Working in partnership resulted in significant benefit for partners and the effectiveness of the response. The partnership supported significant national actor engagement and leadership in the response by providing substantial funding and capacity support to MORDI as a national NGO. And the response was evaluated as being very effective – more than 10,000 individuals received shelter, WASH, food security and livelihoods support.
What did we learn?
- Local actors can significantly contribute to efficiencies in a response operation by accessing networks and relationships that international actors cannot.
- If local partners and communities are to be involved in design processes for humanitarian programming, there needs to be more flexibility with initial proposals to allow field teams to engage in more detailed design and planning processes at a later stage.
- To ensure transparency and accountability in response distributions, local partner insight should be supported by sharing best practice and learning about feedback mechanisms.
- Respect and trust between partners are an important basis for international NGOs to introduce international standards and best practice concepts.
- Respecting and recognising the role of national and local government requires international NGOs to invest resources into processes that may not necessarily promote their own brand.
- Partnerships where one actor is not primarily reliant on the other for its sustainability are more equal and therefore create space for more honest conversations without the possibility of money being used as a bargaining tool.
Want to learn more?
Read the full evaluation and summary.
