Final Report - Zimbabwe Floods DREF Review

Following continuous heavy rainfall, which led to widespread flooding across Zimbabwe, on 13 January 2015, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) approved the release of CHF 192,292 from the Disaster Relief & Emergency Fund (DREF) to support the Zimbabwe Red Cross respond to the immediate needs of the affected population, with emergency food, relief, shelter assistance, water, sanitation and hygiene promotion in Manicaland, Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland East, Mashonaland West and Midlands provinces over a period of three months. The DREF operation included interventions in the following sectors:

• Quality programming – including detailed needs assessment, the use of new technologies (Mega V/ODK).
• Water, sanitation and hygiene promotion – including the distribution of safe water supply and sanitation related items.
• Shelter and settlements – including the distribution of non-food items (NFIs) and emergency shelter items, as well as training on their use.
• Food, nutrition and livelihoods – including the distribution of food parcels.

A review of the floods operation was carried out from the 22 to 24 April culminating in a lessons learnt workshop on 27 April to assess its effectiveness, capture lessons learnt and identify areas for improvement of future operations. Through the review, a case study was developed to be used to demonstrate to key partners/donors of the efforts that were undertaken by the ZRCS to respond to the flooding situation in the country through the DREF. Feedback on the initial findings of the review was shared with the national society (NS) on the 28 April. A variety of methodologies were used in the review from desk review of secondary data and other operation documents, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, a household beneficiary satisfaction survey as well as household observations were also conducted and finally, a lessons learnt workshop was held to get a national perspective from the areas that were not sampled during the review.