“It was the women’s voices that created a tipping point.  It was their testimonies, their stories, their pain, their truth, their courage to speak truth to religious power at the time,” said Dionne Gravesande of ACT member Christian Aid, during a side event at the Commission on the Status of Women in New York.  “What was different in 2015?  They were heard.”

Gravesande’s story, which shared the experience of the Zimbabwean Council of Churches, was one concrete example of the importance of involving religious leaders in addressing harmful gender practices including early marriage, gender based violence and more.  ACT Alliance co-hosted the event, along with the Danish Permanent Mission to the UN, DanChurchAid and the UNFPA.

The goal of the event, Building Bridges, was to discuss best practices in developing effective partnerships between faith and secular actors to challenge discriminatory gender norms and secure rural women’s rights. A broad range of organisations participated, including Christian Aid, Tearfund, Abaad, Islamic Relief Worldwide, the Joint Learning Initiative, World Vision, and Norwegian Church Aid.

Dr. Selina Palm of Stellenbosch University presented research from JLI’s report No more ‘Harmful Traditional Practices’: Working effectively with faith leaders.  Palm noted that the term “harmful traditional practices” itself is problematic.  “We suggest that it is a term beloved by policy makers, but not very user friendly for practitioners,” she said.  The term often makes people defensive, and can put practises into silos isolating them, rather than addressing them in comprehensive programmes like child protection or anti-gender based violence.

Palm underscored the importance of faith communities and leaders: “Faith communities are spaces where beliefs, behaviours and social norms- both positive and negative- are created, reinforced, and can be challenged.  To engage there, you have to work through faith leaders.  They are crucial gatekeepers into wider faith communities.”

Faith leaders bring access to spiritual capital, which can be harnessed alongside the health information and knowledge, to transform, over time, opinions and norms in societies.

Irene Arena, from ACT member the Church of Uganda, echoed the importance of working with faith leaders.  Faith leaders played a key role in ending the war in Uganda.  “The faith leaders are actually the sleepy giants, which should be engaged in ending gender-based discriminatory norms and practices.”  90% of the population of Uganda is religious, so DCA and other ACT members engage church leaders as champions of gender justice, building their capacity to respond to gender issues.  2017 was the Year of the Family, and faith leaders were involved in addressing family-based gender discrimination in their communities.

Rev. Joseph John Hayab from Nigeria spoke of the need for faiths to come together in addressing gender-based violence.  “If we keep thinking it’s about them, not knowing it’s about us, there is no way out,” he said of the realization that in Nigeria, despite the 50/50 Christian/Muslim split in the country, gender issues are found throughout the nation.  They are a Christian problem as well as a Muslim problem.  Muslims and Christians have become collaborators on gender justice, creating joint resources drawing on Islamic and Biblical sacred texts, and engaging in educating boys and girls in gender issues and positive masculinity/femininity.

Dr. Azza Karam, Senior Advisor at the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) spoke of their work with religious leaders as a part of their work for decades.  “We have plenty to learn from faith-based actors,” she said, and talked about strategic learning exchanges with faith-based organisations that have helped to build a network of 450 FBOs the UNFPA has worked with since the 1970s.

Kidist Belayneh, from ACT member Norwegian Church Aid’s Ethiopia office, spoke of the engagement model that NCA has used for almost 10 years, starting with the top leadership in churches- educating them on the effects that female genital mutilation is having on girls in their communities- and then challenging them to identify their role in addressing the problem.  “It should be their agenda,” she said,” not ours.  Don’t push, but continue the journey.”

Faith-based and secular actors can come together to address gender-based practices that are harming women and girls around the world, and to tackle the underlying issues of poverty and patriarchy that help perpetuate them.  Dr. Palm summed up the danger of patriarchy at the end of the event.  “Patriarchy destroys.  Both men and women.”

But there is hope.  “Transforming patriarchy requires engaging men and boys and having male champions,” she said.  “Engaging masculinity and femininity and how they are constructed is important in how we do this work.”

Doing this work with faith leaders is one key way of helping it to happen.

On March 21, 2018, Alison Kelly, ACT Alliance’s Sustainable Development and UN Representative, presented an oral statement on behalf of ACT, the Lutheran World Federation and the World Council of Churches at the 62^nd Commission on the Status of Women at the UN.

“As networks of Churches and Christian faith based organizations working in humanitarian response and human rights-based development in over 145 countries – in rural areas that are often out of the institutional reach of national governments – we call for an end to gender inequality and injustice,” the statement began.

