Self-Recovery & Stronger Buildings

Promoting safer building at scale in a self-recovery programme – some pre-evaluation thoughts.

• Staged response1. Food

2. Emergency Shelter

3. Early recovery shelter programme

4. Livelihoods

• Working through partners

REACH Monitoring Assessment, mid April:

It is clear that emergency shelter – usually the focus of humanitarian responses in the weeks after a disaster – is no longer preferred by the population.

CARE’s shelter response to Typhoon Haiyan

Image taken on 11th November 2013; 3 days after the Typhoon

Early Recovery

Objective: The most vulnerable affected households (men, women, boys and girls) have increased capacity to build back safer shelters.

Phase 1, 3 months: Emergency shelter & NFIs for 15,000 households.

DFATD (Canada) & DFID RRF

Phase 2, 3-12 months: Self-recovery shelter support for 15,000 vulnerable households.

CARE’s Shelter Programme

• 15,854 housholds received emergency shelter kits• 16,576 households received self-recovery kits & cash• 7,980 received additional top-up cash grants

Response in numbers

5th May 2014

Early Recovery

Ambitious recovery

Safer building measures

Some beneficiaries used wire, some refused because of corrosion worries

Not so safe(r) building measures?

Control over quality & design

“We can concentrate on our livelihood because we know we have a place to come home to” – Adult male

“It is a very big help because I can focus on my studies instead of finding work to help sustain the needs of rebuilding our house” – Male child

“If not for the support, we would still be raising money for the repair. The SRK lessened my worries and gave us a chance to put food on the table” – Pregnant woman

Benefits of early recovery

“We were satisfied with the quantity of materials because we were told that it is not to build a whole house but for repair so we did not expect too much.” – Adult male

“Even if we are going to need more materials, at least we’ve started building. We’ll take care of the rest.” – Roving team member

“I accepted that not all will be assisted because the criteria have to be followed.” – Adult female

“Other beneficiaries are not deserving; why did they make it to the list?” – Adult female

Expectations

As agency-built houses start to be delivered, what will happen to perceptions of the support?

Perceptions over time

Building back safer messaging

Building back safer application

• REACH monitoring assessment found, in April:• Households that shelter assistance, in any form, were twice as

likely to have knowledge of building back safer measures.

• But… Only 18% of households that received build back safer information actually used it in construction of their homes. Why is this?

• In July:• “When looking at the safety statistics for households that received

non-emergency types of assistance, 30% were classified as being fairly safe or safe”

• “there should be an increased focus on technical assistance, trainings and public outreach on building back safer so as to support households in their self-recovery.”

Is it working?

• Design & construction of shelters is done by the owners and the community

• Each Barangay has a ‘roving team’ of two trained carpenters & one mobiliser, for technical support, monitoring and community relations

• A variety of measures, including model houses (large & small), training carpenters, training men and women, demonstrations and twice-weekly site inspections were used to promote adoption of safer building measures.

Promoting safer building measures

Prioritising messages

1

2

3

4

Varied means of messaging

Adoption of safer building measures

% adoption of 4 priority build back safer measures by time since distribution

Building back safer, safely?

• The programme has successfully targeted the most vulnerable, and reduced their vulnerability

• The programme has supported communities’ ability to self-recovery

• Working through partners was enormously beneficial• Technical expertise on the ground early was critical• Flexible funding allowed a more responsive programme

Conclusions

• Are we, collectively, doing enough to understand how to effectively promote safer building?

• Is a programme well received after 6 months still so well regarded after 12? And how will it be after 24 months?

• Has support to the most vulnerable been sufficient to allow them to recover – and how long will that take?

Questions