Emergency Shelter and NFI / WASH Sectors – Lessons Learned meeting
9am – 12pm | 21 Thursday 2017 | A-PAD Office

Attendees:

Overall Action Points:

District Level Coordination:Engage a permanent, local-level organization with existing presence for this role e.g. SLRC; Agencies can find funding for those agencies/the overall coordination mechanism
(Note: This may require the mapping of relevant agencies on the ground, and the identification of appropriate agencies)

Joint Procurement: Continue to advocate for VAT exemptions and to coordinate to procure needed items in bulk. In the short- to mid-term, agencies should work with UN agencies to avoid VAT

Information Management systems and tools: More awareness and a greater understanding of the Sahana response tool is required. Additionally, the Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) and Camp Management processes need to be developed further for future responses.

Early Recovery: The PDNA/RINA process needs to be more inclusive of response agencies in future, and in the current recovery plan.

Private Sector: Engagement of the Private Sector must continue, and training on Humanitarian Principles and Coordination must be conducted.

Minimum Protection Standards for Shelter: Minimum Protection Standards for Tents must be communicated to donors

Post-Distribution Monitoring: There should be an effort to standardize PDM over sectors/agencies. Shelter Sector must review the JEN Transitional Shelter program.

Shelter Kits: Must be fast in procurement and distribution, with elements for flexibility per beneficiary identified (e.g. CGI sheets as per need of beneficiary).

Flood vs Landslide-affected households: An approach to providing assistance to households affected by floods and not at risk of landslides must be identified.

Advocacy to Donors: There must be further advocacy on a shift to DRR to donors from the sector.

Discussion:

Joint Procurement:

  • Joint procurement between agencies (including Oxfam, UNICEF, World Vision) resulted in effective cost savings and better coordination
  • However, the issue of VAT exemption remains
  • UN agencies (IOM, UNICEF etc) and IFRC are VAT-exempt – so a short-term solution is to work with these agencies in procurement to avoid the VAT in the short-term

ACTION:

  • Continue to advocate for VAT exemptions for INGOs and to coordinate collectively to procure needed items in bulk.
  • In the short- to mid-term, agencies should work with UN agencies to avoid VAT costs on procurement

District Focal Points and Coordination

  • This level of coordination was not efficient in this response, but could be an effective model
  • Agencies in the field are project based, so when the project ends, the agency Focal Point also leaves.
  • A discussion regarding local government authority coordination raised the following points:
  • DS Offices in areas such as North and East have experience dealing with/coordinating INGOs, but DS in monsoon-affected areas such as Rathnapura and Kegalle have much less experience. How can we build and sustain the coordination capacity of officials at this level?
  • What is the role of DMC Additional Secretaries based in the Districts/NDRSC officials in DS Offices, and can’t they conduct this coordination?
  • Could there be an incentive/accountability element to the District Focal point position, if the initiative is funded by donors?
  • With potential local authority overload, and issue of project-based INGOs/NGOs, another possibility is the activation of local CBO’s and/or Sri Lanka Red Cross local branches to conduct coordination roles, as they are permanently locally-based and have good connections with authorities.
  • This would require funding for capacity-building and coordination: Most likely not a separate funding proposal, but organized within agency funding requirements

ACTION:

  • Engage a permanent, local-level organization with existing presence for this role e.g. SLRC
  • Agencies can find funding for those agencies/the overall coordination mechanism

(Note: This may require the mapping of relevant agencies on the ground, and the identification of appropriate agencies)

Information Management (Sahana and other resources)

  • More awareness is needed on the Sahana platform and its capabilities, potential usage and strengths/weaknesses before agreeing to move into using such a program.
  • IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix: One round was completed. Camps were closing so rapidly that it was very difficult to capture accurate data. Ratnapura and Matara were completed, but the mapping should have covered more districts. Government authorities should also have been more closely involved in this process.

ACTION:

  • More awareness and a greater understanding of the Sahana response tool is required before considering its implementation.
  • The Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) processes need to be developed further for use in future responses.

