Questions and Answers: About the ECB Project

1. Questions and Answers: About the ECB Project AIM Standing Team workshop: Joint Evaluations Casablanca, November 2011

2. Q&A about ECB Q A In what year did the ECB project start? (First and second phase!) • The first phase of the project kicked off in 2005 and lasted til 2007. • The second phase began in 2008 and will last 5 years, until 2013. ?

3. Q&A about ECB Q A What are the 3 objective areas of the project? • Objective 1 works at improving emergency response at the country consortia level. • Objective 2 aims to improve emergency response at the agency / HQ level. • Objective 3 aims to improve the work at the sector level. ?

4. Q&A about ECB Q A What are the cross-cutting themes of ECB? • The three themes are: • Disaster Risk Reduction • Accountability & Impact Measurement • Building National Staff Capacity ?

5. Q&A about ECB Q A Who are the Advisers and what do they do, specifically for the Standing Team? • Each agency has Advisers. • They support the work in the agency and consortium level in their technical area of expertise (AIM, DRR, staff capacity). • They meet regularly and take on work together to improve their agency’s emergency response. • The AIM Advisers designed the Standing Team and they oversee the work the Team does. • They provide support and guidance to the Standing Team members, as requested • They will support all deployments. ?

6. Q&A about ECB Q A What are the IWG Principals? The Inter-agency Working Group are made up of two ‘Principals’ from each ECB Agency. They are the emergency directors at their agency. ?

7. Q&A about ECB Q A What are the most popular tools from the ECB Project? (mention at least 3 of them!) • The Good Enough Guide • Building Trust in Diverse Teams Toolkit • Joint Needs Assessment Tool • Multi-Agency Simulation Toolkit • The CBHA Humanitarian Learning Program ?

8. Q&A about ECB Q A What is an ECB consortium? Each consortium is made up of some or all of the six IWG agency country programs In partnership with other NGOs, UN institutions, local partners, communities, and government actors they are committed to working together to improve their national and field level emergency preparedness and response capabilities and practices. ?

9. Q&A about ECB Q A Which are the ECB country consortia? (you need to list them ALL!) • Horn of Africa (includes Uganda, Somalia, Kenya) • Bangladesh • Bolivia • Niger • Indonesia ?

10. Q&A about ECB Q A What are the main activities of an ECB consortium? (need to mention at least 3) • Improving performance in recruiting, retaining, developing, and deploying skilled staff; • increasing their accountability to affected populations and communities; • decreasing the risks from disasters through local and national government policy changes; • improving the coping mechanisms of participating communities; • improving the coordination in preparedness and response; • developing agreements and work towards implementing joint response activities; and • gathering data and document lessons for sharing with global agencies and sectors. ?

11. Q&A about ECB Q A How were the consortia selected? Twenty-one countries submitted letters of interest to be considered for the ECB work in Phase II. Of those, 5 countries were chosen. The final selection was made by the IWG Principals of the six participating agencies. The group carefully considered the scope and quality of the letters, placing particular emphasis on geographical distribution; level of disaster or emergency risk; political stability; regional linkages and the potential reach of learning developed within the consortia. They sought a diversity of contexts or settings, including urbanization, linguistic and cultural background, and climate trends for each country. ?

12. Q&A about ECB Q A What is a CEP (Consortium Engagement Plan)? A CEP is a consortium engagement plan that outlines the country consortium’s plan of activities for the year. In all 5 CEPs, there is an activity about the Standing Team deployments! ?