This is the review of the Ebola Crisis Appeal Response in Sierra Leone of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) that unites 13 of the largest UK humanitarian charities to raise funds in response to major international humanitarian crises.
The review team consisted of an external team leader, a DEC member representative and the DEC chief executive with complementary roles and expertise. Fieldwork took place from 8th to 18th February. The team visited Freetown and Western Area, Port Loko Bombali, and Tonkolili. They used semi-structured questionnaires to conduct 19 focus groups in the communities visited. Altogether they spoke with 150 female and 148 male beneficiaries, 30 male and 11 female NGO staff, 11 government staff and 12 partner staff and two members of the security forces.
Specific areas of enquiry of this review are:
- Community engagement
- Programme relevance
- Organisational learning and capacity development.
These priority areas were selected based on the terms of reference provided by DEC and discussions with DEC members at an inception meeting in London before the field visit. Visits focused mostly on DEC-funded member projects, although the review team also saw programmes that were not funded by DEC and met with some people who were not benefitting from DEC-funded projects.
Pauline Oosterhoff / 2015 / DEC