Support Proposal Development ECHO, German Red Cross (Pakistan)

This consultancy mission served to support the preparatory work for the elaboration of an ECHO proposal under the ECHO HIP 2015.

The northwestern provinces of FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have been facing waves of displacements due to military operations along the border to Afghanistan for many years. As a result of the launch of the army operation Khyber-One in mid October 2014, a total number of 96.750 families (677.250 individuals), the majority of them being women and children, had to flee their homes around Bara Thesil in Khyber Agency. Most of these IDPs settle in and around the city of Peshawar and adjacent districts with host families.

Not only the IDPs, but also host families and entire communities are faced with the sudden challenge of having to provide goods and services for a substantial number of additional persons. Existing social services and infrastructure such as health, WASH, nutrition and psycho-social support are already poor and over-stretched and cannot cater for the increasing number of people. The same applies to local organisations and government authorities.

The proposal therefore aims to provide humanitarian support to IDPs and host communities in KP Province in form of basic health and nutrition services, improved access to safe drinking water, hygiene promotion and psycho-social support. Approximately 9.000 IDP families (63.000 individuals) and their host families in and around the three communities of Pishtahara, Naguman and Bakshu Pul in the district of Peshawar shall be benefitting from the action. Since women and children are particularly vulnerable in these volatile situations caused by displacement, they will receive special attention in this action’s activities.

Due to the recurrent situation of displacements in the area, the project is designed to build permanent and sustainable capacities within the IDP population and the host communities. Capacity building of PRCS staff and volunteers will contribute to the sustainability of the project.

Since it was not possible to travel to KP Province as a foreigner and travel for local staff was very restricted, the envisaged time frame of 4 weeks have not been enough to develop a full proposal. Instead, I facilitated a training for the consortium project team, (Danish Red Cross, German Red Cross and Pakistan Red Crescent Society) to prepare them as much as possible to collect the required information for the development of the proposal and to familiarize them with ECHO guidelines and quality criteria.