A ripple in development - Norad

tant as “group formation has great potential to empower and raise the incomes ofpoor people” (Thorp et al., 2005, p. 907).However, direct implementation by Oxfam in the form of shelterconstruction was still ongoing. Only 1,443 houses were built by the endof 2007 – but another 427 were planned to be completed by the followingMarch (Oxfam International, 2007b, pp. 7, 9).Oxfam also reported shifting from a community based strategy forpublic health engineering projects (their initial approach) to using contractors.Oxfam gave two reasons for this: the lack of engineering skillswithin communities and the pressure to complete a large number ofsystems (Oxfam International, 2007b, p. 5).Figure 2: The pattern of annual spending of NGO funds for one group of NGOs.Millions of Pounds in spendingTsunamispendingpatternforfundsraisedbytheDECfromthegeneralpublicintheUKFiguresfor2007areaestimatedfromreturnstomidDecember2007andthosefor2008areprojectedfromagencyplans.1501005002005 2006 2007 2008In general, declining funding would in any case have led to agenciesmoving from expensive direct implementation to the much more economicalsupport role. Figure 2 shows the pattern of expenditure of thefunds of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) in the UK. This isprobably indicative of the tailing off the very generous public fundingavailable to the best-established NGOs 3 .The Swiss Consortium provided both funding and direct financialand technical management support to the government in two districtsin Sri Lanka . This contrasted with the more hands-off approaches takenby some other donors (Aysan, 2007, p 9).1.3 Information flowsTo what extent has accurate information on reconstruction plans reached affected communitiesand has this provided the basis for genuine decision-making at local level?Poor information flows were a problem from the very start of the Tsunami,starting with failures in the passing of alerts and warning mes-3This should not be confused with overall funding. In the first year there will have been largeamounts of time limited donor funds that would have been spent before agencies used the moreflexible DEC funds.17