ACT, LWF and WCC focused on the role of faith actors in combatting harmful practices including early marriage and female genital mutilation.  “The importance of involving faith actors cannot be overemphasized, as they can play critical and influential roles and have the potential to bring lasting change… churches in Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe have intentionally targeted support to vulnerable women and girls in rural communities. Their deliberate efforts to promote gender justice within the church structures, schools and congregations have led to concrete actions to address early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation.”

ACT members have been involved in a variety of events at CSW over the past two weeks, focusing on the role of faith leaders in ending harmful practices, in the role of gender in achieving the vision of the Sustainable Development Goals to Leave No One Behind, engaging youth in gender justice and more.

The full text of the oral statement is here, and you can watch it here (beginning at 8:00):

At the inaugural General Assembly of the ACT Alliance in Arusha, Tanzania in 2010, there was widespread consensus amongst members that climate change was threatening the lives and livelihoods of the communities that they serve. Since that first General Assembly, ACT Alliance members and forums across the world have prioritized climate change in their advocacy work.

Today, ACT Alliance continues to advocate for climate justice, particularly in support for community resilience in developing countries, low greenhouse gas emission development, the respective means of implementation and for the full implementation of the Paris Agreement, guided by the principles of equity, human rights and gender justice.

Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, ACT Alliance has engaged in climate advocacy and capacity building initiatives through a series of regional workshops focused on enabling the national level implementation of the main instruments of the Paris Agreement, namely, the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and the mid-century long-term low greenhouse gas emissions development strategies or Long-term Strategies (LTS).

ACT Alliance is pleased to share our newest Toolkit for national level advocacy, Towards the Ambitious Implementation of the Paris Agreement. This Toolkit will support the climate change advocacy of ACT members, forums and partners at the national and regional level. It will help faith-based organisations to effectively advocate for key climate goals including keeping global temperature rise to 1.5°C and to bring to life the Alliance’s common vision of shaping our future in ways that take up the call for a strong moral and religious imperative in overcoming the climate crisis.

The Toolkit is composed of three modules, one for each of the three instruments mandated by the Paris Agreement; namely the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and the mid-century long-term low greenhouse gas emissions development strategies or Long-term Strategies (LTS). Each module follows the same structure, guiding FBOs in a step-by-step process to prepare their national level advocacy plans. The Toolkit incorporates key messages, questions and answers, checklists and lessons learned, as well as diagrams and infographics as visual elements to facilitate the learning process. Best practise examples are used to further illustrate the content. The Toolkit also proposes various advocacy interventions for FBOs, which can be adjusted to suit their local context.

We welcome all of our members and forums to use this Toolkit for advocacy and capacity building and to facilitate internal discussions and reflections to ensure that their national contexts are integrated into our global climate justice work.

The Toolkit is available here in English and here in Spanish. 

_______

For any additional information on the Toolkit, please contact Joanna Patouris, Climate Change Communications Coordinator: joanna.patouris@actalliance.org

As I sit in CASA’s (Church’s Auxiliary for Social Action) Mumbai office to write this blog, nearly 50,000 farmers -women, men and some of their daughters as young as 1 year old have assembled in Mumbai, marching 180km in scorching heat to demand that the government pay heed to the escalating disastrous situation in rural India due to the agrarian crisis there. The 62nd Commission on Status of Women, which continues in New York this week, with its priority theme as “Challenges and Opportunities in achieving gender equality and empowerment of rural women and girls” is very apt and echoes similar sentiments to the farmers marching on Mumbai.

Let me also bring to you the report UN published on International Women’s Day (March 8 2018) highlighting the vulnerability of women, and how climate change impacts women more than men. 80% of people displaced by climate are women. As primary care givers and providers of food they have to collect fuel and water, even during droughts and floods, which makes them more vulnerable and having to work harder.

The ACT Alliance works at the grassroots with vulnerable groups affected by disasters, involved in sustainable development, and in advocacy.  ACT members are currently participating in the 62nd CSW, working to help increase the opportunities to convert the challenges of girls, women, and LGBTQ people to lead and take control in their own lives.

At COP23, the international climate conference held In 2017 in Bonn, the Gender Action Plan was approved, acknowledging that women are disproportionately affected by climate change. The plan highlights the need for capacity building, participation in decision making and leadership positions in climate meetings, along with many other provisions.

