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Start Network Assembly 2021: Quality partnerships from the perspectives of local and national actors

Takeaways from the 2021 Start Network Assembly Explore session: Quality partnerships from the perspectives of local and national actors This interactive session explored what quality partnerships could look like between Start Network members and local partners. It explored what local partners perceive to be important values, and how to achieve these, especially trust, flexibility, and transparency. The session included a presentation of main findings from the survey, a panel discussion, and breakout rooms with participating INGOs and L/NNGOs. The panellists were local partners: Nanette Antequisa (ECOWEB, the Philippines) Muleneh Tesfaye (Caritas Ethiopia) and Lynn Walker (Tree of Life, Zimbabwe). The session was facilitated by Lola Gostelow (an independent humanitarian and associate of the Partnership Brokers Association). The session was based on a survey of 98 local organisations and their experiences working with Start Network members, or directly with Start Network.

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Start Network Assembly 2021: Recovering costs more equitably an important step in rebalancing power

Takeaways from the 2021 Start Network Assembly Learn session: Recovering costs more equitably: an important step in rebalancing power This session aimed to raise awareness on why a more equitable Indirect Cost Recovery (ICR) across the humanitarian sector is a concrete and tangible way to make progress towards locally led action. Panellists from the session include Fhakrul Islam and Sajid Raihan from Start Fund Bangladesh, Yeakub Hossain from SEEP, and Dulon Gomes from World Vision Bangladesh. The session was facilitated by Myriam Castaneda Solares.

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Start Network Assembly 2021: Decolonising evidence: locally-led defined approaches of measuring programmes success

Takeaways from the 2021 Start Network Assembly Explore session: Decolonising evidence: Locally-led approaches of measuring programme success This panel session aimed to explore what alternative approaches to collecting data and measuring success could look like from the perspective of local communities and non-western lenses. It was facilitated by Sanjukta Moorthy (a planning and MEL consultant) who has a special interest in championing diverse perspectives and decolonised frameworks. The three panellists were Saeed Ullah Khan (GLOW consultants, Pakistan) who brings extensive multi sectoral experience especially in large scale survey handling; Anuarite Kabuo (MIDEFEHOPS asbl, DRC) who works for an NGO passionate about contributing effectively to the development of vulnerable communities, children, women, victims of situations of armed conflict; and Pradytia Pertiwi (Rooted Impact, Indonesia) whose work focuses on research and development practice at the intersection of psychology, disasters, development and inclusion, seeking to co-create knowledge with communities.

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Why is it Hard for Organisations to Learn?

The Evidence & Learning and Innovation teams at Start Network came together to begin unpacking how we can better embed learning into our work to ensure that our practice and projects continually change and develop as a result of learning and feedback. We began by getting to grips with the problem – what’s stopping learning from happening?

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HOW CAN START FUND BANGLADESH DO MORE TO ENSURE: EFFECTIVE RESPONSES, SHARED LEARNING & POWER SHIFTS?

In 2019, Start Fund Bangladesh opened up its membership to 26 local and national organisations enabling them to access direct funding and become involved in decision-making around funding and responses. As a direct result, 80% of all Start Fund Bangladesh funding had been awarded directly to local and national organisations in 2020. This directive to shift the power has also been explored in other ways. For example, Start Fund Bangladesh has also been working to encourage INGOs who have local implementing partners to share overhead costs so that these can be used to grow and strengthen local organisations. To understand more about further changes that Start Fund Bangladesh could make, we listened to some of the reflections of Sina Chowdhury and Sirajul Islam who work for two of the local organisations that joined in 2019. The verbatim quotes from the interviews provide a powerful and rich narrative around their experience working with Start Fund Bangladesh and as humanitarians and have led us to formulate three main lessons for the Start Network: BE MORE INCLUSIVE TO BE MORE EFFECTIVE; UPSKILL TO EMPOWER; and CHAMPION FOR CHANGE. This report would be of interest to all those working towards a system change to a more locally led humanitarian system that is more accountable to those affected by crisis.

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Primer on Mainstreaming Gender and DRF: Experiences of Marginalized Gender Identities in Disasters in rural/urban communities in the Philippines

The conduct of the missing voices approach in understanding the role of gender in disaster risk financing for the Philippines provided several emerging themes. Themes vary from disaster preparedness activities, early action, as well as barriers and challenges which need to be considered in developing a local DRF system. Start Network recognizes the importance of experiences as a learning mechanism to devise ways to help in improving disaster preparedness, access to information, and early action given the gendered needs of people.

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Recovering costs more equitably: An important step in rebalancing power?

Start Fund Bangladesh produced key evidence on the impact of Indirect Cost Recovery (ICR). How can organisations use ICR for their own organisational development and how INGOs can adopt these practices to strengthen partnerships with local organisations.

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AN ITERATIVE FRAMEWORK FOR A LOCALLY LED START NETWORK

This framework is set out as a series of intensions and questions across 11 elements where we feel change is needed. The intention outlines the vision of where we want to be or get to as a network. The issues/questions outline questions that SN needs to answer at all levels leadership, management, staff, membership, Hubs, etc. 

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What Is Start Ready and How Does It Fit Into The Financing Facility

This session introduced Start Ready, a new financial service for the humanitarian sector that will use climate science, risk protection mechanisms, and financial best practice to protect more people against predictable disasters worldwide. Start Ready will sit alongside the Start Fund in Start Network's financing facility. 

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The Five Founding Hubs: What has happened and what comes next?

In April 2020, five locally led groups of changemakers came together to explore what it takes to launch local hubs as part of Start Network, as envisioned within ‘Start Evolves’. This phase was called a ‘Proof of Concept’ and has resulted in the emergence of Hubs in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, India, the Pacific Region and Pakistan. 

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Outcomes from the Crisis Response and Resilience Lab course

Recently the Start Network partnered with Complexity University and Global Fund for Community Foundations offering organisations a unique opportunity to take part in a radical experimental intiative. Global teams engaged in an intensive course looking at how we can work together to transform the humanitarian aid sector from the ground up. In this session, we presented the outcomes from the Crisis Response Resilience Lab and showcased some of the teams experiments and lessons from the innovation course.

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The new network: Our future role as a platform-based service provider

As the network decentralises, and more functions and decisions devolve to the hubs, the role of the Start Network secretariat will also need to change to support a new way of working. The "network of networks" will require a new global infrastructure which enables many members across many hubs to work together, share and learn from each other; and which provides aggregated solutions that reduce duplication across the network. This session was an opportunity to hear about the work and thinking that has been done to date around this new service-provider model and what it might look like.