Narrative Report - StartFund , 2016.

Like the rest of Southern Africa, Zambia was impacted by the recent El Nino event which resulted in late start to the 2015/2016 rain season and prolonged dry spells. The erratic and poorly distributed rainfall in December and January led to late planting, poor germination, reduced planted area and dry water bodies. Compounded by a poor previous cropping season, there were predictions of poor harvest, food and water scarcity and increased food prices.

In anticipating further draught, World Vision Zambia in partnership with other consortia partners (CONCERN, Save the Children and Oxfam) sent an alert to StartFund under the START Network, an international network of humanitarian NGOs, working together to connect people in crisis to the best possible solutions.

In collaboration with the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit under the office of the Vice President, seven districts of southern province were identified for training in Community Based Disaster Risk Management, a framework that is aimed at strengthening the District and satellite Disaster management Committees and also serves as a standard operating procedure. These seven districts which are located in the drought-prone Agro-Ecological zone I were amongst eight districts of southern province that had never under-gone training in the CBDRM framework.

Using the grant from StartFund, World Vision Zambia sought to build capacity of District Disaster Management Committees DDMC to respond to possible impact of the El Nino phenomena. Two specific activities that were conducted were (1) Evaluation of district disaster management committees (DDMC) in seven districts. and (2) Training of District Disaster Management Committees) and sub-district community structures (satellite disaster management committees) in CBDRM, and cross cutting issues such as Gender, Protection, Accountability & transparency and Grievance mechanisms.