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Resilience
Children are living today in a more complex world and fast changing environment. While access to health and education has improved and poverty reduced in the last 15 years, inequalities are on the rise, more than 50% of the world’s population live in fast growing cities and the world is increasingly threatened by conflicts, climate change and environmental degradation.
To adapt to such disruptive environment, the concept of resilience has emerged in the last decade and Save the Children has identified “resilience” as one of its 3 main cross-cutting topics for its 2030 global strategy. Resilience is commonly defined as a complex multi-dimensional and dynamic ability embedded in individual or complex system that emerges at time of shocks, stresses and trauma. For Save the Children, resilience is the ability of children, families and systems to protect and safeguard all children against shocks and stresses in order to ensure the realisation of their rights to survival, development, education and protection.
The resilience of a child, family or a community with respect to potential hazard events and threats is determined by the degree to which they have the necessary resources (physical, social, financial, human, natural) to maintain their development and keep planning for their future projects and plans despite shocks, stresses and adversities.
Our DRR and CCA work are important factors of building resilience, but ensuring also that basic needs are met and that children have access to education, health services and opportunities for play and social interaction is critical. Efforts to strengthen families is a priority, as it is widely acknowledged that a loving and caring family is one of the key protective factors which can strengthen a child’s resilience and support their healthy development in spite of a crisis.
Effective resilience supposes a transformation, putting issues of people, power and politics at the centre of the change process. Because vulnerabilities and risk are rooted in deprivation, inequalities and human rights violation, resilience is thereby built by influencing policies that relate to power imbalances in society that encourage, create and sustain vulnerabilities.
For example, Save the Children’s Child Rights Governance work contributes to resilience of institutions by institutionalizing children’s rights in governance systems and mechanisms enabling the fulfilment of children’s rights in all contexts. Moreover, improved transparency, participation and accountability and fair (re)distribution of resources is supporting a healthy social contract between citizens and government and can prevent conflict.
Photo: Hedinn Halldorsson/Save the Children
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The Economics of Early Response and Disaster Resilience: Lessons from Kenya and Ethiopia
In 2010 natural disasters affected more than 217 million people, killed more than 297,000 people and caused $123.9 billion in economic damages. The types, dimensions, and dynamics of humanitarian crises are further increasing, in some cases exponentially.
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Traditional Games for Child Protection- Terre des hommes
A handbook of games developed out of experience gained by organisers and trainers of the Terre des hommes MOVE project in Romania, Moldavia and Albania. This booklet is aimed to strengthen youngsters' life skills of cooperation, responsibility, flexibilit
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Samadhan- Building Disaster Resilient Communities
This publication is a reflection of project experiences, learning and achievements through the disaster risk management initiative. CARE-Nepal has been committed to building disaster resilient communities through initiatives that have helped make a differ
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Building Urban Resilience: Principles, Tools and Practice. Managing the risks of disasters in East Asia and the Pacific
This Handbook is a resource for enhancing disaster resilience in urban areas. It summarizes the guiding principles, tools and practice in key economic sectors that can facilitate the implementation of resilience concepts into decisions over infrastructure
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Country Risk Reduction Profile: Disaster Risk Reduction in Indonesia
Children and their communities in Indonesia are among the most vulnerable in the world to the effects of natural and man-made disasters. The country is regularly subjected to a wide range of disasters stemming from climate change and environmental degrada
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Changing climate, Changing disasters: Pathways towards integration
A guide from the Strengthening Climate Resilience consortium (IDS, Plan and Christian Aid), focusing on a Climate Smart Disaster Risk Management (CSDRM) approach that offers different ‘routes’ to integration (and indicators to track progress) for agencies
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Child Friendly Spaces: A structured review of the current evidence base
Child Friendly Spaces (CFSs) are a widely used tool to help support and protect children in the context of emergencies. Sometimes called Safe Spaces, Child Centered Spaces and Emergency Spaces for Children, CFSs are used by a growing number of agencies as
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Characteristics of a Safe and Resilient Community: Community Based Disaster Risk Reduction Study
The International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC), as the ‘world’s largest humanitarian and development network’ is committed to building safety and resilience through its Community Based Disaster Risk Reduction (CBDRR) programmes. As a movement the Re
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Ending the everyday emergency: Resilience and children in the Sahel
More than 1 million children face severe and life-threatening malnutrition in the Sahel region of West Africa in 2012. "Ending the Everyday Emergency" demonstrates that shortage of food deficit is only part of the crisis. Even more important is a ‘resilie
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Building Protection and Resilience: Synergies for child protection systems and children affected by HIV and AIDS. Inter-Agency Task Team (IATT) on Children and HIV and AIDS
This paper presents findings from a study commissioned by the Inter Agency Task Team on Children affected by HIV and AIDS. The study aims to better understand the ways in which child protection systems can respond to the needs of children living with and
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Horn of Africa Two Years On Report: Response and Resilience in East Africa
In 2011, in the midst of the devastating Horn of Africa drought, Save the Children launched the largest ever multi-country humanitarian response covering three countries: Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, the most severely impacted by the drought. Thousands of
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Livelihoods at the limit: Reducing the risk of disasters and adapting to climate change. Evidence from the consolidated Household Economy Analysis database
This report draws on the compiled Household Economy Analysis dataset and analysis tools to answer some of the most pressing questions about disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in a range of livelihood contexts:- Which single shock has th