Rapid Assessment for Resilient Recovery and ... - GFDRR

Government partnership with CODI: The Community Organizations Development
Institute (CODI) has a decade of experience in facilitating low-income communities to
rebuild their environment. A semi-government institution, CODI receives core budgetary
support from the government. CODI and their partners can be mobilized 1) to help
communities assess and articulate their housing and settlements needs, determine priorities in
costing and targeting, and assist communities in managing rehabilitation and reconstruction of
their neighborhood; and 2) to assist communities in assessing the causes of damage and
find solutions for them, among others by revisiting indigenous coping mechanisms in
housing and environmental design, and where appropriate, including options of
resettlement. The processes may build on the Baan Mankong modality of delivery of
actions on the ground. 109
As has been shown by the Baan Mankong program, communities are capable of managing
the rebuilding of their own housing at a relatively large scale, if given the chance and
responsibility, and adequate assistance. Cooperatives have been a strong element in the
processes, and can provide economic resilience to communities (for instance coping with
arrears) while managing community projects. It also showed that actively involving women
from the start in decision making and planning provides a much higher level of transparency
and accountability of the activities, and strong relevance to actual family needs.
No high-pressure timeframe: People do not need to be in a hurry to repair their home,
except for repairs on doors and windows, and painting. Unlike in post-tsunami or postearthquake
situations, over half of the affected families could stay in their inundated
houses, while the other half evacuated but could return to their homes as soon as the
house was cleaned and dry. Of the estimated 1.96 million affected families, “only” 1 percent
(19,000 families) is estimated to have been forced to live elsewhere because of total
damage of their house. On the other hand, care needs to be taken if grants are handed
out to beneficiaries in a region at once, which will trigger high levels of activity and demand
intensity of assistance by facilitators and close guidance by government agencies in the
use of the grants. For this reason, community preparedness (in terms of organization and
action plans) will become the prerequisite for launching every activity.
Facilitation
CODI itself has relied on community activists to do all the deliberation and organization,
and has been able to develop community networks that are actively interacting with a small
number of personnel in the field covering a large region. This is an ideal setup that keeps
initiative in the hands of people. However in post-flooding reconstruction, some input may
need to be provided simultaneously to the process, which means a higher need for personnel
capable of dealing with communities and conveying the right messages. Aside of
training of key community organizers, local forums (including all parties) may need to be
109 The Baan Mankong program has provided improvement of 80,000 houses in slum areas between 2003 and 2009,
or serving 13,300 families per year; this was done with government funds. The Rapid Assessment team considers this
approach very suitable for post-disaster reconstruction, as proven effective in various community-driven post disaster
reconstruction programs in other countries, among others the reconstruction of over 250,000 houses by community groups
in post-earthquake Yogyakarta & Central Java in less than 2 years.
THAI FLOOD 2011 RAPID ASSESSMENT FOR RESILIENT RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION PLANNING
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