Each DRC country programme must have an Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan (EPRP) to ensure preparedness to respond to humanitarian crises (manmade or natural) that might occur within reach of DRC’s operations.
DRC’s Country and Regional Directors must ensure that EPRPs are produced and revised annually for each country operation. The Emergency Focal Point (EFP) can facilitate the process with remote support from the HQ Emergency Unit, or the Emergency Unit can facilitate the workshop directly. Further to this, a training of trainers of EPRP facilitators can be conducted at a regional level.
The EPRP process must be conducted prior to or during the Annual Review, as issues raised around capacity and preparedness may need to be addressed in SPDs and Results Contracts. All EPRPs should be shared with the Regional Office, who maintain a regional overview.
An EPRP consists of the following components:
The EPRP workshop
The EPRP must be developed through a one day participatory workshop involving all categories of staff (Management, Programme, Support). Lessons learned from previous years clearly show that the exercise not only produces valuable and useful plans, but is also important in fostering a strong awareness and mental preparedness among DRC staff that is essential in case of emergency. The below 4 components are then the key outputs of the EPRP workshop:
1. Emergency Risk Analysis
In order to ensure good emergency preparedness, emergency risk analyses are produced to identify and rank potential shocks that, should they occur, would result in a serious humanitarian crisis. While the EFP is the owner of this document, and responsible for ensuring it is updated throughout the year according to contextual changes, it should be revisited collectively as part of the EPRP process to feed into the plans produced.
2. Response Plan
For each high ranking shock identified a response plan is produced – how many people should DRC aim to assist, with what support, and where?
3. Capacity Gap Analysis
A capacity gap analysis defines what is required internally to deliver the response to each shock – what do we have in place, and which gaps still need to be filled for a full response?
4. Preparedness Action Plan
For each high ranking shock a preparedness action plan is developed which outlines the current capacity, the gaps and key actions to be undertaken by the Country Office, including persons responsible and due dates, to be adequately prepared for a potential shock. This action plan is the core output of the EPRP that needs to be followed up on by management and revisited throughout the year.
MANDATORY ACTIONS
1. Hold a one-day EPRP workshop with participation from programme, management and support staff prior to the Annual Review.
2. Send all EPRP documents to the Regional Office.
3. SMT in country to track progress through the preparedness action plan throughout the year.
4. If shocks occur during the year or there is a significant deterioration of the situation, the EPRP must be revisited and amended.
Links
EPRP tools and resources are available on Insite
Questions?
Contact the HQ Emergency Unit: [email protected]