Community Driven Resilience. 2022

Community SomReP’s approach to
Driven Resilience
building resilience in
Somalia

Somali Resilience Program (SomReP) |Web:
https://somrep.org/|Email:[email protected] |

OVERVIEW Background
1. Background
2. Our Approach The conversation on building resilience in Somalia continues to evolve, as emergent
3. Lessons and Impact Government invests efforts to build an enabling environment for interventions that
yield success. The question is presently not whether resilience building is a suitable
SomReP employs the principles of pathway for Somalia, but rather what interventions or what combination of
Community Driven Resilience (CDR), interventions work best for building resilience.
and establish committees at the village
level to undertake the immediate Since the call to action issued by the consortium of partners following the drought of
planning process and to ensure an 2011, SomReP has consistently worked to refine and package approaches for
administrative mechanism is in place to partnering with communities to build resilience. Over the years SomReP actively
conduct period reviews of plans for made iterations to the programme’s model and approach harnessing lessons from the
continued relevance and maintain delivery of interventions across communities in Somalia.
sustainability of the development
agenda.(SomReP Strategic Plan 2018- Appreciating that resilience building is a journey of consistency in the frequency of
2023 deliver, quality of the service package and responsiveness of the intervention to the
shifting community dynamic, we remain convinced that innovative approaches that
place communities at the center of resilience remains key to reducing the impact of
disasters and protecting gains of interventions that go beyond providing shock
responses for at-risk communities.

SomReP’s community driven resilience (CDR) approach seeks to enhance the risk
awareness, mitigation, and management of the target household and communities
through community based disaster risk reduction activities, and linking these to the
creation or strengthening of existing informal safety nets. Our approach is centered
on the following key principles:

• Strengthening governance systems at community level to coordinate
agency promoting inclusive decision making and public planning.

• Encourage pathways to self-reliance through promoting adoption of
proven approaches and innovative community based financing models.

• Co-creating solutions with communities by bridging community
development tools with indigenous knowledge.

Community Page 2
Driven Resilience

Our Approach “These days the Village
Development committee
Appreciating Somalia’s long history of inadequate contact between government and communities, talks to us about the plans
our approach invests on capacitating government to participate in community planning and for controlling floods and we
prioritization processes. The joint action to collaborate with communities on these key principles not discuss our community’s
only cements agency but also ensures that government remains focused on the core needs and needs for infrastructure.”
priorities of the communities. We have adopted a set of community planning tools and approaches
that ensure planning for resilience action is gender responsive and inclusive of minorities. Saadiya 32 aged mother of
4 from Eyl,Puntland State, of
Our CDR approach is delivered through a 4 stage journey that transition communities from Somalia
establishing governance structures, being aware of risks and hazards to planning and resourcing
reviewing their risk reduction actions. The journey is structured to deliver a set of tools and structures
that better equip communities to direct priorities both immediate and long term in line with their
context while addressing challenges around inclusive development and building agency for
accountability and transparency.

Stage 1: Strengthening Community Structures.
The SomReP program strengthens community structures involved in disaster risk reduction, water and ecosystems management and community planning
to mitigate the impact of shocks and stressors on household and community resilience. Under the leadership of the Village development committee
SomReP supports sensitization and the establishment of adjunct committees that decentralize management of various components of community
development priorities. This includes the Social affairs committee that manages social safety nets, Early warning committee that manages early action
initiatives, the Natural resource management committee that manages rangeland activities and the Water management committees that manages the
water infrastructure. Often inclusive governance is a challenge especially in contexts where Government is emergent after extended period of fragility
such as Somalia, as part of our 2019-2023 SomReP has implemented the community based targeting guidelines seeking to ensure that the most vulnerable
which is often characterized by poverty in female headed households, minority clan affiliations or disability are included in decision making processes.

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Driven Resilience

2. Gender-Sensitive Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis (GCVCA) Meeting the Village Development
Committee in Qabri-Allan village in Dollow,
This is a community reflection tool through which communities analyze vulnerability and Somalia.
capacity to adapt to climate change and build resilience to disasters at the community level,
with a particular focus on social and in particular gender dynamics.

The GCVCA process uses a series of guiding questions to analyses information on climate
change, disaster risk and vulnerability at community and household level. The guiding themes
include;

• Local observations of climate change and the existence of climate-related hazards
and natural disasters

• Livelihoods resources and coping strategies employed by men and women
• Capacity to manage risks and how this differs between men and women
• Social safety nets and their access by men and women and vulnerable groups
• Access to information, resources and services by vulnerable groups, men and women

The GCVCA is based on participatory qualitative methods that aim to empower and engage the
community members participating in an analytic process. Instead of extracting information
from communities and then analyzing and summarizing the data in their absence, the
participatory methods in a GCVCA are intended to guide a conversation that helps people in
communities articulate and understand their own vulnerabilities and capacities in the face of
climate change and natural disasters. The process therefore focuses on enabling people to use
their own knowledge of their context to identify possible changes which would reduce the
negative impact of climate variability and shifts and natural disasters on their lives and
livelihoods.

