Report by Giulia Genna, Alexander Howarth, Yu Rim Kim, Nafisa Shamim Rudmila, and Lara Soliman
Article by Giulia Genna
Created from a collaboration between five LSE graduate students and Re-Alliance, the aim of this report is to understand regeneration, and highlight some beneficial characteristics when applied within the disaster relief field. The purpose of this report is to produce an evidence-based toolkit that can easily adapt to the flexibility of regenerative approaches.
To achieve such a goal, we decided to first analyse the regenerative movement as a whole, underpinning its most salient points. The results of our literature review revealed a lack of a shared language and terminology within the regenerative movement, which undoubtedly hinders the capacity of regeneration to become more well known in the disaster relief community. Secondly, we interviewed fifteen key informants coming from different academic and professional backgrounds, to better understand the nature of regeneration, the common targets and features of regenerative approaches, and the essential aspects of a successful disaster relief project. The findings from the interviews built the foundations for the MET, a monitoring and evaluation toolkit for regenerative approaches.
The MET is divided in three distinct, yet ever-developing, phases: planning, implementation, and review. In the planning phase, we highlight the importance of creating a shared regenerative language, promoting regenerative values, and understanding the challenges of regeneration. In the implementation phase, we focus on the different methods of data collection, highlighting SMS integrated databases and online web pages with backend databases as possible solutions, and we stress the importance of evidence of progress to advertise regeneration. In the final phase, the programme review, we emphasize the role of community involvement and accountability, funding and donors’ management, and knowledge sharing. Ultimately, the MET is presented as a set of questions which aims to facilitate practitioners in the process of implementation of regenerative practices. The goal of the toolkit is to give structure to regenerative programmes, in order to help professionals promote regeneration among other organisations and donors.
With the hope that our toolkit will be of help to aspiring regeneration practitioners, our wish is to see the MET further developed into a complete guide through additional research and interviews.
Once again, we want to stress that creating a shared language, data collection, and community
involvement, are crucial for the development of regeneration into a well-established approach to disaster relief.
You can find Genna et al.'s report below, including the MET in section 5.