SERVICES: National Platforms
Vanuatu
Context: Communications shortfalls have hampered many disaster responses in Vanuatu. In 2015, following a request from the government, CDAC provided CCE technical support for the Cyclone Pam response. In 2018, as part of an Australian Government funded joint CDAC-GTS project, a CCE scoping mission was undertaken. One outcome was the establishment of a Communications and Community Engagement Sub-Cluster, led by the NDMO and co-chaired by Vanuatu Red Cross, which was established in February 2019. More than 30 individuals representing sub-cluster organisations provided feedback and subsequently agreed to a TOR for the platform in May 2019. The TOR has been endorsed by the NDMO. The sub-cluster membership includes many members of other clusters, positioning the CCE Sub-Cluster to be well integrated in the existing humanitarian architecture.
Leadership: The sub-cluster currently sits under the national telecommunications cluster. The NDMO is the lead for the sub-cluster, and the Vanuatu Red Cross is the co-chair. The CCE Sub-Cluster National Coordinator is hosted by CARE (as part of the joint project) and is seconded to the NDMO to lead on sub-cluster coordination. The Director of the NDMO has endorsed the CCE Sub-Cluster’s ongoing work, highlighting that strengthening communication with and between all stakeholders in disaster preparedness and response remains an NDMO priority.
National and international actors involved: Membership includes representatives of Vanuatu Government bodies, multilateral organisations, media, telecommunications, NGOs, INGOs, and faith-based organisations, many of whom are also members of other Clusters. The CCE Sub-Cluster is also characterised by an almost fully ni-Vanuatu membership and leadership, ensuring its approaches and activities are locally led and contextually relevant.
Achievements, opportunities and challenges: When the project first commenced, Vanuatu was at the tail end of the Ambae volcano response, which had highlighted the importance of communicating with disaster affected communities. Subsequent disasters experienced by Vanuatu, including TC Harold and COVID-19, have demonstrated the CCE Sub-Cluster’s impact in increasing the prioritisation of communication and community engagement in disasters, including disseminating timely information to communities through a range of channels, allocating time and resources to collecting systematic community feedback, adapting programming and resource allocation in response to the community feedback, and continuing to progress preparedness work after it has been disrupted by an active response. The CCE Sub-Cluster has been actively involved in supporting this work at the national level, providing technical advice and support as well as resources to enable execution.
As part of systematic data collection, analysis and feedback training in August 2019 (led by GTS and co-facilitated by CDAC), CCE Sub-Cluster members outlined key next steps across the four priority areas that were identified during the CCE Sub-Cluster inception workshop (feedback mechanism, training, systems and coordination). The training further enabled the group to make use of the technical advisors present to make progress on several planned activities, including developing a CCE training outline for national, provincial, area and community disaster responders; drafting standardised questions for community engagement in disasters; and outlining key communications and community engagement gaps and inclusions (such as in the SOPs of key roles) for the existing disaster response system.
Strengthening community feedback systems was identified as an NDMO priority in the wake of TC Harold, and so a systematic collective feedback mechanism was developed by the CCE Sub-Cluster in 2020, including step-by-step processes for seven commonly used communications channels with supporting tools and templates. The CCE Sub-Cluster trialled the SMS based tool Rapid Pro as a feedback collection tool with support from UNICEF Fiji in 2021, enabling feedback mechanism processes and tools to be tested and refined. National workshops including NDMO staff, CCE Sub-Cluster members and other key stakeholders were also held in 2021 to enable collaborative input into the feedback mechanism and to provide foundational training in its processes. In late 2021, the CCE Sub-Cluster partnered with the NDMO to facilitate training on foundational CCE concepts and the new feedback mechanism at the sub-national level, running workshops in Tafea and Penama. Provincial CCE Working Groups were also established in Tafea and Penama through these workshops to provide ongoing support for communications with communities in disasters, with the NDMO requesting that CCE Working Groups also be established in the remaining four provinces. At the same time, an online library of both CCE resources for disaster responders, like training, guides and tools, as well as government-approved community messaging, like disaster preparation advice for volcanoes, tsunamis, flooding and cyclones and COVID-19 safety advice, has been developed to support effective communication with communities nationwide.
Work to further progress this sub-national roll out and embed CCE practices through regular simulations and refresher training is planned to continue. Strong foundations have been laid for the sustainable integration of CCE into Vanuatu’s humanitarian infrastructure and ways of working, but work remains to be done to solidify and build on the progress that has been achieved through the four year project.
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