Putting Power into Resilience: Case Studies from around the World

This report presents nine case studies that illustrate the principles of Christian Aid’s Resilience Framework, and put the risks and opportunities it addresses into context.

The first three case studies demonstrate the principles of the Resilience Framework. Community-led participatory vulnerability and capacity assessments (PVCAs) is exemplified by initiatives to facilitate inclusive decision making in Burkina Faso, while schemes to provide women with access to quality land in Mali, and to address land insecurity among the urban poor in the Philippines, embody power, gender and inclusion. Accountability is highlighted by community-led work in the occupied Palestinian territory, where the inclusive PVCA process, adapted to local context, has encouraged communities to develop coalitions to strengthen advocacy work.

The remaining case studies contextualise the framework’s identified risks and opportunities. On page 13, an advocacy initiative in Kenya, to connect communities to county government via SMS-based reporting, in the wake of devolution, illustrates the risks and opportunities inherent in structural change. The benefits of anticipating climate and environmental change, to maintain and boost crop productivity, are highlighted (p15) in an example from Nicaragua, while the importance of building infrastructural resilience is demonstrated by the devastating 2008 Kosi flood in India, and subsequent community-driven work to prevent future infrastructure failure (p17).

In Bangladesh, Christian Aid’s work on milk value chain development has addressed livelihood and market inequalities, integrating marginalised producers into a profitable supply chain, enabling women to exploit opportunities in the dairy sector (p19). 

Designed to boost health and wellbeing, radio listening groups in Ethiopia have encouraged debate about health and harmful traditional practices such as female genital mutilation, polygamy and child marriage (p21). Meanwhile, the challenge of achieving lasting impact in environments affected by conflict and disasters has been the focus of Christian Aid’s work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, supporting local people to use advocacy to address violence and insecurity (p23).