Pathways Home launch

 By Sue Webb and Bill Flinn

Download Pathways Home here

For the first time, guidance for humanitarian actors aiming to support the process of self-recovery after disasters has been published. A new publication from the Global Shelter Cluster articulates the need for a change in mindset in humanitarian responses to disasters linked to natural hazards and to other crises that result in loss of homes.

Pathways Home: Guidance for Supporting Shelter Self-recovery (Global Shelter Cluster, 2022. Pathways Home: Guidance for supporting shelter self-recovery. Geneva: Global Shelter Cluster) has been the work of many hands. The collaboration between many partners - notably CARE International UK, the Global Shelter Cluster, the Centre for Emergency and Development Practice (CENDEP, Oxford Brookes University), CRAterre and the German Red Cross - has been long and fruitful. However, we are delighted that it has now emerged and feel sure that it will be a useful guide on supporting self-recovery for practitioner, policy-maker, donor and academic.

What is self-recovery?

Twenty percent of the world’s population live in inadequate housing. Many of these homes are located in areas of repeated hazard and extreme vulnerability. It should, therefore, be no surprise that a major hazard event  – an earthquake, cyclone, flood – may  result in the destruction of tens of thousands of houses. In any one event –  the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal, or Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013 are notable examples – as many as half a million homes can be destroyed or severely damaged. Most of the thousands of houses destroyed in the recent earthquake in Afghanistan were not built to withstand seismic shocks and people who have lost their homes will need external support to rebuild. 

Aid agencies are not mass housing providers. They have neither the financial means nor the skill-set. Indeed, on average they only meet between 10 and 20 percent of the shelter needs after a disaster, meaning that up to 90% of households rebuild their homes using their own resources, relying on savings, loans, family, community and diaspora. They self-recover.

Conventional emergency shelter provision has done little to support this majority portion of crisis-affected populations. They inevitably initiate a process of recovery from day one, long before humanitarian organisations have arrived, coordinated, made a strategy and found the funds. It is now well accepted within the humanitarian shelter sector that finding ways of supporting families and communities on their self-recovery pathways, is effective, appropriate, timely and aligns with many current concerns being discussed in the humanitarian sector,  such as localisation and the humanitarian/development nexus. 

Why the need for Pathways Home?

Although self-recovery is now firmly established in the shelter vocabulary, there has, to date, been no guidance on how best to accompany a community on their self-recovery journey. This new  publication – Pathways Home – fills this gap. It provides an introduction to the principles and rationale of self-recovery – Part A; and then Part B provides practical guidance for the practitioner, implementing agency and donor. 

The Guidance is accessible, practical and readable. It is illustrated throughout with 75 short case studies, such as the example below of the chainsaw programme in Vanuatu, which illustrates how humanitarian actors can help to create an ‘enabling environment’ for self-recovery through non-conventional ‘shelter’ programming.

Case study 6.18 Providing alternatives to devastated natural construction materials, Vanuatu, 2020

Tropical Cyclone Harold barrelled down on Vanuatu in April 2020, destroying a large number of houses and causing extensive damage to trees and other vegetation that served as sources of building materials, such as bamboo and sago palm leaves (natangora) used for the structure of houses, walls and roofs. It would be seven years before the island’s plants would rejuvenate and provide enough harvest for building materials in the amounts needed. 

Some people managed to salvage natangora from their damaged houses, and where possible from fallen trees, but this needed to be done almost immediately following the cyclone before the leaves rotted.

An INGO supporting shelter self-recovery agreed with the community, through the local chiefs, to provide shelter repair and rebuilding equipment, including chainsaws. Community members were trained as chainsaw operators, which allowed them to use and process fallen trees for shelter construction. The community agreed to be responsible for sourcing building materials, in addition to  the processed timber they received through the chainsaw operators, and agreed to pay for additional fuel as well as pay fees and provide meals to the chainsaw operators. Chainsaw operators on their part committed to prioritising support to vulnerable people, such as the elderly, widows and women-headed households.

Adapted from: CARE, September 2021. Research Report: Shelter Self-Recovery in Vanuatu.

Video: CARE Vanuatu’s South Pentecost Shelter Recovery Project.

What are the main messages from Pathways Home?

The Guidance identifies five simple principles: people have agency and are leaders of their own recovery; going beyond participation to an understanding of closer accompaniment; support building back better, with a clear understanding of what is meant by “better”; going from good enough to as good as possible; and do no harm. 

These principles are built upon the three main “building blocks” of supporting self-recovery of a broad and holistic context analysis, a process of facilitation and accompaniment and a strong community engagement. For these building blocks to adhere into a successful programmatic process they must be connected by the flexible “mortar” of adaptive programming.

Supporting families and communities on a self-recovery pathway has many benefits; and not a few challenges. In an environment of increasing need and limited resources, it allows implementing agencies to reach significant scale in an appropriate and timely manner that respects people’s agency, choice and priorities. Through a process of training and messaging, important housing-related issues such as safety, health, well-being and protection can be addressed and improved. Implementing agencies can complement the gaps in capacity through training and also support households with limited means through cash and material assistance. 

Next steps

The CARE UK Emergency Shelter Team and the Centre for Emergency and Development Practice at Oxford Brookes University have been leading partners in a multi-disciplinary, multi-agency collaboration over the past six years. The team has been fortunate in being awarded three successive Global Challenges Research Fund awards. Pathways Home is the latest in a line of publications, some of which are listed at the end of this blog. The partnerships built up over the past years ensures that the work is sustained and contributes to impact on practice within the humanitarian shelter sector. An important element of the work has been the development of understanding of the wide beneficial impact of good post-crisis shelter programming: adequate housing is much more than safer housing; it is also healthier, conducive to good mental health and well-being, a secure home and a base for livelihoods. Sue Webb and Charles Parrack at CENDEP are funded by UKRI’s Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) through Oxford Brookes to track the progress and impact of this emerging Guidance for supporting shelter self-recovery.

Other publications and further reading on self-recovery:

Article The Case for Self-Recovery (Forced Migration Review 2017) 

Article  Defining ‘Better’ Better (Journal of Humanitarian Affairs 2020)

Working paper Self-Recovery from disasters: An interdisciplinary perspective (ODI 2017)

Report  Mindful Sheltering (CARE International UK and CENDEP 2021)

Report Towards Healthier Homes in Humanitarian Settings (CENDEP and CARE International UK 2020)

Book chapter on relocation in Tacloban, Philippines (Chapter 12) in Rethinking Urban Risk and Resettlement in the Global South, edited by Cassidy Johnson, Garima Jain, and Allan Lavell (UCL Press, 2021)

See self-recovery website for further reading.