Project • Ongoing

Community engagement in the South Pacific

Context

Situated in the South Pacific, the island nations of Fiji and Vanuatu are vulnerable to cyclones, flooding, and volcanic eruptions. Many disaster-prone countries in Asia Pacific have significant capacity to manage responses to disasters. To support localisation efforts, processes now need to be put into place to ensure that disaster response operations conducted by local aid actors and local authorities can be evaluated by the communities they serve.

Project aim

The overarching aim of this project is to assist local and regional organisations in Fiji and Vanuatu to effectively communicate with communities and engage with them more efficiently by ensuring that feedback is central to preparedness measures and response programming. This community feedback should be collected to assess disaster preparedness, as well as during or after a disaster to inform the response.

Together with the Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities (CDAC) Network, Ground Truth Solutions is working to help ensure that local emergency responders are able to factor community views into their humanitarian operations through the collection and analysis of community feedback, followed by real-time course corrections. During the project, the existing capacities of local organisations will be identified and further developed. This ensures that they are prepared to provide a range of feedback services when disaster strikes, both to inform their own programming and the broader response.

Results

Local organisations can help improve existing feedback practices to ensure that communities are consulted in matters of disaster preparedness and post-disaster response. A community engagement survey will be developed jointly with local actors.