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The Start Fund is a multi-donor pooled rapid-response fund that initiates disbursement of humanitarian finance within 72 hours. It is collectively owned and managed by the Start Network members, a group of 42 national and international aid agencies from five continents. The fund was officially launched on 1st April 2014 and has an annual disbursement of approximately £11 million (GBP). It is designed to fill gaps in the humanitarian funding architecture in three main areas: underfunded small to medium scale crises; forecasts of impending crises; and spikes in chronic humanitarian crises. This review is one in a series of learning products developed by the Start Fund Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) team with the intention of providing actionable recommendations to improve decision making at the project, crisis and system level . Evidence and learning for the Start Fund is provided by World Vision UK.

The Protection in Practice project, part of the Disasters Emergencies Preparedness Programme, aims to build the capacity of national staff to deliver activities which ensure the protection of civilians during times of crisis, while transforming the sector’s approach to protection. The humanitarian community, along with the United Nations as a whole, has taken critical steps in the last decade to emphasise the fundamental importance of protection in responses to humanitarian crises. Today, in view of the number of complex and concurrent emergencies, it has never been so critical for all humanitarians to ensure that their activities have a positive impact on the protection of displaced and affected populations.

The Protection in Practice project, part of the Disasters Emergencies Preparedness Programme, aims to build the capacity of national staff to deliver activities which ensure the protection of civilians during times of crisis, while transforming the sector’s approach to protection. The humanitarian community, along with the United Nations as a whole, has taken critical steps in the last decade to emphasise the fundamental importance of protection in responses to humanitarian crises. Today, in view of the number of complex and concurrent emergencies, it has never been so critical for all humanitarians to ensure that their activities have a positive impact on the protection of displaced and affected populations.

Shifting the Power (StP) is a three-year project that aims to strengthen the capacity and influence of local and national humanitarian actors, and to contribute to the development of a more balanced humanitarian system. StP is part of the three-year Disasters and Emergencies Preparedness Programme (DEPP) and is being implemented by a consortium of six INGOs: ActionAid, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Concern, Oxfam and Tearfund. The consortium is working alongside 55 local and national NGO (L/NNGO) partners in Bangladesh, DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya and Pakistan. The project is comprised of five ‘outputs’, relating to capacity strengthening, supporting representation and voice of local partners, consortium member INGOs ‘walking the talk’, collaboration with other DEPP projects, and learning and evidence sharing. This learning review took place between July and September 2017 (towards the end of the project). It examines how the project has influenced local and national partner’s response to emergencies, and which capacity strengthening activities have been most successful. The data on which the review is based was collected from StP staff, L/NNGO partners, and INGO consortium members through a variety of means including: qualitative surveys, field visits, Key Informant Interviews (KIIs), Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), Skype calls and extensive document reviews. The programme has seen some immediate results and benefits. There are numerous examples from all StP countries of L/NNGO progress in being prepared for and able to respond to emergencies. Positively, reports of the progress achieved as a result of being part of StP was not limited to one or two L/NNGOs, nor were they limited to one area of progress per L/NNGO.  

In 2015 the Start Network launched a three-year Transforming Surge Capacity (TSC) project financed with UK aid from the UK government as part of the Department for International Development’s (DFID) Disasters and Emergencies Preparedness Programme (DEPP). The project has seen engagement by eleven UK-based aid agencies with a collective focus on finding ways to ensure effective civil society surge capacity in order to deliver more efficient, collaborative and localised emergency responses. 

This review is one in a series of learning products developed by the Start Fund Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning team with the intention of providing actionable recommendations to improve decision making at the project, crisis and system level.

The study uses the Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability (CHS) as a lens to review the extent to which Start funded projects are accountable to disaster-affected populations, and the influence this may have on the quality and relevance of these projects.

As part of Start's Migration Emergency Response Fund, Network members Mercy Corps, ACTED and IRC have conducted an assessment of how different cash delivery mechanisms serve migrant and refugee populations in Libya.

Learning by doing is the best way to learn, so the Protection in Practice project builds local partner capacity by training, mentoring and co-implementing projects with them simultaneously. This means that vulnerable people are helped at the same time as strengthening capacity.

In order to build an organisation that can deliver the Start Network's vision at scale, complex solutions are needed. Here Dan McClure of ThoughtWorks discusses how to do complex innovation better.