The needs of women and girls in humanitarian situations are enormous.  Lake Chad in central Africa has lost 90% of its water, leaving nomadic indigenous groups at risk. In Haiti, women who were displaced by flooding’s sanitary requirements received little attention. More women get killed in catastrophic situations than men for many reasons including their attire—women wearing saree during the 2004 tsunami were slowed down by their clothes. Women with more socio-economic power are less affected by such situations. For the best gender sensitive responses we need more women in the negotiating bodies of humanitarian organizations.
Let’s provide opportunity and make the rural women lead their life as well as the world to a green, just and peaceful existence.

Last word: Can you imagine the thoughtfulness of the farmers as they walked their last leg of the March into Mumbai in the middle of the night so they didn’t inconvenience the Mumbai school children who were taking their final Board exam on 12th March.

How thoughtful are we to other’s needs? This is a first step in making a green just and peaceful world.

_______________

Dr Joycia Thorat, Co-chair of Advisory Group on Advocacy, ACT Alliance and Project Officer & policy desk in charge, Church’s  Auxiliary for Social Action (CASA), India

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is an opportunity highlight some of the important work in the UN Peasants Declaration, which will have significant impact on the rights and lives of rural women and girls.  This Declaration will also impact the upcoming Conference of Parties (COP24), the international climate change conference taking place in Krakow, Poland this December.  Land use and seed diversity are key to develop solutions for responding to climate-induced impact. Land and seed rights are a cornerstone of rural women’s and peasants’ rights.

 “We are peasant women.  We are many. We are the Guardians of fertile land and reproductive seeds. We are ‘farmacologists’. We protect medicinal plants and generate local knowledge.”

Several ACT members are also founding members of the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition, which for ten years has gathered stories and raised the voices of peasants, fisherfolk, pastoralists, landless people, consumers, urban people living in poverty, agricultural and food workers, women, youth, and indigenous peoples –  that recognize the need to act jointly for the realization of the right to adequate food and nutrition.  The Network’s voice has helped to shape the new draft of the UN Peasant Declaration.

The revised draft UN Peasants Declaration of 12 February 2018 recognises that access to land, water, seeds and other natural resources is increasingly at risk for rural people.  The Declaration calls for support to agricultural practices of indigenous people and rural communities that are in harmony with nature, with Mother Earth . These practices include respecting the biological and natural ability of ecosystems to adapt and regenerate through natural processes and cycles.

The Declaration stresses that peasant and other rural women play a significant role in their economies, including through their work in the non-monetized sectors of the economy, but are often denied tenure and ownership of land and productive resources.  To redress this injustice, their right to access courts, to seek immediate redress, and to be protected from violence, abuse and exploitation must be respected, fulfilled, and promoted.

Knowledge generated by peasant women provides insights into the complex matrix of nature. Microbiological research is now able to visualise the extent to which we are what we eat; discovering that soils are an integrated system that nourishes communities and keep them healthy. Traditional peasant women have known of the health benefits of phytonutrients and protective bacteria for a long time; they are ‘farmacologists’, a term coined by Daphne Miller from University of California, San Francisco.

For the first time, a UN Declaration provides a comprehensive list all of rural women’s and girls’ rights and the importance of their contribution to life for all in times of climate change.  These include:

• The Right to seeds (Article 19), which calls for the protection of women’s traditional knowledge relevant to plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. It affirms the right to save, use, exchange and sell their farm-saved seed or propagating materials. It calls for the respect of women’s rights to rely on their own seeds or on other locally available seeds of their choice, and to decide on the crops and species that they wish to grow. And it calls for research into ‘orphan crops’.
• The Right to biological diversity (Article 20), which establishes the right of women peasants and rural communities to use and develop biological diversity and associated knowledge; and the right to traditional agrarian and pastoral and agroecological systems upon which their subsistence and the renewal of biodiversity depends, and the rights to the preservation of the ecosystems in which those processes take place.
• The Right to physical and mental health (Article 23), which includes the right of women peasants to use and protect their traditional medicines and to maintain their health practices, including access to and conservation of their plants, animals and minerals for medical use.

It is important to recognize this Declaration and the legitimacy of peasant women and girls as rights holders around the world as the Commission on the Status of Women continues to discuss the empowerment of rural women and girls. For we know since the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action that access to and control of productive and reproductive resources is a precondition for enhancing gender equality. It will also have a positive effect on preventing violence against women and girls and be key to their wellbeing and the full realisation of human rights.

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Karin Ulmer is Senior Policy Officer with ACT Alliance EU (previously APRODEV), specialising in EU trade policies and global food security. The current focus is on human rights and trade, land and seed issues, agricultural policy and research. Based in Brussels. Educational background in cognitive, social and human science. German nationality.”

