Typhoon Haiyan (locally known as Yolanda) made landfall in Central Philippines on 8th November 2013. With sustained wind speeds of 250 km/hour and gusts of up to 315 km/hour, Haiyan was one of the strongest typhoons on record and left massive devastation in its wake, resulting in loss of life, destruction to physical infrastructure and housing, and disruption of communications, electricity, water systems and transportation.
The UK provided £62m in funding in November 2013, with a further £15m added to support early recovery activities in March and May 2014.
The aims of the evaluation
The purpose of this evaluation was to assist DFID CHASE (both the response and policy teams) learn lessons with a view to improving performance in future responses. Key to the evaluation is to learn how well DFID’s partners (and through them DFID) performed, what can be done better next time, and what comparative value for money and added value DFID’s partners provide. The secondary aim was to assist accountability issues, both to the taxpayer but equally importantly, to end-users.
Our approach
Itad mobilised a highly experienced team with a deep understanding of multi-sector rapid humanitarian response and its evaluation, humanitarian policy, the Transformative Agenda, value for money evaluations as well as specific knowledge and experience of the response to Typhoon Haiyan.
Our evaluation design centred on an overarching evaluation framework to ensure systematic data collection and analysis of evidence across the three main areas of enquiry: the response of DFID and its partners; the response of the humanitarian system; and accountability to affected populations. The design also focused on addressing gender and violence against women and girls (VAWG), as well as value of money of DFID and its partners’ response.
In the inception phase, the team conducted a literature review of existing evaluations and assessments, interviews with key implementing agencies and stakeholders, a partnership assessment and an evaluability assessment. This was followed by four weeks of fieldwork in Manila and three selected locations in the Philippines in January 2015 to conduct extensive interviews with a broad spectrum of Government, national and local NGOs and CSOs, and beneficiary communities.
The final report was presented to DFID in March 2015.
Contact David Fleming (david.fleming@itad.com) if you would like to discuss this project.
Image © Lifesaving British Aid reaches remote Philippines Islands. Photo Credit: Simon Davis/DFID (CC BY 2.0)