Designing Capacity Development for Disaster Risk Management : A ...

1. Analysis of project context
1. Analysis of project context
What is the general rationale and context for the project?
When involved in designing a
capacity development project for
disaster risk management, it is
crucial to start the process by
contemplating and formulating the
general rationale for the project.
In other words, we need to
describe in short why the project
is necessary in the first place.
Being explicit and transparent
about the reasons for the potential
project, as well as for engaging in
the process of designing it, is
fundamental for building trust
among stakeholders, for creating
commitment, and ultimately for
project effectiveness. The output
of such dialogue will then be used
as input to the coming steps.
1 Analysis of project context
2 Stakeholder analysis
3 Situation analysis
4 Objectives analysis
5 Plan of activities
6 Resource planning
7 Indicators
8 Internal risk analysis and management
9 Analysis of assumptions
Figure 3. Step 1 in LFA
In this initial phase of the project design process it is also
important to consider that the notion of “development”, in the
concept of capacity development, may carry different meanings to
different people. What is considered an improvement for one
stakeholder may not be considered an improvement by another 18 .
For example, a governmental authority in charge of disaster
preparedness may view better capacity to distribute donated
clothes to disaster affected communities as development, while
women involved in local clothing production loose their
livelihood if their market is flooded with free foreign clothes and
may not view that change as development at all. It is thus
essential to think about and present what is to be considered
“development” in the particular project.
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