Resilience and Resilience Capacities Measurement Options: Full Approach—Enumerator Guidance

The REAL Award was established to respond to growing demand among USAID Missions, host governments, implementing organizations, and other key stakeholders for rigorous, yet practical, monitoring, evaluation, strategic analysis, and capacity building support. Led by Save the Children, REAL draws on the expertise of its partners: Food for the Hungry, Mercy Corps, and TANGO International. The REAL Award employs a resilience instrument as part of USAID's core household questionnaire to gather data on shocks and stressors that impact food security and well-being. The instrument also identifies resilience capacities that are critical to mitigate the impact of shocks and stressors. There are three types of resilience capacities: absorptive, adaptive, and transformative. Absorptive capacity refers to the ability to minimize exposure to shocks and stresses through preventative measures and appropriate coping strategies. Adaptive capacity involves making proactive and informed choices about alternative livelihood strategies based on an understanding of changing conditions. Transformative capacity refers to the governance mechanisms, policies/regulations, infrastructure, community networks, and formal and informal social protection mechanisms that constitute the enabling environment for systemic change. The resilience instrument involves two questionnaires: a household questionnaire and a community questionnaire. Data collected from the household and community resilience questionnaires and other modules will be used to create an index for each of the three resilience capacities. The score for each index will help understand what capacities are important for people to respond to and recover from shocks and stresses in the short and long term. The household questionnaire includes 19 modules that assess various aspects of resilience, including shocks and stressors, productive assets, availability of markets, infrastructure, and services, access to financial services, access to information, group participation, collective action, livelihoods activities, migration, and social and capacity-building support. The community questionnaire includes 9 modules that assess village characteristics, village infrastructure and services, village organizations, government and NGO programs, and governance. The REAL Award aims to provide a comprehensive approach to measuring resilience capacities and identifying the most critical capacities for responding to and recovering from shocks and stresses. The resilience instrument and questionnaires are designed to be practical and rigorous, providing valuable insights for USAID Missions, host governments, implementing organizations, and other stakeholders. The REAL Award has established a partnership with TANGO International to develop and implement the resilience instrument and questionnaires. TANGO International has expertise in resilience analysis and has developed a comprehensive approach to measuring resilience capacities. The partnership aims to provide a robust and reliable framework for assessing resilience capacities and identifying the most critical capacities for responding to and recovering from shocks and stresses. The REAL Award has also established a contact point for inquiries and feedback. The contact information is as follows: The REAL Associate Award, c/o Save the Children, 899 North Capital Street NE, Suite #900, Washington, D.C. 20002, Email: [email protected], Website: https://www.fsnnetwork.org/REAL.