Realities of resilience in practice: lessons learnt through a pilot EU Aid Volunteer Initiative

Abstract

AbstractHumanitarian and development practitioners and donors increasingly regard resilience as a central objective and a fundamental facet of the development path of communities and countries. Between 2012 and 2013, a consortium of European non-governmental organisations set out to strengthen local capacities for enhancing resilience in eight disaster-prone countries: a European Union Aid Volunteers Pilot project lead by the Inter-Church Organisation for Development Cooperation (ICCO). Since resilience is increasingly becoming a central focus of aid organisations, the article aims to share lessons that were learnt through this project. The first lesson learnt is that multiple interpretations of resilience are being used. This causes confusion amongst practitioners and can result in resilience becoming an empty concept. The second lesson relates to the potential that ‘resilience approaches’ have to bridge different working fields, where segregated policy and funding architecture and a lack of unified tool...