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3182. User-Centred Design and Humanitarian Adaptiveness
- Author:
- Sofya Bourne
- Publication Date:
- 04-2019
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
- Abstract:
- Gathering and acting on feedback from affected communities is a key means to identify potential triggers for change during the design and implementation of humanitarian programmes. This study is focused on user-centred design (UCD), an approach often used outside the humanitarian sector to design products and services that are tailored to the needs and preferences of end-users and are created with the users’ involvement in the design process. Because UCD is meant to facilitate a structured, quick, and iterative design process that is oriented towards the perspectives of users, it has the potential to help humanitarian organisations design programmes that are more responsive to the needs of affected people, i.e. more user-centred, which in turn could support greater adaptiveness of humanitarian programmes. But can the benefits of UCD hold when this approach is applied in the context of the contemporary humanitarian system? This case study seeks to explore the utility, applicability and effectiveness of UCD in supporting humanitarian adaptiveness, and to understand whether UCD can enable humanitarian actors to be more adaptive, or whether these organisations need to have well-developed adaptive capabilities to be able to apply UCD in a way that facilitates different types of adaptiveness in their responses.
- Topic:
- Accountability, Participation, Adaptation, WASH Projects, and Humanitarian Response
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
3183. Shifting Mindsets: Creating a more flexible humanitarian response
- Author:
- Alice Obrecht
- Publication Date:
- 09-2019
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
- Abstract:
- As humanitarian needs and situations change, and as our understanding of complex problems evolves, humanitarian agencies must be able to adapt. Yet in recent years, international humanitarian agencies have struggled with flexibility when it comes to adapting to context, changing the type and quantity of support at the right time, or responding quickly and appropriately to unexpected crises or challenges. To date, the flexibility of modern humanitarian agencies, and the capacities needed for response level flexibility, has not been explored in depth for modern crises. This is the end-of-project report for a two-year workstream that sought to address this gap by undertaking exploratory research on the support factors and barriers to flexibility and adaptation in contemporary humanitarian action.
- Topic:
- International Organization, Crisis Management, Humanitarian Response, and Flexibility
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
3184. Shifting Mindsets | Section 5: Funding
- Author:
- Alice Obrecht
- Publication Date:
- 09-2019
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
- Abstract:
- This standalone section of the ALNAP Study Shifting Mindsets: Creating a more flexible humanitarian response focuses on funding for greater flexibility. This is one of the three pillars that flexibility relies upon according to this research and also one of the starting points to make humanitarian responses more flexible. It covers types of humanitarian funding and their relationship to flexibility, characteristics of funding mechanisms that support flexible and adaptive humanitarian action, and the future of flexible bilateral funding.
- Topic:
- International Organization, Crisis Management, Donors, Funding, and Humanitarian Response
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
3185. Shifting Mindsets | Section 4: Culture and people
- Author:
- Alice Obrecht
- Publication Date:
- 09-2019
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
- Abstract:
- This standalone section of the ALNAP Study Shifting Mindsets: Creating a more flexible humanitarian response focuses on culture and people for greater flexibility. This is one of the three pillars that flexibility relies upon according to this research and also one of the starting points to make humanitarian responses more flexible. It covers flexible approaches in organisational culture and staff, as well as anticipatory and adaptive strategies to this extent.
- Topic:
- International Organization, Culture, Performance Evaluation, Humanitarian Response, Flexibility, and Organizational Learning
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
3186. Shifting Mindsets | Section 3: Systems for greater flexibility
- Author:
- Alice Obrecht
- Publication Date:
- 09-2019
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
- Abstract:
- This standalone section of the ALNAP study 'Shifting mindsets: creating a more flexible humanitarian response' focuses on organisational systems to support flexibility. This is one of the three pillars that flexibility relies upon according to this research and also one of the starting points to make humanitarian responses more flexible. It covers flexible approaches in: logistics, supply chain and procurement systems; programme design and programme cycle management; and monitoring of these systems.
- Topic:
- Procurement, Logistics, Supply Chains, Monitoring, Humanitarian Response, and Flexibility
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
3187. Beyond Assumptions: How humanitarians make operational decisions
- Author:
- Leah Campbell and Paul Knox Clarke
- Publication Date:
- 11-2019
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
- Abstract:
- The ability to make good decisions – particularly under urgent and uncertain circumstances – is fundamental to effective humanitarian response. Yet decision-making to this extent has received little academic attention. The ALNAP Study ‘Beyond assumptions’ seeks to address this gap and it is the result of over two years’ work exploring the nature of humanitarian contexts, the different types of decisions that they require, and the most suitable approaches to making these decisions at the country/ field level. This research builds upon ALNAP’s previous work on humanitarian leadership and coordination, where the importance of good decision-making emerged as a key theme. Time and again humanitarian evaluations have also flagged it as an issue, with decision-making receiving regular criticism for being too slow, disconnected from strategy, opaque and unaccountable.
