Once upon a time…

….there was a little girl who loved stories. As a little slip of a thing, she used to stand and swing on the garden gate, waving to passers-by in the hope that she could chat to them and ask them questions to find out their stories (she was a very curious little girl). A few years later, her very patient, very wonderful mother would read her favourite Maurice Sendak stories Outside Over There and Where The Wild Things Are to her every night. When she was at school, she’d set her alarm super early so she could wake up and read Enid Blyton books before going to lessons. English was always her favourite subject, and characters such as Elizabeth Bennett, Scout Finch, Jo March and Scarlett O’Hara were as familiar to her as her oldest friends. And then she studied the art of telling a story – for it is an art – during an English Literature degree at university.

Now that little girl (who’s not so little anymore) works for Practical Action.

I am that girl. And I work at Practical Action because I want to change the world. But my passion is storytelling: both discovering a good story, and then telling it in the best possible way. But how do you change the world with a story?

Well, this week, we at Practical Action launched our next five year strategy. It is bold and ambitious and exciting – but challenging too. The targets, both in terms of fundraising and impact at scale, are high.

But that’s because there are huge problems to solve. Right now 1.3 billion people across the world don’t have clean, safe water. 1 billion people don’t have enough food to eat. 2.6 billion people don’t have adequate sanitation. And 1.6 billion people don’t have access to modern energy. Too many people live in abject poverty. It is a world of great technology injustice.

There is no question that this needs to change. So over the next five years we will work towards four universal goals:

1. Sustainable access to modern energy service for all by 2030
2. Systems which provide food security and livelihoods for people in rural areas
3. Improved access to drinking water, sanitation and waste services for people living in towns and cities
4. Reduced risk of disasters for marginalised communities

And by the end of this next strategy period, in 2017, we will have transformed the lives of 6 million people.

That is an exhilarating prospect for me.

Because 6 million people = 6 million stories to find and tell.

Each of those 6 million is not just a ‘project beneficiary’ but a living, feeling, thinking human being with their own unique life story. And those 6 million life stories are 6 million more reasons to support Practical Action, today and for the future.

I can’t wait to get started.

How Practical Action is building resilience

Susan Upton
March 8th, 2012

Resilience is a hot topic in the development sector. Practical Action sees resilience as the ability of a system, community or society to resist, absorb, cope with and recover from shocks and stresses. A resilient community is one in which people can manage risk and recover from shocks such as floods, droughts and conflict. It also means people have the ability to adapt to long term trends such as climate change in a timely manner without undermining their wellbeing.

A key element of resilience thinking is the way it integrates multiple risks, shocks and uncertainties and their impacts on vulnerable people as well as ecosystems. Therefore resilience emphasises system, community or individual capacities to learn, adapt and innovate to cope with and recover from disruptive changes. However, learning, adapting and experimenting are not always a priority for development programmers. They are also hard to measure and quantify.

How to turn resilience into practical actions is therefore a challenge for many organisations.

So how is Practical Action building resilience into its programmes?

Practical Action has produced a briefing paper called ‘Resilience in Practice’, which explains just how resilience is being built into projects. The paper is made up of six case studies of projects in Peru, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sudan and Kenya that illustrate Practical Action’s work in building resilience into its programmes. They provide an evidence base for how Practical Action is turning resilience into practice and for including processes and resources that are essential for supporting learning, adaptation and experimentation.

The case studies reinforce the need for organisations to be proactive in reaching out to build partnerships and alliances with people and organisations operating outside of their specialist intervention areas.  This means they also require an investment and challenge our traditional way of working.

These projects have already seen increases in people’s livelihood security through the strengthening of food security, more diversified livelihood options and disaster management plans at the district level reflecting local level risks.

So what’s next?

The briefing paper highlights that there are still a range of challenges that need to be overcome and that there are areas that need further research. The challenges include a lack of relevant climate data, appropriate tools and incentives in organisations to support integration of sectors, a lack of scenario planning methods and clear indicators of resilience on which to base planning, monitoring and evaluations. For the full briefing paper please see ‘Resilience in Practice’.

