Appeal for ACT Alliance Rapid Response Fund Contributions
ACT Alliance has the privileged position of being a network of local, national and international actors committed to partnerships amongst each other. This commitment enables international and global members of ACT to enhance the capacity of local and national actors, through resources, training and/or other support, allowing for first response in the beginning of a crisis or disaster to come directly from the community itself.
ACT Alliance prioritizes approaches that attempt to ensure a commitment of responsibility towards communities in emergency response. Dignity, community empowerment and capacity-building are cornerstones of our local and national responses. Our members at the local and national levels are embedded within communities, familiar with the needs of communities and able to respond before any other actor in times of crisis. It is the role of the ACT Alliance, in the context of its emergency response mechanism, to ensure that the tools and resources available lend towards reinforcing this ambition.
The Rapid Response Fund (RRF) is a global fund of the ACT Alliance administered by the ACT secretariat. Funds for the RRF are provided by ACT Alliance members and non-members on the basis of an annual appeal.
In exceptional cases the RRF can also be requested by implementing members, through the Forum, as an advance on a forthcoming appeal for immediate life-saving or humanitarian needs assessment activities. This would act as an immediate “start-up” fund, allowing for a maximum of 150,000 USD to be used in the first 6-8 weeks of a large-scale/global emergency. This amount will be reimbursed in the appeal. This is being introduced in 2017 for the first time, based on the recommendations from the Emergency Response Review and the Humanitarian Policy (2015).
As of 30 November 2016, 9 RRF projects were approved in 2016, ranging from immediate response to populations affected by conflict (Armenia), as well as natural disasters (Uruguay, Liberia, India, Bangladesh, Tanzania, Dominican Republic, Egypt and Costa Rica). In total, more than 575,000USD was disbursed within 24 hours of the request for funding, providing life-saving assistance by ACT members to thousands of people around the world, within 72 hours of the onset of the emergency.