Related to building trust and ACT governance, including strategic collaboration as part of the wider ecumenical movement and learning with other forums

Uganda Forum has excelled as one of the most exemplary and progressive forums in Africa and globally. These are some of the good practices we have undertaken:

We have managed to recruit a forum joint staff whose title is the Advocacy Officer. This position is jointly financed by forum members who pool resources together to meet the human resource needs of the staff including technical advocacy work. The joint staff has ably coordinated and implemented advocacy initiatives of the forum.

Related to humanitarian, development and advocacy work of ACT Alliance

The Forum has been able to develop an advocacy strategy with 4 thematic areas and out it, developed project proposals, and we successfully won an external grant amount to 2,445,208 DKK approx 400,000USD for a 3-year climate change advocacy project. Through this project, we have been able to lobby the government of Uganda to prioritize and scale climate change finance through budgetary allocations and access to international funds. This was mainly implemented by religious leaders, a constituency that we felt had the moral call to duty as stewards of mother earth.

We went ahead to include Muslim and Catholic faith leaders in the project in order to uphold the values of inclusivity, tolerance and diversity in our approach to serve humanity. The Forum also developed and financed its own 2-year project on Good governance and active citizen participation in electoral democracy. The project aimed at enhancing active and peaceful citizen participation in electoral democratic processes. This strengthened civic responsibility among Ugandan citizens anchoring majorly on religious leaders, church structures and institutions. This was the first advocacy project that the forum piloted in an effort to actually jointly finance and to work together.

ACT Appeals: The Forum has continued to jointly implement ACT Appeal in response to the refugee crisis in South and Northwest Uganda) for Congolese and South Sudan influx. As the biggest host of refugees in Africa with over 1.5Milion refugees, many ACT Alliance members are involved in humanitarian work to ensure the immediate needs of all refugees are met. The ACT Appeals are jointly developed as a forum, some members contribute finances and implemented by both international and national members of the forum in order to build their capacities Exchange learning and forum collaborations: Uganda Forum has also initiated regional visits by sending faith leaders and staff of ACT members to visit other Forums in Africa, for example, Malawi and Kenya Forums were visited in previous years. We equally hosted other Forums in Africa including forums from Kenya, Tanzania, and South Sudan who have come to learn from our best practices. As a leading forum, we guided other forums with our approaches and supported them to grow.

The forum has continued to present itself as one of the most exceptional forum globally. The leadership of the forum is rotationally every 6 months and led by a different member. Members met every month on the last Thursdays and this is on everyone’s calendar permanently, this meeting is graced by only heads and senior management staff with decision-making powers.

ACT Forum Uganda pictures

Related to building trust and ACT governance, including strategic collaboration as part of the wider ecumenical movement and learning with other forums

The interested WCC members in the country are being assisted in its application to become a member of ACT whenever possible.

Active engagement in regional and global initiatives, with a clear division of roles and how to support: World Humanitarian Summit, Ecumenical Strategic Forum on Ecumenical Diakonia, CoPs – Climate Change and CBPS; Child Safeguarding Training, Roll out of the humanitarian mechanism. The ACT Forum also nominates their representatives to different regional and global meetings and activities. All out-of-the-country activities are properly echoed with other Forum members by the nominated representative through various means such as reporting & workshop, while other concerns were addressed in regular Forum meetings.

Invited both regional representatives to the Philippines to establish relationships and strengthen coordination with the regional office (2016), where the regional representatives presented the updates regarding the restructuring of the ACT Alliance, and other regional focus. The Forum convenor attended the Asia-Pacific Forum meeting (2017), and ACT Forum members contributed to the global sharing on Ecumenical Diakonia and how it is concretized in the Philippines (2017). Over all, there is a culture of supporting each other; complementing rather than competing; openness and transparency; appreciating what each one brings to the table.

ACT Forum piloted a Core Humanitarian Standards Training-Workshop (2016) opened to WCC members and other local faith-based humanitarian groups to influence quality and accountability in the FBOs’ humanitarian work. The ACT Forum has a pool of trainers who facilitated the 2-day event. Aside from this joint venture, the Forum shares each capacity building activities with other ACT Forum members such as ACT Security Training, CBPS, CHS & SPHERE Standards, Complaints Response Mechanism, and others. (Capacity development)

Understanding the faith-based dimension of humanitarian work in the country from the keynote speeches of the Protestants (NCCP) and Catholics (Catholic Bishop’s Conference in the Philippines) shared during our pre- and post-WHS for a together with WCC members, and other FBOs in the country. In all its undertaking, the Forum brings the spirit of putting people at the center as the heart of its humanitarian work.

