EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report focuses on lessons learned by WFP from the Ready to Respond project, a joint UN humanitarian preparedness programme funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID).
Ready to Respond was instigated in late 2013 by UNICEF and WFP, who were joined in 2015 by OCHA and UNHCR. DFID’s support enabled the agencies to implement a wide range of preparedness activities, aiming at reinforcing their own capacity and the capacity of partners in being better prepared to respond to disasters.
These investments have already contributed to faster, cheaper, greener and more appropriate humanitarian response.
Some of the activities have also helped strengthen national governments’ preparedness capacities in the longer term, and have led to innovative collaborative approaches to preparedness.
This Lessons Learned report is addressed primarily to an internal WFP audience: staff in Country Offices (COs), Regional Bureaux (RBs) and Headquarters (HQ) who are involved in emergency preparedness/readiness work. It brings together lessons and good practices in emergency preparedness that emerged from the Ready to Respond project, in the hope that they will be shared and built upon in future programming.
It draws lessons from the most telling cases, focusing on preparedness investments that have actually been used in emergencies and which have enabled more efficient response.
Concentrating mainly on qualitative impacts, together with the quantitative findings of the Return on Investment study it contributes to evidence that humanitarian preparedness does pay off.