SomReP Resilience Measurement Brief

SomReP, Measuring
Resilience

Somali Resilience Programme, Aven Premier, Mogadisho
Web: https://somrep.org/ E: [email protected]

TEL: +252613700032

OVERVIEW Resilience Measurement Brief
1. Resilience Measurement
Since its formation in 2011, SomReP has invested efforts to improve its ability
Brief to measure resilience with the primary focus of remaining a consortium that
2. Analytical framework continuously learns from its work with communities. During this time the
3. Resilience Tools and concept of resilience was still formative with majority of the existing
resilience measurement frameworks focusing on resilience to food security.
Approaches As a result, most indicator frameworks based impact and outcome measures
4. Lessons on food security indicators as proxy indicators to determine how well
households were coping during periods of shock.
“Responsive and context
appropriate approach to More central to the focus on food security were efforts to keep track of
resilience measurement.” impact of the response to the 2011 drought and further demonstrate impact
resulting from interventions delivered following donor response to appeals
made in 2011 that advocated for a shift from response focused programmes
to more development focused funding.

As SomReP innovated on a compendium of interventions to deliver it became
more apparent that we needed to understand key aspects of our programming
approach. This included the following: -

 As we work with households, what is their profile and what changes
have they experienced over the course of their engagement with the
programme?

 As we deliver interventions, which ones deliver most impact and
what combination of approaches work best?

 As we design new programmes what is the communities
understanding of resilience and how do we bridge their aspirations
with objective measure ensuring that programmes are responsive to
community priorities?

 As we work with governments, what investments do they need to
prioritize and to what intensity do they need to focus?

Responding to these questions informed the structuring of tools and process
highlighted here to ensure we are the consortium that learns with
communities and governments.

Page 2

Analytical Framework “Resilience for the
SomReP is not an end
To better understand how communities progress SomReP’s analytical framework rather a higher level
appreciates that multiple capacities interact to contribute towards resilience. change that contributes
to the attainment of
At Impact level we keep track of the well-being of households with a focus on measuring significant impact in
the impact of programme interventions on the profile of households who are the central households.”
unit of our interventions. This means that our measurements are centered on poverty
measurement, food security and health.

At outcome level we focus on higher level changes in the resilience capacity of households
and individuals to cope with shocks and stresses as well as continue on a sustained pathway
to socio-economic progress. This translates to assessing the absorptive, adaptive and
transformative capacity of the households served by the programme approaches.

Secondly we focus on immediate and intermediate changes that contribute to building
resilience these include adoption of practices at individual, household community and
institutional level. This tied to metrics of quality in the delivery of programme interventions
with a focus on the intensity in the delivery of programme approaches.

Beyond the computation of metrics our analysis focuses on various analytical models to ensure we have a holistic understanding of how
communities are progressing. The Programme applies regression models to test the strength of relationships between interventions and
immediate and intermediate changes, interventions and resilience capacities and combines this with explorative analysis of qualitative
data to further give depth in the understanding why and how outcomes were experienced by households.

Page 3

Resilience Tools and Approaches

A key aspect to our measurement approach is ensuring that the tools and processes utilized
by the consortium are sensitive to seasons. Different parts of Somalia experience different
shocks and stresses as the seasons change, this contributes to increased cases of
displacement, food and income insecurity as a result of disruption of livelihoods. This
necessitates the use of point based measurements and tools that contain indicators that are
sensitive to these changes.

The primary building block for SomReP’s results measurement approach is ensuring targeting
and enrolment prioritizes the most vulnerable in the community and sustained follow-up of
the intervention packages they received through a comprehensive M&E system. This paired
with the monitoring anchors our process monitoring.

For outcome measurement our evaluation approach is comprised of initial- and end-state
measures, disturbance measures, and capacity measures.

The indicators required to measure resilience fall under the following components:

 Ex ante component (i.e., initial states and capacities), (What is the present state
of vulnerability, poverty, food security, structural change e.g. agency?)

 Disturbance component, which represents shocks and stressors, (What shocks did
the communities face and what was their severity?)

 Ex post component that represents subsequent states and trajectories (What
outcomes have they experience; vulnerability poverty, food security, structural
change?)

