NGOs and recovery planning

Recovery planning in Haiti seems to be happening on multiple, rather independent planes.  Over the last two days, we have spoken with a range of organizations grappling with recovery strategies.  On Wednesday we assessed a series of church complexes and discussed recovery strategies with their development and aid specialists. I also read through the UN’s shelter cluster meeting notes and planning documents. Today, I went to a small networking meeting of small and independent non-profit organizations.

The cluster group has laid out a systematic and targeted plan for relief distribution, camp management, procurement of of temporary shelters, and many other issues. Reporting is standardized  so that the large humanitarian relief agencies can coordinate their responses using online geographic-based reporting. Much of their strategies are grounded in policies based upon past experience in managing large disaster recovery efforts.

The church aid and development specialist indicated a much more incoherent picture in the field. They noted that there were often multiple and conflicting “community leaders” in camps and it was difficult to determine who was represented. Further, non-profits would compete to be prominent in providing high profile relief, leading to overlaps and gaps and a very murky picture of what services were being provided where, and to what percentage of a camp’s population.  They had attended UN Shelter cluster meetings, but being smaller than the major international aid agencies, they did not have staff to devote to the almost continuous UN cluster meetings. As such, they were not integral to the decision making process.

Today, at the networking event for small non-profits, I spoke with several individuals that represented organizations of volunteers or staff of one to two people. Some of these groups had been working in Haiti on education, orphanages, and general development when the earthquake struck. Without the benefit of past experience, they moved into disaster relief and were now contemplating how to support communities in redevelopment. These individuals were for the most past, unaware of the UN coordination system and strategies already being made. Some were equally unaware of the lessons learned from past disasters. They seemed destine to have to learn through failure, or at best, by independently developing public education materials, housing designs, and distribution processes that already exist.