Practise/ Policy (innovative, replicable): Building trust by purposively deepening understanding of Faith-based Emergency Response and Ecumenical Diakonia amongst ACT and FBOs

Results:

• ACT recognized for initiating conversations and coordination amongst FBOs (Visibility)
  • Pre-WHS Conference (Putting People at the Center: Role of FBOs in Humanitarian Action)
  • Post-WHS Conference (Changing People’s Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need)
  • FBOs meeting with the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (The Philippine Government’s DRRM Council)
• Formation of Philippine FBO Forum (FBO PH) that brings together the 3 largest national Christian networks
  • Joint learning sessions that enhanced understanding of faith-based dimension of humanitarian work; partnership established at the national level together with other non-Christian religion
  • Coordination of FBO’s response in Marawi siege
  • Engagement of FBO PH with United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, push for more representatives of national networks in Humanitarian Country Team; reaching out to United Nations Development Program
• Contributes to ACT WHS commitment

Annexes:

About_Transforming faith into action

About_FBOs working together for Marawi

About_ACT Annual Mtg with FBOs

“A young, rural girl will most likely be caring for her siblings by the time she is four or five,” said Lopa Banerjee of UN Women. “She will be helping to get firewood and water.  She will end up in an early marriage, have children while she is young, with complications to the births.  She will have no choice over the number of children she has.  She will likely experience violence.  She will not have the option to find decent work.”

“These problems are magnified if she is a refugee, disabled, Indigenous, a widow, or of a different sexual or gender orientation.”

This presentation kicked off a lively event attended by over 300 people which examined the slogan of the Sustainable Development Goals to “Leave No One Behind” through a gender lens.  ACT Alliance was one of the hosts of the event, which was led by UN Women.  Leaving No One Behind for Planet 50/50 by 2030: every rural woman and girl everywhere shared the voices of women and girls, as well as LGBTQI people as they discussed their experience of being left behind due to disability, age, location, marital status, gender expression, or more.

Gladys Nairuba, from ACT member DanChurchAid’s Uganda office, spoke during the event about the role of faith-based organisations in gender justice.  “ACT Alliance across the world is working for the rights of women…  It is injustice that is keeping women behind.  Faith actors can’t be quiet.  As ACT Alliance, all the members are boldly speaking out against injustice.”

“Faith leaders are saying we should not put out our voice because it is convenient,” she continued. “We should speak irrespective of who is affected. We do not have a choice.  We have to speak out.  Injustice in any place is injustice everywhere.”

In many countries around the world, religions have significant power.  In Uganda, 95% of the population is affiliated with religion.  Faith groups have a powerful role as conveners in their context, bringing people together to talk about issues related to gender.  “We are talking about change.  We are talking about valuing women.  That is where it starts from.  People are in churches and mosques.  If we put messages out where people are, then we will not miss the mark,” Nairuba concluded.

After hearing from a wide variety of voices from around the world, participants discussed what policy standards could be created to ensure that the SDG achievement “Leave no one behind” can be realized for women and girls around the world, especially those living in rural contexts.  Ideas ranged from the collection of disaggregated data to ensuring the participation of rural women in government and other structures to the importance of male involvement, accountability and responsibility in gender justice.  These ideas will be shared by UN Women for more input after CSW.

Dr. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women said, “The impact of gender discrimination starts from when someone is conceived and they are a girl…  You are asking for our policy to be gender aware and to address all of these intersecting life stages that women and girls go through.”  She spoke of gender-based violence, economic disadvantage facing women, early marriage, and more challenges facing women and girls, and the need to address these challenges.

Gladys Nairuba reflected after the event that “The Leave No One Behind event and active participation of faith actors is in a way reaffirming the critical role of faith in addressing gender targeted injustice. And the platform provided for faith actors to share what we do, own up and challenge ourselves to fast track the change. What I kept hearing is the social constructs and how they perpetuate gender violations. And some of these are built by culture and faith which are as diverse as the participants that were in the room.

“On the other side it’s knowing that the event was demonstrating that not even the faith actors should be left behind.”

Related to building trust and ACT governance, including strategic collaboration as part of the wider ecumenical movement and learning with other forums

Through the prayer vigil, the APF members have helped to build awareness about the issues plaguing Palestinian society in Gaza and the West Bank. By identifying key humanitarian issues and focusing on one of them each month as part of the prayer vigil organized by the APF, the APF has succeeded in reaching people who otherwise would have little knowledge of or interest in the impact of the Israeli occupation and the humanitarian activities of churches and church-related organizations.

