Survivor- and Community-Led Crisis Response (Sclr): Practical Experience and Learning
Sclr enables aid actors to connect with, support and strengthen crisis responses identified, designed, implemented and monitored by local groups.
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This Network Paper introduces and explains existing knowledge and experience with an emerging way of working in humanitarian programming. For now, this approach is called survivor- and community-led crisis response (sclr), as it seeks to enable external aid actors to connect with, support and strengthen crisis responses identified, designed, implemented and monitored by existing or new self-help groups among crisis-affected populations. This way of working has evolved through experimentation and experience from crises in Myanmar, Kenya, Sudan, the occupied Palestine territories (OPT), the Philippines and Haiti — as well as like-minded ways of working in other contexts, including Ethiopia, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
As this way of working has evolved, a number of guiding principles have emerged and are the subject of continued practice, research and reflection. These include stressing the importance of understanding crisis-affected individuals and groups as first responders, and reforming and changing existing aid systems and practices to better support locally led responses.
Faced with growing documentation and recognition of citizen activism, mutual aid and self-help in response to crises related to conflicts, climate change or pandemics, such as COVID-19, creating space for truly user-led ways of working will be crucial if humanitarian organizations are to remain relevant to current and future challenges. Adopting the sclr ways of working is one step in that direction.
This paper was prepared by Justin Corbett, Nils Carstensen and Simone Di Vicenz for the Humanitarian Practice Network at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).