Today, we understand that the impact of COVID-19 is long-term and will continue to affect vulnerable communities. Pandemics are here to stay, and there is an increasing likelihood that we will experience more pandemics in our lifetime. Yet, while for the world, the pandemic was a time of fear, hopelessness and uncertainty, for vulnerable people, the experience of these feelings is a constant. They live through shocks and disasters daily.

Community Action Collab (CAC) is a dynamic humanitarian emergency platform that builds the resilience of Vulnerable People and their institutions, in their everyday emergencies, and is ready for future humanitarian crises (climate & health). The platform orchestrates and influences actions and decisions of 360 partners, government and other alliances, enabling them to solve issues affecting 10 million vulnerable people and ensuring they access critical livelihood, health, social protection and climate impact solutions.

The impact of humanitarian crises like COVID19 is far-reaching and has multidimensional effects. A pandemic like this not only affects health but also livelihoods, and influences various other basic life processes such as education, and the effects can be felt long-term.

No single organization can combat these effects alone. It needs resilient organizations working with long-term multidimensional approaches, with a special focus on vulnerable communities.

We need to act collectively and we need to act now. Hence, CAC synergizes, augments, and accelerates the impact of its partners to build effective, efficient, and resilient institutions and eventually dynamic humanitarian response ecosystems.

Our Approach

The COVID-19 pandemic has enabled the Catalyst Group to build a strong and dynamic pan-India multidisciplinary network with a variety of expertise. This presents the potential to build the resilience of the vulnerable and their institutions in their everyday emergencies and to be ready for future humanitarian crises (climate & health). This has led to the #COVIDActionCollab transitioning to Community Action Collab, a ‘spring to action’ ready humanitarian emergency platform.

Our approach is born of the learning from #COVIDActionCollab is focused on orchestrating the responses of partners, solving difficult problems to find scalable solutions and influencing practice, policy and investments.

We deploy a three-pronged approach to support and enable vulnerable communities to survive and thrive amidst a crisis.

Orchestrate

Functional governance systems causing dynamic network effects, with nodes to actively address the needs of the vulnerable and enable human capital for emergency response.

Influence

Significant policy and practice changes. Amplify components/issues through global collaboration.

Solve

Scalable solutions, response time and district-level integrated action.
The key elements we’re focusing on to operationalise this are:

Outcomes

Enable at least 10 million vulnerable people to experience resilience in their lives and livelihoods.

Enable at least 100 vulnerable people-focused organisations to become resilient to future humanitarian tragedies.

Create a ‘spring to action’ ready resourced platform available to respond to emergencies present in key vulnerable districts.

Focus and Scale

We place vulnerable people at the centre of the initiative. Its strategies and approach are geared towards attaining scale. Its action orientation is etched within what it will seek to do (orchestrate, solve and influence) and how (partner action platform, district-level initiatives and emergency response systems).

Our Unique Approach

As an orchestrator, we will support the development of nodes of geographical, domain and vulnerable population profiles. Each node would be a cluster of partners, driven by an anchor partner. The node would identify and implement an agenda with respect to the resilience of vulnerable populations in their geographies, with respect to a domain or a vulnerability profile. Through the orchestration, the entire system of nodes will be supported to enable a network effect as a force multiplier. A technology backbone will enable optimal network engagements.

Decentralisation and Localisation

An integrated district approach for resilience building and disaster preparation will be undertaken for districts selected based on vulnerability assessment and partner availability. This approach would include SDG planning at the district level, scaleable models and initiatives, as well as response plans with the government for disaster management. Localisation will also give a fillip to resilience, which will get comprehensively addressed through building individual as well as collective agency.

Management Architecture

The backbone of the Community Action Collab is a Secretariat that will help in developing the collaborative platform, maintaining partner nodes, facilitating an impact canvas for problem-solving, designing resilience-building initiatives at the district level and performing other enabler functions for the collaborative like technology, communications, monitoring and evaluation, policy advocacy and governance.