How to do VCA? - International Federation of Red Cross and Red ...

How to do a VCA 15Our experience of VCA all over the world has shown us that VCAoften ends up leading to projects that are not necessarily hazardrelated– despite our own focus on disaster preparedness, both atthe International Federation and within National Societies.With time and experience, we have come to recognize that thetypes of risk uncovered by VCA represent the real concerns of thepeople – even if these do not include natural hazards. It hasbecome clear that people are normally more concerned by theirdaily survival problems (e.g. health concerns, lack of income or,issues like traffic accidents etc.), often making no mention ofearthquakes or floods.Vulnerability has been defined in relation to five componentsthat embody most aspects of people’s exposure to a given naturalhazard:■ Livelihoods■ Well-being■ Self-protection■ Social protection■ GovernanceOnce VCA has been linked to the different components of vulnerabilityand the relationships between them are understood, itbecomes much easier to identify the related capacities that needto be strengthened.It then becomes possible to see how existing Red Cross RedCrescent programmes, even when not specifically related to disasterpreparedness, can contribute to vulnerability reduction andcapacity building at the grass-root level. This results in a betterintegration of programmes and provides us with new ways ofworking hand-in-hand with communities, to make our RedCross Red Crescent activities more effective.This is all fine in theory. But how exactly do we deal with theexpectations that we are raising in working with the communitiesby undertaking a VCA and how do we incorporate these into aNational Society’s planning process?