National Resilience Programme (NRP) has been working to sustain the resilience of human and economic development in Bangladesh through inclusive, gender-responsive disaster management and risk informed development approach. In this context The Government of Bangladesh as well as the development partners ha emphasized continuing NRP’s activities uninterruptedly. So, for that NRP-PCMT with the assistance of three UN Agencies (UNDP, UNWomen & UNOPS) have started developing the joint programme document from the early of this year. On 30th November, 2022 NRP-PCMT arranged a planning workshop at Hotel Intercontinental about to discuss the Proposed Governance Structure and Coordination Mechanism for NRP (II) in a light of NRP programme Evaluation Report. This programme chaired by Mr. Md. Kamrul Hasan, ndc, Secretary of Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief and he expresses the well wishes for the 2nd phage of NRP. In this workshop the participants delivered their opinion according to the findings from the Programme Evaluation Report of NRP. After presenting the findings of evaluation the audiences provided their opinion and they identified the challenges and way forwarding issues. They praised about the active participation of the respected ministries and GoB counterpart in the Programme. Also, several tools and new concepts adaptation that already have developed by the sub-project parts also been appreciated. But all the participants agreed on the issue of the coordination among the UN agencies and its necessity. Communicating and sharing the knowledge among the project personnel and for wider population needed to be improved. Challenges and the utmost way forwarding in the programme evaluation have been discussed for better implementation. Some areas also identified for improvement and these are;
- Focuses on the overall strategic goal and functioning of the NRP and not on sub-projects
- Applies equally to all sub-projects
- Better coordination required among the implementing agencies – Sub-project approach will require strong central coordination
- Strong management of central monitoring and evaluation of projects – both at planning and execution leads to weak linkage of sub-programme activities to NRP’s overall goals
- Need to establish specific focus on finance – Extremely important to build long-term resilience
- Innovation on information on change pathways – i.e., NRP needs to have a narrower focus for better implementation. Assumptions on change in TOC needs to be reconsidered
- Higher focus required on strategic big-ticket activities Lack of any central oversight and monitoring mechanism on financial resources
- Despite being classified as GEN2 programme there is no gender budgeting or gender expenditure monitoring
- Knowledge Management system is almost absent other than recently published newsletters which are more for popularisation rather than internal and external learning
- Value-for-money considerations needs to be ingrained in intervention selections
- Needed mixed response towards sustainability planning (i.e. assuming that NRP phase II does not come) rather than small, transactional activities
- Silo approach towards gender mainstreaming does not work. This is not UN Women responsibility but of all IEs. Gender lens needs to be incorporated in all project activities.
- Isolated training programmes is not good value for money. Link the training programmes with desired policy/ system changes and set-up system for monitoring training effectiveness
- Management of financial resources and need for greater clarity of thoughts, assumptions and risks at the initial stages. Pushing too much expenditure to the final year of the programme is fraught with risks of ineffective resource allocation.
The focal personnel from respected ministries and UN-Part finally discussed the key issues for upgradaton and the governing structure. It was a half day long workshop and the programme chair Mr. Md. Kamrul Hasan, ndc, Secretary of Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief praised about NRP’s overall activities and finally he well wished about the new phase of NRP.
Some Moments of the Workshop
