How not feeling helpless helped communities in Malawi save 33% more value in crisis

How did they do it? With the generous support of DFIF, CARE worked with communities to create action plans, connect to information, and save money to deal with crisis.

In Malawi's devastating floods in 2014, the World Bank estimated $8.5 million in damages for families. But communities in CARE’s Enhancing Community Resilience Programme (ECRP) were able to save 33% more than their neighbors facing the same conditions.

What did we accomplish?

  • Families had 33% more value: Families in the ECRP program were able to save more assets from the floods and reduce the damage to their homes compared to people not in the program. This means they came out of the flood with more assets and fewer recovery costs.
  • People were better warned: ECRP communities were 53% more likely to have gotten early warning of the floods that non-participants. They also had access to more sources of information, and were more than twice as likely to use more than one source of information to prepare for emergencies.
  • More people took action: Families in ECRP were 78% more likely to take action to prepare for floods than those who weren’t in the program.
  • Communities are more confident in their ability to save lives: Twice as many ECRP families felt that action helps save lives. ALL of the ECRP communities feel that they can handle future shocks, and NONE of the non-ECRP communities felt ready to handle new shocks.

How did we get there?

  • Invest in planning: ECRP communities were 4 times more likely to have a Village Crisis Prevention Committee and a Risk Management Strategy than communities without the program.
  • Use VSLAs: ECRP communities were 8 times more likely to have a VSLA, and rated it as the most important factor that helped them return to normal life. Using money from the VSLA to diversify income and invest in preparedness meant that families had more coping mechanisms available to them.
  • Improve agriculture and forestry: 1/3 of communities cited conservation agriculture and forestry as techniques that helped weather the floods—by absorbing more flood water—but also to help rebound, as those plots also kept more moisture in during the droughts that followed.
  • Build fast flexible responses: Within 2 days of the flood, DFID released roughly $150,000 in emergency response so that ECRP could work with communities to respond and rebound. That meant the project could react to the changing reality immediately.

Want to learn more?

Check out the full resilience study.