To date there has been little formal, empirical research that has been conducted on capacity building for disaster risk management (DRM), and as a result international actors lack robust, evidence-based guidance on how capacity for DRM can be effectively generated at national and local levels. This report on the Philippines is part of a research project designed as an initial step towards filling that knowledge and evidence gap. Two programmes emerged as appropriate case studies:

OCD-JICA: DRRM Capacity Enhancement Programme
Christian Aid: Philippines Resilience Programmes

The Office of Civil Defense (OCD) and the Japanesse International Cooperation Agency’s (JICA) programme was included in this study because, upon closer investigation, it was noted that this was the leading government programme related to capacity building for DRM. The project was a ligned with recent DRR policies and laws in the Philippines and it included different actors and scales across national, regional, provincial, and community levels. The programme specifically worked on capacity building for DRM at all levels. Christian Aid’s (CA) programme provided an opportunity to investigate how an international organisation assists in the capacity building process of smaller non-government organisations (NGO’s). Documentation suggested that CA had played a key role in supporting the creation of effective DRR networks in the Philippines and the team decided to investigate that process more closely. The organisation specifically funded, targeted and assisted NGOs to integrate DRR into development programmes. Both initiatives fit in with the selection criteria and reached from the national to the community level. The combination of the initiatives was believed to be an opportunity for rich findings for the fieldwork report.