Soft Shelter Strategies

Hi Shona,

Our colleagues in South East Asia will be able to advise more appropriately, however I imagine that local information centres, market interventions, host family support, cash programming, supporting insurance and capacity building might be worth considering?

Our guidelines with UN/OCHA and a very broad peer review offer some steps to creating an integrated strategy or programme, including summaries of these options: http://www.sheltercentre.org/library/shelter-after-disaster.

In terms of local information centres, this presentation might be of help:

http://www.sheltercentre.org/meeting/material/Habitat%20Resource%20Centers%20in%20Disaster%20Response

For market interventions, where you work out how their construction industry works and understand how best to support it:

http://www.sheltercentre.org/meeting/material/emergency-market-mapping-and-analysis-tool-emma

http://www.sheltercentre.org/library/emma-pakistan-flood-response-punjab-final-report

http://www.sheltercentre.org/library/emergency-market-mapping-and-analysis-emma-pilot-test-2-myanmar

For host family support, have a look at: http://www.sheltercentre.org/meeting/material/host-family-support-programme.

For cash programming:

http://sheltercentre.org/meeting/material/cash-based-approaches-transitional-shelter-lessons-learned-ifrc-yogyakarta

For insurance:

http://sheltercentre.org/meeting/material/applications-insurance-building-back-safer

For capacity building, this programme was recognised as being extremely successful:

http://www.sheltercentre.org/library/confined-masonry-illustrated-guide-masons

http://www.sheltercentre.org/library/bhatar-construction-timber-reinforced-masonry-illustrated-guide-craftsmen

I hope this is helpful in stimulating more responses to your interesting question.

With best wishes for your mission.

Kind regards,

Tom Corsellis

Hey Shona
I spent years frustrated with NGO's who ran around saying "we dont do shelter", when in fact they did when the need was great enough, and all that statement meant was they failed to learn, prepare and build capacity around shelter...
For most of these years I wanted to start an NGO called "We Do Shelter" a simple direct message, then go out and specialize in doing just that...
More recently my frustration with agencies leaping into disasters and doing shelter badly as they thought it was where all the money was, has lead me to wanting to start an NGO called "we dont build shelter"
Such great shelter outcomes can be achieved with a range of non physical, or non construction based interventions.

I so fondly remember wandering through a village in southern Bangladesh with a colleague Sarbjit, and doing what shelterers are meant to do,
i.e looking at "what fell down and why, what stood up and why,
and determining what were the barriers to people doing the later and not the former"
As we wandered through the village, we engaged with the community in discussion.
It was a fascinating afternoon, hanging out with the community, playing house failure detective and by the end of it, the problems were clear to one and all
1) houses that had used a steel plate to connect their posts to their foundations stood up well
2) The foundation on houses that used a wide earth plinth did not wash away
and
3) Houses that used two nails in each joint of the panel wall construction did not blow over.

Sarbjit and I wandered away, to provide technical advice to our relative agencies

Coincidentally a few months later I got the chance opportunity to drop back in on that same village
nearly all the houses had been stood back up, all had the above 3 improvements, to the point where even the poorer members of the community had been supported by wealthier members to achieve those changes.

It was a sobering reflection on what impact a little information can have
Not sure we ever really need to "do" shelter as such :)
just sheltering

I'm probably preaching to the choir, but thought you might enjoy the tale
dave