A handbook for building resilience

Susan Upton
February 9th, 2012

Promoting resilience is a growing area of interest in development. The UK Government’s Humanitarian Policy ‘Saving Lives, Preventing Suffering and Building Resilience’, puts resilience at the heart of their approach. Building on this, DFID have committed to embedding resilience building in all of its country programmes by 2015 and integrating resilience into all of their work on climate change and conflict prevention.  

So what is resilience?

Practical Action sees resilience as the ability of a system, community or society to resist, absorb, cope with and recover from shocks and stresses. A resilient community is one in which people can manage risk and recover from shocks such as floods, droughts and violent conflict. It also means people have the ability to adapt to long term trends such as climate change in a timely and efficient manner without undermining their wellbeing.

So how do we achieve resilience?

How to operationalise concepts of resilience is a challenge for many organisations. Practical Action has developed an approach called From Vulnerability to Resilience (V2R). This is a framework that analyses the causes of vulnerability and how disaster risk reduction, climate change impacts, governance and livelihoods interact and affect resilient outcomes.

The handbook

This new handbook is aimed at practitioners who seek examples of how the V2R framework can be used in practice, based on examples from Nepal. It offers a step process, workbooks and tools.  It includes guidance on how to include long-term trends in programming with a focus on climate change.  

It is essential that organisations working on poverty reduction take into account the impact of climate change on the communities and sectors where they are working. In so doing, they will be better able to support community members and government officials to adapt to the adverse effects and take advantage of any opportunities presented. This requires a detailed analysis of the impacts of climate change at the local level in order to build adaptive capacity to withstand both sudden shocks and incremental changes in the climate. Participatory tools have been updated for use of uncovering community perceptions of changes, alongside identifying historical climate data.

Download it here.

Climate Change and Disasters – What we can do

Maggie Ibrahim
Bourton on Dunsmore, Warwickshire CV23 9, UK, Bourton on Dunsmore
November 14th, 2011

The Special Report on Managing the Risk from Extreme Events and Disasters for Advancing Adaptation to Climate Change (PDF)  is a welcome resource  for Practical Action as it helps to confirm the direction we need to take for our 5 year strategic plan on disaster risk reduction.

 The challenge for our disaster risk reduction (DRR) programme is to systematically include the latest climate change information into programme design, project planning and monitoring and evaluation. Despite the latest Special Report providing assessments at the global, regional and sub-regional level, there are real challenges of including climate information for community based DRR planning. Data is often missing at the local level.

 To overcome this gap, Practical Action has developed a  handbook with a six stage process to bring climate data into our programme planning. We start with triangulating climate data, and climate change proxies of plants and animals with weather trends and communities perceptions.

We then use this information to understand the different scenarios communities may expect.  This provides us a way with working with uncertainty by understanding how climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency hazards and in turn the impact of these hazards on livelihoods.

From here, we turn to our Participatory Action Plan Development approach to build consensus on an action plan among a range of stakeholders. For us, this means working with local communities and national, meso and  local level authorities , as well as scientists, academics and the private companies to integrate climate information into DRR planning and participatory technology development.

The handbook for a holistic vulnerability and capacity assessment  includes the latest observed and projected changes in climate related hazards and non-climate related hazards, livelihoods and governance. This is to be used at the local level and fed into meso and national level DRR processes to build resilience of communities facing changing risks.

Stay tuned for our forthcoming release of our:

From Vulnerability to Resilience Handbook: Steps for Holistic Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment for Programme Design in a Changing Climate

International Day for Disaster Reduction – it’s all about children

Julie Brown
Bourton on Dunsmore, Warwickshire CV23 9, UK, Bourton on Dunsmore
October 7th, 2011

October 13^th is International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction and this year the focus in on children and young people.

