Evaluation of Oxfam's Response to Hurricane Dean in Three Countries of the ESC

In 2007, Hurricane Dean (category 4 with sustained wind of 150 mph), made landfall
in Jamaica on August 19th 2007 leaving a trail of damage along the Southern coast.
According to initial reports, as many as 300,000 people were temporarily displaced by
Dean. The communities most affected are located in the southern part of the island
that was impacted by hurricanes Emily, Ivan, and Wilma in 2004 and 2005.

This evaluation carried out after the six-month programmes have closed was to look
at the following areas:
• To review the project design and implementation
• To identify and document innovative and good practices
• To identify persistent weaknesses (particularly in internal systems) for
organisational learning

The evaluation was carried out by semi-structured interviews with key informants and
focus groups in the three countries with a variety of stakeholders. The evaluator talked
to all staff in the Barbados office, four staff in the regional centre, one HSP and one
contract staff and in the countries three government staff, 16 partner staff, 12
volunteers and 67 women and 25 men from the affected populations.
On the whole, although the implementation was late, the response went