Start Network has launched its 2022 Annual Report and Financial Accounts, highlighting the fantastic achievements of our members, partners, donors and staff. The report demonstrates the collective efforts our network has made to drive the sector towards a more collaborative humanitarian system.
In 2021, Start Network commissioned a piece of research to analyse issues around gender for Disaster Risk Finance programming, in order to make recommendations to help us ensure the DRF systems we build and support are fully gender-sensitive, and to ensure that our programmes adequately account for gender differences at different points of the project cycle. Based on the ‘Missing Voices’ methodology developed by Practical Action, the research sought to hear from those individuals who are most marginalised, to gain insight into their experiences in order to design more inclusive approaches to disaster risk management. The research included a deep dive into two case studies - Bangladesh and the Philippines - to illustrate the gendered dimensions of DRF programming with real-life experiences.
Humanitarian coordination in Bangladesh involves a large number of stakeholders and forums, and a complex system of government committees that relate to disaster management actors, clusters, working groups, NGOs and INGOs. To be successful, this system needs to be responsive and adaptive to the local needs and contexts, well-coordinated and to ensure active participation of local and national actors. This is where Start Fund Bangladesh (SFB) fits in. Here are some examples where SFB has facilitated or lead changes within the humanitarian system in Bangladesh.
The current clamour for more international humanitarian aid to be channelled through local organisations is nothing new, says Steve Williams, head of programmes for the Start Network.
Start Network has launched a new online platform that will allow its members, donors and the public to monitor humanitarian alerts as they happen, follow how money is spent and see how many people have been helped.
The humanitarian sector aims to be locally led and therefore, it is important that the humanitarian sector listens to organisations acting at the local scale, so we can learn from their experiences and adapt to meet their needs. Over recent years, Start Network has engaged local and national non-governmental organisations through interviews and surveys to determine ways in which humanitarian structures can do better to support them. Gathering perceptions from non-governmental organisations has led to some pertinent findings related to exclusionary practices that some organisations acting at the local scale experience and led to some key recommendations that humanitarian actors can begin to implement in order to build equitable partnerships. While more in-depth research on these systemic issues continues to be conducted by Start Network and other organisations, we hope that this overview can assist international actors to begin positively disrupting the traditional systems that create barriers to equity within crisis response.