Last year I visited Nepal where I met an amazing young student who was on the committee for disaster management in her village.  She told me that learning what do if a flood occurred made her less afraid.  What really impressed me was that students were considered an important part of the committee and that their contribution was valued.  They helped educate other students in school as well as spreading the messages in their community.  Children power at its best!  It made me think that we could really learn something from that here in the UK.  As far as I am aware the committees that run Neighbourhood watch schemes do not inactively encourage participation from young people, perhaps they would be more effective if they did.

To find out moreabout the day and how you can get involved go to the United Nations website.

Disasters, climate change and development: what do we need to do differently?

Jonathan Ensor
September 30th, 2011

What is the missing link in disasters? According to Terry Cannon, in a session I attended today it is the attention to social and cultural issues that mediate preparedness and perceptions of risk. Terry highlighted the need to think more broadly about the challenges of addressing disaster risk, discussing the need to bridge institutional and local knowledge systems, and bring in knowledge from other disciplines – a theme taken up by his co-presenter, Katie Harris.

Earthquake in Nepal

Achyut Luitel
September 19th, 2011

I was about to leave a social function at 6:30pm yesterday (Sunday), when the ground started trembling. I realised that it was an earthquake, so I guided all in the room to kneel down near the door and cupboards.

Once we felt that it was all over, we all ran outside. I started ringing my wife at home, but the mobile was not working so I rushed home. When I reached home, my wife told me she ran out in an open area as soon as she noticed that it was a quake. However, my kids were very smart. They did not come out of the house but instead covered their head and stayed calm under a big table until the tremor was gone. This was what they were taught in their school.

It was an earthquake measuring 6.9 Richter scale with the epicentre somewhere in the east near the Nepal and India border. The news reported that 21 people were severely injured, 68 people injured and over 200 houses were damaged in eight districts. The tremor was felt across 20 districts of Nepal. Three people were killed in Kathmandu after a wall of the British Embassy collapsed over a car and motorbike.

Nepal has been ranked as the 11th most earthquake-prone country in the world. In terms of human casualty risk, Kathmandu is billed as the most risk-prone area in the world.

The Practical Action Nepal Office is working to reduce disaster risk, but it is mostly in the field of community based disaster risk reduction and mainly floods and landslides. Practical Action has worked with communities in Peru to build earthquake-resistant houses. Now it is high time to get engaged in earthquake preparedness in Nepal as well, which could come up in our next strategy.

Working to Save Pastoralists’ Livelihood in Mandera

George Kamau
August 23rd, 2011

Mandera residents are among the hardest hit by the current drought. However, their plight has not been highlighted as much compared to other areas like Turkana. As a result, many pastoralist families continue to suffer.

Able bodied men and women, who in the recent months were proud owners of healthy animals, have lost a majority if not all their animals due to the drought. The Ministry of Livestock estimates the losses to between 45-60%. The loss of their animals – the main source of their livelihoods and income – has reduced many to internally displaced persons living in makeshift camps where relief supplies are normally distributed by the government or humanitarian agencies.

During our recent trip to the area I could not help but notice the loss of pride and the level of devastation in the eyes of these pastoralists. Their experiences are moving. It is overwhelming.  I can only imagine the explanations the men and the women give to their children when they are no longer able to provide food to them.

“What needs to be done to secure the pastoralists’ sources of livelihood?,” asked Tom Kimani, a Kenyan journalist.

As an organization we believe that although time is extremely short and the needs are great, efforts by all stakeholders to save the lives of many pastoralist and their generations should not stop at providing emergency aid. Relief is important but not enough. We must move beyond it to help these impoverished regions escape from extreme poverty and become more resilient to the changes in weather associated with climate change. The use of appropriate technology to address the challenge cannot be overemphasized.

