Start Network's Laura-Louise Fairley discusses a study into the Start Fund and accountability. She finds the study reports on tangible success stories yet argues there is clear room for improvement.
This grant sought to enable the creation of new methodologies to measure the success and impact of humanitarian interventions. The Community-Led Approaches to Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning (MEAL) Research Grant was created in March 2022, with support from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and the IKEA Foundation. This grant formed part of the Start Network’s push for a locally led humanitarian system and to meet the participation revolution commitment in the Grand Bargain, which seeks to promote the link between effective participation and the quality and effectiveness of humanitarian response.
Using the 1% to implement minimum standards in downward accountability in Puntland
In late 2016, the Start Fund was alerted to an outbreak of dengue fever in Burkina Faso. Read ALIMA's account of their efforts to combat the disease.
When Typhoon Nock-Ten made landfall on December 25, Joana Villaflor had just arrived home for Christmas on Catanduanes island. Joana, a member of On Call Surge Philippines, a shared roster set up by the Start Network’s Transforming Surge Capacity project, gives an account of the days following the typhoon.
In late January, Start Network member ALIMA alerted the Start Fund to a Lassa Fever outbreak in Nigeria. The Start Fund's MEAL advisor, Ian Sim-Cox Heath, and Start Fund programme officer Anne Noirhomme, give their first hand account of the Start Fund awarded response on the ground.
Michaela Larson says the answer to how we can help the world’s poorest populations become more resilient following a crisis, is an obvious one – we give them cash.
The drought in Southern Africa has been ongoing since October 2018 and has consistently grown in scale and severity. 45 million people were estimated to be experiencing critical levels of food insecurity at the end of 2019. The ongoing crisis is the cumulative consequences of the climate-related natural disasters (including drought, cyclone, and flooding) that have hit Zambia.
Every Start Network member that receives funds through the Start Fund answers this question in the reporting template. The feedback is used to gauge the impact of the Start Fund. In 2018, half of the responses to this question mentioned either the timeliness of the Start Fund or its ability to fill a gap in an ongoing response effort.
