Executive summary
The present independent evaluation looked at Handicap International’s contribution to the Earthquake Preparedness Project and how this contributed to the response to the 2015 earthquake in Nepal. The Earthquake Preparedness Project (EPP) is funded by DIPECHO (the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Office’s Disaster Preparedness Program), as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Luxemburg and the French Centre de Crise and has been implemented since 2011 in connection with a consortium led by the World Health Organization (WHO), and involving Save the Children and Oxfam. The evaluation was commissioned by Handicap International (HI) in September 2015, and was conducted by an independent team of consultants (Francois Grunewald and Dr. Lakshmi Narayn Thakur) and funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Luxembourg.
The EPP, in which HI took part, aimed to strengthen the health sector response capacity in the event of a high intensity earthquake in the Kathmandu Valley. The evaluation had to respond to a series of questions relating specifically to HI activities and their impact during the health sector response to the 2015 earthquake. In particular, it aimed to:
• identify/document lessons learned and make recommendations that HI in Nepal might use to improve the design and implementation of future projects. The results will contribute to better informed decision-making, foster an environment of learning and promote greater accountability for performance, both for HI and for other organizations working in earthquake preparedness.
• establish how HI Nepal contingency planning, including the coordination and articulation between development (DAD) and humanitarian (DAH) teams, contributed to the response with the aim of making recommendations for the amendment of this plan.