The highly specific nature of the indicators and ensuring they are captured and analyzed at
specific points in calls for the use of a range of tools and approaches to outcome tracking
discussed in the subsequent section. These tools apply both subjective and objective
measures to further give depth to the programmes understanding of the changes at
household, institutional and community level.

Page 4

Recurrent Monitoring Survey delivery that need to be improved while testing the
assumptions of the programmes theory of change. For
These consist of Seasonal Assessments that are point based response type of programmes dependent on scale the
measurements adopting a longitudinal design with the consortium may conduct Post Distribution Monitoring as a
objective of establishing patterns of change in intermediate performance monitoring tool to track the transfers provided
indicators over time. The measures are mainly centered on to participants, as well as their utilization, timeliness, and
adoption of practices and help the programme understand the satisfaction of participants. The PDM uses a quantitative
the impact of adoption of programmes aspects such as design and includes a quantitative survey to measure key
governance, community assets, social safety nets, savings, questions and produce key indicator values. The specific
credit and economic activities (farm or non-farm) on food objectives of the PDM are to reinforce accountability,
security. Primarily the analysis provides a deeper improve programming, improve vendor services and
understanding of the changes in the graduation profile of the distribution methodologies, and identify and prevent
programme participants following across intervention protection risks.
phases enabling a reflection on quality aspects of the

Research and In-depth Review of approaches Quality of Life Study: Beyond measuring programmatic
outcomes, we increasingly face the need to explore how
Research; Evidence for Policy Influencing: The nature of work and intended outcomes around resilience translate to impact at the
environment that SomReP operates in remains dynamic, and the household level—exploring how food availability at household
consortium appreciates that research is naturally open-ended whereby level translated or influences health outcomes and Income or
findings beget new questions SomReP seeks to develop a mechanism to poverty measures.
allow agile operational research to support the evidence base for the
program. The consortium seeks to prequalify research and learning Anchored on the OECD better life framework, the quality of life
partners with a view of establishing a pool of partners with strong study measures impact through a longitudinal study approach.
academic and technical background in resilience in humanitarian action Through this approach we follow-up cohorts of beneficiaries
to work towards prioritized areas of research include; Assessing supported by the consortium and examining how their outcomes
recovery pathways for development and recovery activities across a broad section of their lives – including health,
interventions, gender, Inclusion and targeting, Market systems education, nutrition, and financial literacy – change over time
development, Natural resource management, social protection and compared to changes which occur for a control group in a
Outcome Measurement focusing on systems change at the community similar adjacent area with a focus on subjective understanding
and multiple levels of governments of what resilience means for them.

The Annual Resilience measurement is an approach to measuring Lessons and Best Practices
household wellbeing outcomes going beyond severity of a shock but to
focus on co-relating the effect of various interventions on wellbeing Over the years we have learnt how best to work on resilience
outcomes. Our approach to resilience considers the following key measurement in a way that bests bridges policy and evidence
factors: - gaps.

 Identify the wellbeing outcomes to be achieved, and measure  Governments are key stakeholders to the future of
resilience in relation to these outcomes. development work in Somalia and it is of primary
importance that we link resilience measurement to
 What shocks and stressors are individuals, households, their decision making platforms.
communities and larger systems are exposed to and the
severity and duration of these shocks and stressors.  Community perspectives on resilience are key and
SomReP has come to appreciate the value of
 A Measure of the absorptive, adaptive and transformative subjective measures in deepening the correlation of
capacities in relation to these shocks and stressors at objective measures but also validating programme
different levels. assumptions and understanding the change process.

 What are the responses of individuals, households,  Joint efforts with governments in the design and
communities and larger systems to these shocks and stressors implementation while may have its challenges,
and trajectories of wellbeing outcomes? provides a platform for communities to engage with
technical focal points and make them better allies for
The assessment is carried out every 12 months and it reviews the their development needs.
resilience indices based on the three core areas of change; absorptive
Capacity, adaptive capacity and transformative Capacity.  While in principle Interventions may be similar, making
them context appropriateness is key to ensuring they
have expected impact in communities and this calls for
leveraging program technical design process with
community understanding.