The Resilience Measurement Experts Meeting held June 30-July 1, 2016 facilitated sharing and discussing tools, approaches, and methods within the resilience measurement efforts, sharing experiences and perspectives of recent quantitative data collection efforts of RAN partners in Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda, Ghana, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. This dialogue informed improved prioritization of resilience factors and greater clarity in resilience measurement while using the workshop platform to improve collaboration, learning, and partnerships between universities, donors, and NGOs in resilience research and programming.
The Resilience Measurement Experts Meeting (Resilience Dialogue) brought together 50 multidisciplinary resilience experts for resilience measurement and these included; Global Resilience Partnership, Food and Agriculture Organization, Catholic Relief Services, Mercy Corps, World Vision, UNICEF, IGAD, PACT-EAC, World Food Program, Tulane University-DRLA, Stanford University, CSIS, Makerere University, Somalia, USAID, University for Development Studies, University of Rwanda, Jimma University, University of Pretoria among others. The Resilience Dialogue participants engaged in discussions ranging from sharing Resilience conceptual frameworks and theories of change: current models. Strengths and weaknesses, Deliberative Polling (DP) a novel approach to community consultation applied in Uganda and Ghana and now planned in Senegal-September 2016, Indicators and Dimensions of Resilience, shocks, data and interventions, Resilience Pathways to Collaboration, Learning and Partnerships.
Dr. Luca Alinovi, Executive Director, Global Resilience Partnership while leading the discussion on Collaboration, Learning and Partnerships strongly noted that “We can influence where the world is going if we are committed to working together/partnerships and doing things differently”. That the best way to development and growth is coping the person who knows better than you do, but knowing exactly what to copy”. Prof. Ky Luu, Executive Director Tulane University’s Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy (DRLA) and RAN Co-Chief of Party added to these remarks above emphasizing the need to work within strong partnerships to further build the resilience agenda among others.
Maggie Linak, Program Manager, Higher Education Solutions Network (HESN), U.S. Global Development Lab, U.S Agency for International Development thanked all participants with emphasis to Prof. William Bazeyo, Dean Makerere University School of Public Health and Chief of Party RAN/Lab Director and Prof. Ky Luu, for the able leadership but most importantly efforts towards a successful RAN 2016 Partners Forum-June 27-28, 2016 and Resilience Dialogue-June 30-July 1, 2016. “I am looking forward to getting back to my desk and further conceptualizing all that has been discussed. What can we do with all the information which we have collected, so that we do not only disseminate it through academics but use it to make meaningful impact in the communities?” she added. She urged all participants to translate the rich knowledge generated and shared into impact or at least make steps towards translating this knowledge.
Prof. Bazeyo in his closing remarks thanked the RAN team and Resilience Dialogue participants for a job well done, specially thanking Prof. Ky Luu for always freely sharing all that he knows for the benefit of others. “You do not have to listen to somebody for a long time to learn, you just need to listen to him/her for a short time and the rest is implementation”. He said this while thanking Dr. Luca Alinovi, Executive Director, Global Resilience Partnership for ably leading participants through the Collaboration, Learning and Partnerships session at the Dialogue. We still need to firmly engage the Missions where RAN is operational for effective innovation and resilience activities. “Even if I thank everyone, unless we have each learnt something that will impact the communities, we have done nothing” added Prof. Bazeyo. Let us not do the same things all the time, Resilience is not new although it may be new when we do not accompany it with Innovative Solutions. Let us help each other to understand how best to implement what we have learnt in all these sessions. We committed ourselves to cause change in the communities, unless we have done that, we have failed! Always take care to note where RAN’s footprint is, whatever we have discovered, let us use it to cause a difference in the communities.
“We promised to understand what hurts the communities, document it, and revisit innovators to develop solutions to address these community challenges. We are steadily moving to motion towards achieving this” said Prof. Bazeyo. Thank you RAN partners for the commitment to transform the communities, “If we do all that we are doing, without positively impacting or transforming the communities, we are equivalent to doing nothing” he added. We look forward to having more dialogues directed towards impacting the communities.
The conversation was shared @AfricaResilient #RANRD2016.
“Solutions through Innovation”
