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

54Analysis phaseAfter having gathered information during the course of the VCAor field-test day, what should you do with it? In many ways, thisis when the real work begins.KeymessageThe objective of the VCA is to collectinformation so that it can be used bybranches, communities and other partnersto develop programmes and projectswhich will reduce vulnerability.The tasks described below should be practised as part of the fieldtestingexercise. Team members should be adequately trained in:■ systematizing data;■ interpreting and drawing conclusions from the data; and■ developing recommendations for the future.Systematizing, analysingand interpreting the dataOnce you have collected the data, you need to put it into a formatthat will allow you to better analyse and interpret it. This iscalled systematizing the data. This involves entering the largequantity of raw data into charts and cleaning up diagrams anddrawings, so that they are easily understood.Once the data has been systematized, it can then be shown to allteam members so that they can see what it says about the community’svulnerabilities, capacity, etc. This is called “talking tothe data” – in other words, analysing and interpreting what thedata is telling you.