Institutionalizing Resilience Webinar

The Institutionalizing Resilience Webinar was marked with energized presentations, an engaged audience and an educational question & answer session. The webinar held on July 21st 2020 was
hosted by the Kenya4Resilience (K4R) Community of Practice (CoP). Over 80 participants from
Kenya, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Uganda, South Sudan, and Sweden attended via
ClickWebinar platform and the Facebook Live Stream. This is part of K4R’s quarterly webinars
organized to build the capacity of our member organizations towards building resilient
communities.

Bijay Kumar, the executive Director of GNDR, and Dr Pios Ncube, United Nations Senior Policy Advisor were the webinar speakers and Chelimo Njoroge, K4R Coordinator, moderated the webinar. Both speakers provided great insight on how to make resilience a part and parcel of work.

Gibson Mwaita, a training and regional manager at I Choose Life -Africa(ICL-A), shares “the
webinar would not have come at any better time than during this Covid-19 pandemic. Am
excited about tracking the progress and outcome of this.”

The conversation was timely given the international and local effects of several hazards including the COVID-19 pandemic. The speakers highlighted the increasing severity and occurrence of risks plus pointed out the need to make incorporate a resilience lens in everything and anything we do.

Key Lessons from about Institutionalizing Resilience are summarized by the 3 Cs.
1. Context Specific
There is no one size-fits all approach to developing a resilience strategy. It is important to
examine needs of communities to ensure a relevant and appropriate response is developed.
Tomi KK from Full Life Empowerment Programme(FLEP) Nigeria adds, “an in-depth
understanding of our unique bumps and circumstances goes a long way in strengthening us to
bounce back on our feet every time. Furthermore, developing our Power dynamics in FLEP will
be a huge effort in institutionalizing Resilience within.”

2. Community Centered

If resilience could wear a face, it would belong to individuals leading resilience-based programs in
communities. Communities are the back-bone of global resilience change initiatives and therefore
need to be involved in resilience activities. Local CSO involved in resilience, therefore have a
unique opportunity of ensuring resilience is a-part of the conversation with communities.

3. Champion Localization

Though the pandemics are many at times global, the risk is usually local – and hence as much as
resilience conversations are held at the global level, it must be championed at the local level. Risk
from shocks and stressors affects spheres at global and local level. The change and actions to
mitigate these effects though occurs at local level. The effects of COVID-19, for example, affected
individuals locally and internationally. Trends, characteristics and precautions of the virus were
shared internationally but adopted locally by countries and communities. This model ensured a
context-specific and community centered approach. This model should be adopted for resilience.
Local communities need to create strategies and plans informed by international resilience actors.

As the K4R Secretariat, we would like to thank all those who attended this webinar. We also would
like to send a special thanks to our speakers who ably relayed the need to make resilience part
and parcel of anything and everything we do within the communities we serve. We look forward
to engaging in further conversations geared at building your capacity in resilience and DRR.

“When I learnt, I didn’t need to have big money to start my business, I started my cosmetics business immediately!”

“With my income, I pay my children’s school fees, health issues and my personal needs.”

The Sustainable Livelihoods Programme (SLP)

Job Openings

Global Impact of the War in Ukraine

Institutionalizing Resilience Webinar