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The DEPP closed two years ago this month. Many articles were published on its achievements and the independent evaluation by Harvard Humanitarian Initiative drew attention to these as well as some of the challenges including its sustainability. As part of our 10-year celebrations, the Evidence and Learning team of the Start Network have been finding out “what happened next” following the close of the DEPP by speaking to some of member organisations and other stakeholders who were involved in the programme.

Here we talk with Sana Zulfiqar who told us about the continuation of the work of the DEPP and how it has led to new initiatives in Pakistan and the wider region. Sana has been able to push forward many of the Start Networks initiatives in localisation and “shifting the power”.

Here Saeed Ullah Khan shares some of his reflections on the achievements and challenges of Start Network’s Disasters and Emergencies Preparedness Programme (DEPP) in Pakistan, his observations on its continuing legacy and his suggestions on how these efforts could be further improved.

The Transforming Surge Capacity project was one of the Start Network DEPP projects. We asked Pamela Combinido, a local consultant tasked with evaluating the programme in the Philippines, about her involvement in the project and its major achievements.

This report provides the summative results from the three-year external impact evaluation of the Disasters and Emergencies Preparedness Programme (DEPP) conducted by a team at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI).

Hitendra Solanki, Action Against Hunger’s Project Lead for the Mindfulness & Wellbeing Project urges NGOs to act now to protect worker’s mental health and wellbeing.

In Cebu, in the Philippines, the very first dedicated 'Wellbeing Cluster' has been officially launched, aiming to catalyse a new way that NGOs prioritise and support the mental health and wellbeing of staff in the humanitarian sector.

This report was commissioned by the DEPP (Disasters and Emergencies Preparedness Programmes) Learning Project to contribute to learning on best practice for localisation, and to move forward the discussions. The research was intended to test, refine, deepen and, where needed,adapt a framework developed in 2017 for the Start Fund and Network, commonly referred to as the ‘Seven Dimensions of Localisation’. It also aims to reflect whether and how DEPP projects have contributed to ‘localisation’ and provide tips or recommendations for further similar preparedness strengthening work.

The DEPP has been producing high impact results since its inception, in the spirit of the Grand Bargain’s commitment to: 25% of humanitarian funding going as directly as possible to local and national responders; the participation revolution; strengthening engagement between humanitarian and development actors; and cash-based programming. Below, are some of the achievements against the programme’s five result areas. These are based on programmatic log frame data and independent evaluations for each project in DEPP.

As the Disasters Emergencies Preparedness Programme (DEPP) comes to a close, we have summarised key crisis responses that the DEPP has worked on and the how the DEPP projects impacted the communities.