- Topic:
- Leadership, Decision-Making, Coordination, Humanitarian Response, and Assessment
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
3188. Under Wraps: A survey of public attitudes to homosexuality and gender non-conformity in Malawi
- Author:
- Alan Msosa, Zione Jane Veronica Ntaba, MacDonald Sembereka, Eric Sambisa, Gift Trapence, Chiwoza Bandawe, Ndifanji Namacha, Eric Umar, Timothy Mtambo, Reverend Master Jumbe, Jones Hamburu Mawerenga, and Janet Mwandira
- Publication Date:
- 12-2019
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- The Other Foundation
- Abstract:
- This report is called Under Wraps because it shows that Malawi has a comparatively high LGBTI population that is known by a significant number of ordinary Malawians to be socially vulnerable – but this reality remains hidden in Malawi’s social consciousness. Despite strong social values and aspirations of equality, non-violence, and belonging in a community, the majority of Malawians restrict LGBTI people from being openly recognized and safely included in families, communities, workplaces, cultural practices, and public policies. However, a large number of Malawians are thinking differently about discrimination, even the majority in relation to recognition of intersex people and violence towards LGBTI people.
- Topic:
- Public Opinion, Discrimination, LGBT+, Society, Homophobia, and Transphobia
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Malawi
3189. Taking a Stand: A call to action by the church against injustice towards LGBTI people
- Author:
- Allan Boesak
- Publication Date:
- 06-2019
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- The Other Foundation
- Abstract:
- At its 2008 General Synod the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa considered a report on the church’s stand on the question of sexual orientation and nonconformity. That was a moment, in my view, in which this church, who had declared apartheid, its biblical and theological justification a heresy and led the ecumenical movement in doing the same; who in formulating in 1982, and adopting in 1986 the Belhar Confession as a new standard of faith, faced its greatest challenge since confronting apartheid. Central to the Confession are our unity in Christ; the reconciliation wrought by Christ, and the justice demanded by God. These three things. I was the convenor of that task team and presenter of the report at the synod. It was one of those utterly shattering, fundamentally life-changing experiences. After a hostile, and theologically disturbingly crude, debate, the synod rejected the report, its contents, its conclusions and its recommendations calling for justice for LGBTQI persons and referred the report for reconsideration. Even though the words, “another, more anti-gay report” were deleted from the amended version of the original proposal, the intention could not have been clearer. What was striking and shocking, even though hardly unknown in debates on this matter it seems, was the stridently hostile tone of the debate, the blatant homophobic language that dominated the discussion all through the afternoon. Speakers who took the floor did not even attempt to disguise their contempt. Some spoke openly of LGBTQI persons as “animals”, “not created by God”; of bestiality and of LGBTQI persons in one breath, all of which as being a “scandal” and “stain” upon the church. It was an experience that had left me shaken and disoriented: how could the same church that took such a strong stand against apartheid and racial oppression, gave such inspired and courageous leadership from its understanding of the Bible and the radical Reformed tradition; that had, in the middle of the state of emergency of the 1980s with its unprecedented oppression, its desperate violence and nameless fear given birth to the Belhar Confession that spoke of reconciliation, justice, unity and the Lordship of Jesus Christ, now display such blatant hatred and hypocrisy, deny so vehemently for God’s LGBTQI children the solidarity we craved for ourselves in our struggle for racial justice, bow down so easily at the altar of prejudice and bigotry?
- Topic:
- Human Rights, Religion, Christianity, LGBT+, Justice, and Advocacy
- Political Geography:
- Africa and South Africa
3190. Adversity and Resiliency for Chicago's First: The State of Racial Justice for American Indian Chicagoans
- Author:
- William Scarborough, Faith R. Kares, Ivan Arenas, and Amanda E. Lewis
- Publication Date:
- 06-2019
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy (IRRPP), University of Illinois at Chicago
- Abstract:
- Although Native American Chicagoans play a central role in the social fabric of the city, relatively little attention has been directed to documenting the experiences of racial discrimination and inequities for Native American Chicagoans. In this report, we examine the state of racial justice for Native Americans in Chicago. Our report is organized across five substantive areas, Population, Housing, (Mis)Representations of American Indians in Popular Culture, Education, Economics, and Justice, each focusing on a different aspect of racial equity. In each section, we draw on available data to describe the current conditions and experiences of Native American Chicagoans, including areas where they are thriving and areas where they are negatively affected by the legacy of racial exclusion as well as ongoing discrimination.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Race, Minorities, Inequality, Discrimination, Local, and Community
- Political Geography:
- North America and United States of America