Start Fund among first responders in Sierra Leone mudslides

ABIDJAN — Within just two days of requesting help to respond to devastating mudslides in Sierra Leone last month, relief organizations secured 355,262 pounds ($472,685) in funding from a unique pooled fund, the Start Fund. ActionAid, Oxfam, Save the Children, International Rescue Committee, and Plan International alerted the fund of the dire need for rapid financial assistance after Aug. 14 mudslides flattened the homes of thousands and left hundreds missing. The Start Fund allocation became active Aug. 18, making it among the first financial mechanisms to support victims. The Start Fund is hoping to make this rapid turnover the norm in emergency response funding. This multi-donor pooled fund is managed exclusively by a network of more than 40 NGOs. It provides small-scale grants to emergencies faster than most financial mechanisms in the humanitarian space — within 72 hours of notification from local organizations following an emergency or disaster. Depending on the emergency, funds typically support nutrition, protection, shelter, or education. “We want to address the urgent need to bridge the humanitarian funding gap and further try to mitigate the deterioration of the situation,” Alessandra Gilotta, operations manager of Start Fund, told Devex. Emergency funding works this way: Once a proposal is made and funding is requested, a group of humanitarian experts within the country of emergency decides whether the proposed intervention fits the situation. After the committee selects projects, agencies have 48 hours to come back with a detailed proposal and operational budget, which will then be re-evaluated by the selection committee before funding is released. The entire process takes no more than three days before money is released. In the Sierra Leone case, stagnant water following the mudslides, and the possibility of future downpours during this year’s rainy season, heightened fears around poor sanitation and waterborne illnesses such as malaria, typhoid, and cholera. Recovery efforts began the same day as the mudslides, and delegations from neighboring countries descended on Freetown within the week of the disaster with financial contributions, followed by the U.K. government’s 5 million pound package. The International Organization for Migration also released $150,000 in emergency funds during the week following the disaster. Most immediate support came in the form of food rations, installed toilets, and shelter kits. Start Fund implementing partners ActionAid, CAFOD, Care International, Christian Aid, Handicap International, and TearFund used their funding on programming that included cash distributions, support for urban mapping and rebuilding efforts, and incentives for volunteers sharing door-to-door sanitation and hygiene messages. “The timing between when the funding is released is quite fast, and that is the uniqueness of it,” CAFOD’s Sierra Leone country representative Kayode Akintola said. “It allows us as organizations, and also as communities affected by disasters, to get support quickly as needed rather than the process it takes for longer term funding mechanisms.” CAFOD focused its efforts on clean water distribution and increased WASH messaging. The group also worked on decontaminating homes and preparing communities to depart from temporary shelters and return home. TearFund aided 400 of the most vulnerable households with cash distributions, according to TearFund’s Sierra Leone country representative Gaston Slanwa. The group targeted five communities and worked with local religious leaders to register affected families and avoid insecurities of unaffected persons taking advantage of aid by misrepresenting their need. “If other funding agencies can learn from Start Fund, that will be a big lesson,” Slanwa said. “Countries who are prone to natural disasters must wait until conditions are terrible and have to go through a long process with other agencies, so the money usually comes when many people have died or affected communities have suffered severely,” he argued. Members of the Start Fund network say organizations providing emergency response interventions following a disaster can learn from this unique fast-fund model. “We need to look at creating other types of rapid response funding in a way that we can always respond to emergencies more promptly as opposed to following the traditional way of accessing funding,” Akintola urged. Read more international development news online, and subscribe to The Development Newswire to receive the latest from the world’s leading donors and decision-makers — emailed to you free every business day.