Tools to Identify Impactful, Feasible Behaviors for Increasing Resilience
About
REAL organized a discussion on practical Early Warning System (EWS) tools, featuring speakers from Food for the Hungry.
Designing people-centered EWSs has improved information quality, warning timeliness, and warning messages. However, we still need to improve how we engage exposed and vulnerable populations around early preparation, prevention, and mitigation. To this end, Food for the Hungry conducted a literature review and proposed a new, behaviorally-informed EWS framework. Food for the Hungry Kenya then piloted a set of Participatory Learning and Action tools in three communities in northern Kenya affected by cyclical drought. In this event, Food for the Hungry shared key takeaways from the literature review and the pilot study. The event was an opportunity to explore these tools and discuss potential future applications in various contexts.
The event was held in English with simultaneous interpretation in French.
Resources
Early Warning for Early Action: Toward More Behaviorally Informed Early Warning Systems
Outils permettant d'identifier les comportements influents et réalisables pour accroître la résilience
REAL a organisé une discussion sur les outils pratiques des systèmes d'alerte précoce (SAP), avec des intervenants de Food for the Hungry.
La conception de SAP centrés sur les personnes a permis d'améliorer la qualité de l'information, la rapidité de l'alerte et les messages d'alerte. Cependant, nous devons encore améliorer la façon dont nous engageons les populations exposées et vulnérables dans la préparation précoce, la prévention et l'atténuation. À cette fin, l'organisation Food for the Hungry a réalisé une analyse documentaire et proposé un nouveau cadre de SAP basé sur le comportement. Food for the Hungry Kenya a ensuite piloté un ensemble d'outils d'apprentissage et d'action participatifs dans trois communautés du nord du Kenya touchées par une sécheresse cyclique. Lors de cet événement, Food for the Hungry a partagé les principales conclusions de l'analyse documentaire et de l'étude pilote. L'événement a été l'occasion d'explorer ces outils et de discuter des applications potentielles futures dans divers contextes.
L'événement s'est déroulé en anglais avec une interprétation simultanée en français.
Panelists
Zipporah Muhoro is the Buuri Cluster Manager and education technical advisor in FH Kenya. She has worked in the community development sector carrying out different roles for the last 18 years. The key roles included facilitating capacity building of social workers and community members and community projects management. Her interests are equipping and supporting front-line community development workers to deliver on their mandate of transformation of communities; using targeted mechanisms/methods to effectively reach children, youth, men, and women. Zipporah has an MA in Counselling Psychology from United States International University-Africa and a BA in Sociology from Kenyatta University Kenya.
Alex Mwaura is the Kenya Program Director at Food for the Hungry. Over the past 18 years, Alex has led and managed both emergency and long-term development programs. He has worked in various capacities at both the regional and country-level and is interested in strengthening the resilience capacities of marginalized groups and communities, as well as advocating for accountable governance systems. Alex has a Bachelor of Arts in Communication, an Executive Master’s degree in Organization Development, and is currently undertaking an MSc in Sustainable Development at the University of Sussex.
Lauren Woodside de Alegre is the Risk and Resilience and Humanitarian Response Manager for Food for the Hungry. In this role, she focuses on building organizational capacity to integrate disaster risk reduction and resilience strengthening in both development and relief programming. Additionally, her work serves to strengthen FH field competency for rapid and effective emergency response. She is particularly interested in equipping field staff with tools and approaches that reinforce community governance and resilience capacity. In her 14 years with FH, Lauren has held diverse roles both leading and supporting FH teams to design and implement projects across various sectors including health, protection, DRR, shelter, livelihoods, and WASH. Her work with FH directly supports programming in 18 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. Lauren holds a Masters in Teaching from the University of Washington and BAs in Biology and International Relations from Pacific Lutheran University.
Claire Boswell is the Senior Technical Advisor for Social and Behavior Change at Food for the Hungry. She has worked on multisectoral development programming in a variety of capacities over the past 20 years, including program management and technical support. Her particular interests are developing and applying simple, practical tools to build field capacity in behavior change and monitoring and evaluation. Claire has a Master of Health Science from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and a BA in Spanish from Samford University.
Mary DeCoster is the Global Director of Social and Behavioral Change Programs for Food for the Hungry. The SBC team provides technical support in design, implementation, and capacity strengthening for FH’s work in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and Caribbean regions. Mary is committed to supporting the work of country-level staff to build strong relationships between and among staff and communities and promote critical thinking, appreciative inquiry, and respectful, strengths-based community mobilization and development. Mary has over 30 years of experience in Social and Behavior Change, holds an MPH degree from the department of Health Behavior, at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Public Health and an MS degree in Library Science from UNC School of Information and Library Science. She is also an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant.