Browse by Theme: Resilience

“I felt like life will go on, and we are able to find new ways to live a better life.” Nidal is one of more than 150,000 people who worked with CARE’s Food For Peace project to improve food security in Syria. From growing more food, to building bakeries, to monitoring quality — Syrians drove dramatic improvements in their own livelihoods.

After disasters and in post-conflict returns, many families will rebuild relying on their own resources, with little or no support from formal institutions or the humanitarian community – they self-recover. Previous research indicates that support after a major disaster is likely to meet only around 15% of the shelter needs, often less. Yet, many people will rebuild homes incorporating the same housing vulnerabilities as before and the opportunity to build safer, healthier homes can be missed. So what more can we do to support this inevitable process of shelter self-recovery?

As the climate crisis makes natural disasters a daily reality for people around the world, communities and humanitarian organisations are looking for ways to mitigate risks and build resilience. In 2019, in the aftermath of Cyclone Idai – which ravaged the coast of southern Africa – CARE’s Emergency Shelter Advisor, Crystal Whitaker, travelled to Malawi to support recovery and learn how communities were using simple savings groups to break the devastating cycle where repeat floods would wipe out homes and livelihoods, forcing families to start over again and again. Below she shares seven lessons for practitioners looking to build longer-term risk mitigation measures into shorter emergency or preparedness programmes.

Gender inequality is a major driver of poverty and a major obstacle to sustainable development. It’s also a key determinant of exposure to climate change risk: women and girls are more vulnerable to climate change impacts. So if we want to reduce this risk, reduce poverty, and promote sustainable development, adaptation projects and programmes must not only address gender-based vulnerability – they must seek to be gender transformative. What can we learn from good practice examples of programmes where gender equality outcomes have been sought and secured?

Climate change is leading to more regular, and more catastrophic, risks for people living in poor and vulnerable communities. Is insurance the way forward to help people manage these risks? And how viable is it for people in poor households? CARE’s recently published review, Insuring for a changing climate, provides some useful lessons and discussion points.

In late November 2018, Saigon was submerged by Typhoon Usagi – officially the 'longest and heaviest rainfall ever recorded in Saigon history'. Tim Bishop, who lives in Saigon and works for CARE, writes about the initiatives of the TUKLAS Labs in providing solutions for communities to build disaster preparedness and resilience. 

Families who participated in the Nampula Adaptation to Climate Change project in northern Mozambique were able to grow more food, better respond to crises, and save more money. Adopting many climate change conscious practices in their fields helped them achieve this. One of the things families invested in when they got more savings and credit was their children’s education. Here is more about what the project achieved.