Despite the above state of affairs, all is not lost. Our mission came across healthy herds of animals at watering points in Garba Xuoley, Borehole eleven and in Mandera township thanks to one of the current emergency interventions by Practical Action in the area. The initiative, built on observations that pastoralists share some of the limited relief food supplies with their animals to save their capital asset, has so far given a number of the pastoralists a reason to smile. The organization with support from the Society for the Protection of Animals Abroad (SPANA) and The BROOKE is not only providing the animals with supplementary feeds and concentrates but also providing them with essential animal health services to secure a nucleus of animals capable of surviving the overwhelming effects of the drought.

A pastoralist boy holds one of their remaining sheep in Elwak

“The animals being fed today are descendants of those animals that were secured during the 2005/06 drought period. We are not only grateful but optimistic that the animal feed and the health services will help see a number of our animals to the next rainy season,” said Fatima Mohamed whose herd has been reduced from 120 to 40.

And although the noble initiatives are making a difference in the lives of the animals of poor pastoralists in the area it does not reach all the areas. The rations are not enough. Generosity and speed are of the essence. With your support more can be done to cushion pastoralists’ sources of livelihood.

Livestock health key to drought survival

Gemma Hume
August 14th, 2011

Great news – one of our projects to help poor people cope with the drought in East Africa is in the national newspapers!

UK national newspaper journalists came out to Mandera, northern Kenya, to see an emergency drought response programme that we’re running. See my previous blog here:

http://practicalaction.org/blog/east-africa/kenya/emergency-drought-response-programme/

It’s a livestock feeding and vaccination programme we’re managing with funding from the Society for the Protection of Animals Abroad (SPANA).

Their articles were published today. Here is the coverage:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/somalia/8700025/Somali-Islamists-thrive-as-children-die-in-the-dust.html

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/08/14/sunday-mirror-investigation-how-drought-and-starvation-in-the-horn-of-africa-is-helping-al-qaeda-recruit-jihadi-fighters-115875-23342334/

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/view/205936/Starving-families-flee-war-and-drought-in-Somalia-/

Veterinary care helps pastoralists cope with drought

Gemma Hume
Isiolo - Mandera Rd, Mandera, Kenya, Mandera
August 14th, 2011

Pastoralist communities in Kenya’s arid lands depend on their livestock and their donkeys for income. Basic veterinary care is one of the best ways to protect their animals and pastoralist livelihoods in these areas.

This is especially vital during the drought because weakened animals are at major risk from contagious diseases. But in remote areas such as Mandera in north eastern Kenya, pastoralists are unlikely to have access to veterinary services.

That’s why Practical Action vet Dr Golicha and animal health assistant Abdi Hamid, with funding from animal welfare charity The Brooke,  have been training and mentoring 110 community-based animal health workers (CBAHWs) in the area in an effort to bridge this gap.

Dr Golicha from Practical Action (right) with some of the community based animal health workers

What are CBAHWs?

CBAHWs are predominantly herders themselves from pastoral areas who live and move with their animals in search of water and pasture.

I spoke to some of them at a watering point near Mandera town where pastoralists bring their livestock to drink and load their donkeys up with water to transport back home.

CBAHW Adan Ibrahim told me that they provide animal healthcare services to members of their communities. They diagnose and treat common diseases and play a major role in disease reporting, surveillance and community mobilisation. They contact Dr Golicha and Abdi Hamid if there’s anything that comes up which they are unable to treat.

I watched the team treat donkeys for worms and give them vitamin supplements aimed at reducing opportunistic diseases and infections associated with drought.

“My donkey is vital because it carries water from this shallow well 16 kilometres back home.”

Pastoralist Adan Abdirahiman with his donkey

Pastoralist Adan Abdirahiman said many of their livestock have died and donkeys are their only hope of earning money – through collecting and selling firewood and water:

“My donkey is vital because it carries water from this shallow well 16 kilometres back home. We are grateful for the help that Practical Action and The Brooke have given us – drugs for our donkeys and animal welfare advice to ensure we’re not overloading them – this is especially important during this drought when they have to carry water over longer distances and are more likely to suffer from health problems.”