Camps and Coordination

  • The terminology and definitions of “camps” were an issue when discussing with government officials. If asked “are there camps here?” the answer would be no. If asked “are there people here staying in accommodation other than their own homes?”, then the answer would be yes.
  • IOM with Save the Children, under the Government’s plan to identify and equip evacuation centres across affected districts, will conduct CCCM training for over 100 government officials in the Southern Province, and conduct workshops to identify emergency evacuation sites over the next two months.
  • IFRC/SLRC: A CCCM Trainer (Chanaka) is available, and can be linked with IOM for this task.

Sector Response/Coordination

  • Aiming for an integrated, holistic response is best, such as the linkage of WASH sector and Shelter sector for information on well-cleaning and on joint procurement. This is important for financing, as we know that it is very difficult to get donor support for recovery efforts, meaning that we must maximize the impact of response funding and activities.
  • Donors generally prefer very short-term funding for response, so gaining longer-term recovery funding and even longer-term response funding is an issue.
  • There is a need to engage the private sector in early recovery activities, which can be conducted through A-PAD
  • Early recovery sector of the response was not activated – there is a clear need for UNDP here. If the RINA/PDNA process has taken over this, then there needs to be more inclusivity, with the shelter sector more included and involved.
  • For WASH, in the past there has been good coordination between NWSDB and UNICEF – UNICEF should continue to push for WASH sector coordination to occur through the leadership of the NWSDB.

Private Sector

  • The coordination of private sector actors is undertaken efficiently by A-PAD
  • There is a need to include larger companies and employers, such as tea companies, because they look after their own employees, who are often affected in a disaster. Local government officials tend to leave these organisations alone to “do their own thing”, however, there could be good opportunities for humanitarian actors to work with them and with local authorities to better share information and improve response
  • A number of coordination issues were identified:
  • Government leadership: A-PAD is undertaking a pilot study with the NDRSC to link private sector actors with relevant DS Officials. This has been initiated and will continue over the next few months. Some of these organisations have 15,000 employees that have the potential to be deployed as local volunteers in an emergency. However, so far the government has not taken forward this approach. A-PAD will continue to identify private sector actors in specific areas that may have similar capacity
  • Training in humanitarian principles: SLRC received a private sector donation which was intended to only be received by the customers of that organization. This shows that these organizations may require training in the fundamentals of humanitarian principles (can link to NGOs for assistance in this).

ACTION:Engagement of the Private Sector must continue, and training/awareness raising on Humanitarian Principles and Coordination should be conducted for these organisations by humanitarian agencies.

Beneficiary Selection Issues:

  • Some agencies had different approaches to selecting beneficiaries, and there were complaints that agencies were updating or changing beneficiary lists (however this was made difficult as the needs were constantly changing)
  • SLRC conduct a participatory approach in the community with GN/DS, which was fast and effective in coming to agreements on beneficiaries. Save the Children follow a similar process but will also be providing training to government officials on this process. Oxfam follows a similar process, and had a grievance process (complaints hotline) in Ratnapura which was well-advertised in communities. It received over 200 complaint calls, and an analysis will be conducted on the recorded calls to find the trends in issues reported.
  • IOM: people were filing complaints, even though they were not eligible for assistance – potentially, expectations must be explained early on to communities.

