Last month I received a letter from a group of emerging leaders within the Start Network, who are working together to build ‘hubs’, groups of civil society organisations that will form the backbone of the Start Network once they evolve and grow.
Hugo Icu Peren, director de ASECSA y miembro del equipo de liderazgo del Hub de Guatemala, nos habla del nuevo documento de los Hubs destinado a catalizar una respuesta más local a las necesidades inmediatas de COVID-19 y a acelerar un cambio de paso duradero en la respuesta humanitaria.
Hugo Icu Peren, director of ASECSA and member of the Guatemala Hub leadership team, tells us about the Hubs' new paper aimed at catalysing a more local response to the immediate needs of COVID-19 and to accelerate a lasting step-change in humanitarian response.
Today Start Network's five hubs have launched a bold paper aimed at catalysing a more local response to the immediate needs of COVID-19 needs and to accelerate a lasting step-change in humanitarian response.
Shonnasgacha is a small village of Keshobpur Upazila of Jashore district where 210 families live in a 1.5 sq. km area. While the country was waking up to the COVID-19 threat in the early stages of the lockdown, the locals of Shonnasgacha village took measures to protect themselves.
The Start Fund continues to be alerted to climate-related disasters and flooding is a particularly common hazard, with 12 flood-related alerts raised in 2020 so far. One of these alerts was raised by humanitarian agencies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo when the Mulongwe River flooded after heavy rainfall.
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.
On 28th March 2020, Start Fund Bangladesh, the national fund for the Start Network, activated its first alert in response to predictions made by the national Forecast-based Warning, Analysis and Response Network (FOREWARN).
As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds, Cameroon has been afflicted with one of the highest numbers of confirmed cases in sub-Saharan African. The Start Network’s Migration Emergency Response Fund (MERF) funded one of the first projects in the country to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and work to complement existing responses.
Following high levels of interest from members, Start Network reopened the Start Fund COVID-19 for a second call for alerts on 11 May. Based on learning from the first call for alerts, as well as a country prioritisation exercise, this call was limited to seven identified countries: Afghanistan, Burundi, Central African Republic, DRC, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Of these, the Start Fund committee allocated funding to: Burundi, Central African Republic, Somalia and Yemen.
