing a Space for Sharing Best Practices and Influencing National Policy
Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre Internship Program
by Sierra Gladfelter
Zambia, July 2016
In Zambia, Sierra is supporting the monitoring and evaluation component of the ‘City Learning Lab processes’ Zambia Red Cross Society program. This includes supporting the facilitation and documentation of the First Lusaka Learning Lab for the Future Resilience for African Cities and Lands (FRACTAL) project, including contribution to the development of a learning framework and establishing a learning baseline, researching background materials and preparing reading materials in collaboration with the FRACTAL team and documenting learning during the Learning Lab interactions and compiling a learning report.
From June 30th to July 1st, 2016, I had the honor of participating in a two-day meeting hosted by the Zambia Relief and Development Foundation to share the findings from a study to assess the feasibility establishing a non-state actor’s humanitarian platform in Zambia. Such a network would allow for the activities of humanitarian actors to be more strategically coordinated while also providing a space for exchanging best practices. In addition to consultants from the University of Zambia responsible for conducting the study, representatives from more than a dozen organizations and local institutions working in the humanitarian sector across Zambia were invited to play a key role in defining the next steps forward in establishing a platform for coordinating relief activities and leveraging the organizations’ collective expertise to influence policy. The goal by the end of the two-day meeting was to collectively develop a vision, mission, objectives, governance structure and work plan for formally establishing the Zambia Humanitarian Actors Platform (ZHAP). The shared learning generated through this meeting was hoped to serve as a model to facilitate similar processes in the creation of national platforms for humanitarian actors in other parts of Africa.
The formal establishment of the ZHAP was inspired by remarks made by non-state humanitarian organizations interviewed during the initial feasibility study. Many institutions with rich histories of working in communities on the ground across Zambia lamented how most organizations within the humanitarian sector tend to work “as islands,” with individual voices too weak to be recognized by national policy makers. Instead, humanitarian organizations usually find themselves called upon by the government only in the wake of a disaster, but in a way that is explicitly prescriptive. In other words, many humanitarian actors seem to feel that while asked to assist in cleaning up after natural and human disasters, they have little support in preventative projects or ongoing work to build resilience in communities. Frustrated with feeling as if their recommendations are disregarded and not taken seriously during recovery, many organizations interviewed in the scoping study by faculty at the University of Zambia suggested that a common space was needed for non-governmental and humanitarian organizations to convene and share their collective expertise with one another as well as to strategically lobby for more proactive and socially just policies around disaster prevention, relief, and recovery.
Another recurring comment made by participating institutions during the meeting was concern that the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit (DMMU), with a mandate under the 2010 Disaster Management Act to coordinate all relief activities in Zambia, does not currently place enough emphasis on disaster risk reduction, community preparedness, and resilience in its long-term recovery activities.
““We need to act before the disaster!” one workshop participant asserted. “We cannot afford to sit around waiting for the event to occur.””
This conviction, which seemed to resonate among all of the representatives at the planning meeting, became central in ZHAP’s vision statement, which was later articulated in the work groups: to proactively promote a culture of disaster mitigation, management and sustainable recovery across all scales in Zambia. Read more …