The prayer vigil connects the faith-based character of the APF to its commitment to international law and its efforts to promote and protect human rights. The Israeli occupation has existed and its oppressive tactics have grown in severity over many decades. In response, the APF needs to find ways to keep Palestinian rights in the forefront of international opinion, even when the media turns to other crises and donors grow fatigued due in large part to the length and relentlessness of the Israeli occupation and the lack of a viable peace process.

The prayer vigil communicates the hope of the APF members as people of faith, while at the same time communicating the depth and urgency of the needs of the Palestinian people. It is also important for the APF’s external visibility, but also in relation to its credibility with the local churches and communities with which it is engaged. The prayer vigil has actively engaged each of the APF members and it has often prompted important debates within the APF about the needs and priorities of the APF.

ACT Forum Annual Report 2016

Related to humanitarian, development and advocacy work of ACT Alliance

The ACT Nepal Forum has been a testimony to the strength of the collective. Starting from the immediate aftermath of the devastating Nepal earthquake, the forum galvanized into a firm platform of coordination, commitment and collective sharing geared towards providing high quality relief, psychosocial support and care to the affected communities as well remain a constant proponent on accountability, inclusion and meaningful participation for the wider humanitarian community.

ACT Nepal has assisted almost 2 million individuals (400,000 Households) covering progressively actions on Food Aid, Shelter (Temporary, Transitional & Permanent), Water Sanitation and Hygiene (Hygiene kits, Toilets, Water Supply Schemes) Psychosocial support (Care, Counselling), Education (Schools reconstruction), Livelihoods (Seeds, Agri equipment’s & Trainings), Inclusive Protection (Feedback & Accountability) and Resilience. ACT Alliance is considered second to UN in terms of strength, resource leveraging, visibility, geographical coverage and communications.

A series of interesting achievements reaffirm the faith of coming together and working together:

1. Common ACT Base: a place to exchange ideas, have food and work
2. Sharing un-earmarked funds: a very transparent, well documented and inclusive process of allocating funds to neglected sectors
3. ‘One’ sitrep reporting: covering all response actions of ACT appeal as well as non-ACT appeal funded actions displaying a larger canvas of ACT operations in country,
4. ACT model village: a shining example of unifying activities and working as a collective
5. Continual engagement: every day morning Forum meetings (first 3 months) followed by monthly meetings helping maintain continuity in thoughts and actions.
6. Welcoming new members: CA, DKH, Amity Foundation added to with open arms
7. ACT Representation: members focused on respective clusters to enhance reach & implement responses simultaneously
8. Common Appeal: NPL 151, 161 &171
9. Terrai flood responses: common assessment and appeal action for response
10. Joint Monitoring Visits: successful conduct of the JMV and appeal evaluation1
11. Staff sharing: a common security focal for 9 ACT Agencies
12. High profile visits: ACT general secretary and Dutch minister
13. Digital Data Gathering: mobile based apps AKVO (ICCO), MAGPI (DCA), KoBo (CAID)
14. Preparedness: updated EPRP, Common Contingency Stocks – assessment formats (JRNA)
15. Accountability: CHS Audit, ACT certification & Nepali translation with trainings
16. Learning Event & local capacity building: 24 trainings for mutual learning sharing
17. Website: a unified information platform made for ACT Nepal
18. Inter Faith Dialogues: exploratory Works on Disaster Response planning
19. Policy Advocacy: speedy reconstruction clearances and NGO guidelines

The ACT Nepal Forum has been a safe and open space for sharing, learning and debating on key issues of country and member’s operations. The actions are continually characterized by a common visibility approach, common messaging on key response actions and collective agreements of focus areas and complementarity in reach amongst ACT members. These actions have worked very well with all of us able to focus on our core strengths and keep the ACT flag flying high and making others take note of the collective.

Documents:

Annex 1- Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan

Annex 2- Joint Monitoring Visit

Annex 3- General Secretary Visit

Annex 4 – Lessons Learn-ACT response to gorkha EQ

Annex 5- Media Coverage- ACT response

Annex 6 -ACT_FINAL EVALUATION NPL151

Annex 7-Final Narrative Report NPL 151

Annex 8- Capacity Building Program

Annex 9- Capacity building -training reports

Annex 10- Case Stories- ACT response

Annex 11 – Interim report iii NPL 161