The concept of Start Ready was launched in 2021 at COP26, and the first Start Ready Risk Pool went live in May 2022. As such, May 2025 marks three years of the Start Ready programme. Over this time, we have had 18 activations (programmes implemented) over 4 risks (e.g. heatwave, flood, cyclone, drought) in 8 countries.
Our ambitions in the next 3 years are to scale our programme to different countries, improve the quality of our DRF and AA programming, and deepen the impact of our work, by e.g. mainstreaming AA into local
Disaster Risk Management (DRM) strategies/policies, and ensuring our activities are locally-led and inclusive of historically marginalised groups. This will altogether contribute to our wider vision of systems change – to demonstrate to the sector the critical need and impact of locally-led and pre-arranged / proactive ways of working in the humanitarian sector.
To help us achieve our ambitions, we are commissioning an independent consultant to conduct an evaluation of the past 3 years of Start Ready to ensure past experience in programme implementation meaningfully informs our strategy and approach going forward. This will include a summary of key outcomes, intended and unintended, of Start Ready to date, a review of how the DRF systems have been integrated in local contexts, and highlights of lessons learnt to inform our future programming at country level as well as implications for scaling SR to new countries or risks.
Application deadline: April 14 2025, 12pm BST