1. Laying, Sequencing and Integration of resilience programming
Oct 2015
REAL = Resilience & Economic Activity in Luuq, Gedo region of Somalia
REAL is a 3 year program starting in October 2014.
Target population is 14 agro- pastoral villages in Luuq district.
REAL has three objectives:
1. Build absorptive capacity for shocks ( DRR , civ society management of DRR )
2. Diversity livelihoods and asset building/protection Health, nutrition and hygiene behavior change
3. Robust learning of communities ( on resilient behaviours), implementers & fellow organisations thru sharing of learning

2. LAYERING IN REAL project. Luuq , Gedo Region
What is working in Layering in REAL?
After discussing with the M&E team and partners about what we are learning about layering, sequencing and integration. Having listened to all these voices, the conclusion is that we are still learning how to go about layering, sequencing and integrating our projects and it is taking us longer to negotiate the various mandates and power structures to get there.
In order to accelerate this process, there is need for intensified, coordinated strategic planning around resilience to ensure efficient layering. Some of the projects were designed to for example distribute items and donate food. Reorienting the objectives of such projects to fit into the resilience principles of layering, sequencing and integration need to be addressed at the leadership level rather from the field. 

3. SEQUENCING programming in SomReP
Sequencing Learning
Within SomReP the sequencing of activities is critical for keeping HHs and community on a resilience livelihood pathway. This involves moving HH from a plan of low resilience livelihoods, with low access to markets and low asset holdings to level of high market access and higher level of asset ownership, while maintaining an early action system in response to shocks stress.
What is working is in the first years using CFW targeting livelihood infrastructure linked to savings groups formation. This is providing HH’s with savings that can be used as contingency as well as investment for livelihood. Also the early warning and action system was triggered last year and we were able to use the crisis modifier to target HH’s for assistance and prevent them from slipping backwards in well being. Although this was so early in the project it was agency lead, not community as the early warning committees were just being formed in early 2014 when the Gu rain failed. However this intervention was only possible as some SomReP had some discretionary funding, rather than a dedicated crisis modifier fund that is programmed to be complimentary to the project and trigger on evidence of stress. This would be great an enhancement to programming if it existed.
What is not working as well is the time it is taking to get HH into a status where they start choosing to invest in livelihood vs other HH costs. Also pre-existing HH debt levels mean that the first year was largely paying down debts, rather than investing in livelihoods and diversification of livelihood. It would be reasonable to say that what was a first year CFW focus has a become a year 1- 2 year intervention. Year 2- 4 will focus more on diversity of livelihoods and years 4-5 to focus on longer term civil society capacity to manage the project outputs. These years and focus are not mutual exclusive and do overlap in programming emphasis. The theory is still valid, but it takes much longer than we plan, possibly overtly optimistically.

4. Integration of multiple sectors & scales
State capacity building for resilience
Integrating across these sectors and scales requires collective will of the multiple actors with a shared vision and objective. This is further complicated by the need to choose and appropriate scale to reduce the complexity and transactional costs of multiple stakeholder management at multiple scales.
What would help is to bring projects/technical leads together to work on a harmonized (mutually designed) implementation process to enable the layering, integrating, and sequencing of humanitarian and development assistance. This would ideally take the form of Luuq district resilience master plan. Such a plan could also effort help develop the appropriate wellbeing indicators, make midcourse corrections, and share lessons learned across the WV Somalia and SomRep programmes, other NGOs, UN actors and local government. There will be need to involvement of the donors of these actors in this discussion as there might need to be trade-offs in design to address resilience impact across sectors. Donor time lines, funding cycles and beneficiary targeting would all be up for discussion to leverage the collective resources of all actors for resilience outcome. This is possible, however very time consuming and by the time we have this working the project maybe complete in it’s three years of funding.
These efforts must be supported by leadership action to address barriers to organizational change. At the heart of this process is our commitment to empower solution-holders in the field to address unnecessary roadblocks that stand in the way of meeting the resilience objectives. The internal integration within WV and consortium programming is within our power to achieve with dedicated planning and compromise. The external integration between actors within the district and within the region is another scale of engagement which may elude us in the project lifetime. It will take much more effort than we would have expected to get everybody on the same page.
Community capacity building for resilience