# GCVCA Steps Description/Approach Deliverable

1 Decide on the questions SomReP uses this to come up with a set of List objective

that are to be answered in research questions, specific to context and questions Village Development Committee office
supported by the project in Abdi
the GCVCA the purpose of your GCVCA. Lobow,in Dollow District

2 Decide on the data needed SomReP partner maps out availability and List of data

to answer the questions accessibility of resources livelihood requirements

activities and change over time, gendered

division of labor, coping and adaptation

strategies for men and women, and

constraints, outcomes of those strategies

3 Check if there is available SomReP partner accesses existing literature Literature review

data to answer the upon which they draw answers to the pre-

questions defined questions

4 Select appropriate tools to SomReP partner uses transect walks, Primary data

yield the data required by historical timelines, resource maps,

the questions seasonal calendars, Venn diagrams, gender

analysis, and wealth ranking to gather data Bulshokaab Crowdfunding Platform

on the communities. for CDR

5 Compile and analyze data SomReP partner collects data and reviews Organized and

6 Validating the data information to determine gaps, categorizing interpretable data • 18 Community Project
data and seeking patterns and explanations Validated data profiled
for those patterns
The SomReP partner conducts validation • 355 Backers

sessions with the community, and with a • 88,623 USD raised
wider range of stakeholders concerned with

7 Documenting and the community including government. Web:http://www.bulshokaab.com/
This involves the SomReP partner Vulnerability Matrix

Disseminating processing the climate context, Community

livelihoods/climate linkages for men and Adaptation Action

women, changing disaster risks for men and Plans (CAAPs)

women, underlying causes of vulnerability

for men and existing coping and adaptation

strategies by men and women.

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Driven Resilience

3. Community Action & Adaptation Plans (CAAP) to finance development projects identified in CAAPs which are
The CAAPs are the output of the GCVCA process through this tool sustainable and do not lead to longer-term negative environmental
communities translate community priorities as well as the roles and impacts which further increase communities’ exposure to the
responsibilities of actors and resource needs into mitigation plans. effects of climate change, products or services provide the solutions
The CAAPs are a very effective tool to empowering the communities they need.Through our partner Shaqadoon we have established a
to have a voice and be lead actors of development of their own crowd funding platform http://www.bulshokaab.com/ that enables
communities. In the course of programme implementation we have Somali’s globally and incountry to contribute to the fund raising
learnt effective implementation and monitoring of CAAPs requires initiatives for specific community projects in a transparent and
that the CAAP plans be nested within district and state-level plans and accountable manner.
contribute to larger frameworks like the Relief and Recovery
Framework and National Development Plans. Policies and acts which 4. Participatory Monitoring, Evaluation, Reflection &
stem from these regulatory frameworks should enable communities
Learning (PMERL)
Lesson and Impact This is the last stage of the community driven resilience journey,
and provides an interactive platform for communities and
What have we achieved? government to measure, monitor and evaluate changes in local
absorptive and adaptive capacity within vulnerable communities
Since 2019 we have trained and established community structures in 191 for better decision-making. This tool provides a self-reflective
communities supporting them to take lead of community prioritization for platform through which communities and local administrative units
absorptive, adaptive and transformative capacity. as well as agencies. Conducted on a bi-annual basis this tool enables
key stakeholders address the following questions:-
34000 Households have been reached through varied community assets
financed through the CDR approach. • To what extent have we met the objectives set out in the
GCVCA and CAAP process? This helps communities take
Established a crowdfunding approach to expand financing for CAAPs into stock of the achievements and relate them towards their
diaspora remittances providing a platform for Somali people in other countries goals thereby informing and improving plans.
to contribute towards that development needs of their communities ultimately
contributing to a more cohesive societies. • How are differences in climate vulnerability among
different social groups evolving? This ensures that the
Supported member state governments in Jubaland and South West State to plans remain responsive to challenges of the most
develop crisis recovery plans informed by the CAAP and GCVCA. These have vulnerable in their communities.
become tools for planning state level investments in building community
resilience. • What changes to key non-climate change factors (social,
institutional/political and economic environment) (risks &
What have we learnt? assumptions) affecting the implementation have taken
place? This ensures that vulnerable communities also
We have learnt that effective implementation and monitoring of CAAPs address structural challenges to CDR.
requires that the CAAP plans be nested within district and state-level plans
and contribute to larger frameworks like the Relief and Recovery Framework • What is the profile and caseload of people benefiting
and National Development Plans. from the CDR intervention? This deepens the
consortium’s appreciation of scale and reach of its
If empowered communities have the ability to translate CAAPs into innovative interventions.
avenues for diaspora remittances to contribute towards development and
resilience interventions and priorities in their countries. The PMERL process provides a holistic platform for communities
and their partners in resilience to speak commonly on progress
Through the involvement in the CAAP development process, Government is towards building community resilience, through partnering with
better capacitated to prioritise and coordinate development investments local administration ,we further cement the platforms for an
supported through humanitarian and development agencies as well as involved and aware Government that support a bottom
bilateral grants and government to government subsidies. intervention model while building agency for accountable and
transparent use of aid and development investments.
The CDR approach provides an avenue to contextualize how climate and non-
climate change factors contribute towards vulnerability and risk and provide Somali Resilience Program (SomReP) |Web:
avenues to plan responsive actions. https://somrep.org/|Email:[email protected] |

Despite the risk of elite capture in Somalia, tools such as the GCVCA and the
community based targeting guidelines for Somalia play vital role in addressing
differential forms of exclusion.