Emergency Response

  • Sector Strategy – this was the first time a strategy has been developed by the sector. While it was overall successful, some agencies interpreted different elements in different ways and others encountered different issues in implementation which will need to be addressed.
  • The very rapid closing of camps (government push for people to take 3 month rental subsidy) was a significant barrier to efficient response.
  • SLRC have access to more tents for immediate response – agencies should contact Gerhard (IFRC)
  • Oxfam identified protection issues with tents that were provided by government, including outward-facing zips (that anyone could open from the outside). Ideally, there should be a minimum standard for tents that we can advocate for the government to follow.
  • Shelter Kits vs NFIs vs cash
  • The shelter sector should have more focus on shelter kits than NFI’s, and these shelter kits should be tailored better to the needs of the beneficiaries (e.g. some recipients required two CGI sheets while others needed 10). Would need to address how to tailor kits in this regard.
  • Cash is one option to negate the tailoring of kits – however it was only after 2-3 weeks that communities wanted cash (the first 2 weeks, requests were for materials). However, there are issues in obtaining the items quick enough for early response.
  • Need to use the Cash Working Group to standardize Multi-Purpose Cash Assistance. A common format for PDM to agree on the best way forward/hybrid cash-in-hand model.
  • A document on learnings for cash transfer program learningshas been collected from agencies for the last two years, which should be available by early October.
  • Transitional/Permanent Shelter
  • Initially, people did not want or need transitional shelters, however after 3-4 months people realized that resettlement takes much longer than initially thought and so this need was changed. It is also very difficult to find beneficiaries and identify/obtain land in a reasonable timeframe. Additionally, relocation sites are often isolated and far away from the original home of the families.
  • Owner-driven approaches are an important consideration, as there were affected people who were able to stay on their own lands (generally flood-affected, not landslide affected). There may be a need to expand the capacity of NBRO to conduct assessments of these lands in this regard. The work of JEN also needs to be assessed, who were funded to build 350 transitional shelters in 3 months
  • IEC
  • There is an intersectoral demand for combined health, WASH and shelter information and knowledge management. During the NBRO presentation on landslide risk assessment at a previous Shelter meeting, the NBRO raised the importance of early warning systems. Oxfam is working on semi-automated early warnings for landslide risk areas. The prototype is ordered from other countries, however the intention is to work with in-country partners to develop these in Sri Lanka (including Moratuwa University). The intention is to pilot this system in 10 locations in Ratnapura, as a community-based and community-driven early warning system. The SLRC have provided manual rain gauges previously, however these were mostly found to be ineffective though some communities were able to self-evacuate.

ACTION:

  • Minimum Protection Standards for Shelter: Minimum Protection Standards for Tents must be communicated to donors
  • Post-Distribution Monitoring: There should be an effort to standardize PDM over sectors/agencies.Shelter Sector must review the JEN Transitional Shelter program.
  • Shelter Kits: Must be fast in procurement and distribution, with elements for flexibility identified as per beneficiary’s needs (e.g. CGI sheets as per need of beneficiary).
  • Flood vs Landslide-affected households: An approach to providing assistance to households affected by floods and not at risk of landslides must be identified.

Funding and Donors

  • Donors were quite generous for response this year, however they most likely will not be next time. The same issue is being experienced in the drought. A lesson learned is that the funding provided was good, however this is not the usual experience. Any existing funding is being put toward tangible development projects such as the USAID program funding for vulnerable women, targeted at a particular community – not a blanket emergency response.
  • A message for the Development Partners Forum and Development Partners – How can we get donors to invest in more DRR work?
  • Innovation – the humanitarian and development sectors recognize that there is a climatic/disaster cycle each year, and we keep asking for humanitarian funding. These sectors need to look internally for innovative solutions in drought and floods

ACTION:

  • There must be further advocacy on a shift to DRR from sectoral actors to donors.

Discussion: “What went really well” and other recommendations:

  • INGOs and NGO’s were able to respond within 48 hours (like INGOs. SLRC) with pre-positioned stock. Oxfam have also replenished these stocks with their own funds.
  • Risk: no donors are available to fund pre-positioning activity, so agencies must bear the cost
  • The coordination of the shelter sector, and its links to the Private sector were good
  • The inclusion of local partners in response coordination was a strength of the response
  • Sector strategies were developed for Shelter, Protection – need to ensure these are developed further and put into practice (including technical guidelines with NBRO)
  • The training of beneficiaries along with distributions as a capacity-building exercise needs to be further explored
  • The NBRO are working on a booklet for “building safer in landslide risk areas” and want to expand that with a few pages on floods, whilst also making a new poster for door-to-door/government buildings/tuk-tuks (IEC tool)
  • There’s been no reporting on IEC – this could be addressed by making IEC a reportable element of response in the Shelter sector.

Other points to note:
- Dorien(ShelterCluster) and Jan-Willem (IOM) have ended their deployments to Sri Lanka. Gerhard (IFRC) and Lindsey (IOM) will be available for follow-up meetings, in conjunction with WASH sector. Metunan is available to support Shelter Sector information management until December and will update 4W every two weeks.
- WASH Sector: will hold monthly meetings from now on. Will communicate that with WASH sector members.