Lebanon: Humanitarian assistance efforts in Lebanon following the crisis in July 2006 provided blankets, food, water, and medicines to more than 20,000 vulnerable families.

> Emergency Response
> Transitional Development
> Reconstruction
> Integration of mitigation and preparedness activities into long-term development programs

As with all of our programs, we strongly value the important contribution beneficiaries and local community stakeholders should play in identifying not only common problems but also shared solutions. In addition, our approach integrates coordinated livelihood activities from the onset of a disaster, ensuring that communities can benefit from a sustainable economic, social and political recovery that carries our interventions throughout the relief-to-development cycle.

> People-Focused Immediate Relief

Indonesia: CHF worked with local communities and used local supplies to design these transitional shelters following the Yogyakarta earthquake in May 2006.

The importance of incorporating local participation in humanitarian interventions became particularly evident as we responded to the needs of people who had been displaced by the Yogyakarta, Indonesia earthquake in 2006. In order to meet the survivors’ immediate shelter requirements, CHF began providing traditional emergency tent and tarp housing structures early in our response. But as our field team began to work more closely with community members and other local stakeholders, the design of our shelter units evolved into one that was more locally appropriate, incorporating transitional bamboo building techniques and the use of recycled materials. Building local capacity to sustain the program, CHF worked with local engineering students to ensure that technical assistance and labor resources could be provided. Ultimately, this allowed the Transitional Shelter Program (TSP) to provide housing for approximately 7,500 families.

Often, CHF is able to fully incorporate local stakeholders in relief programming due to the extensive networks we have built the countries where we already have an active presence. For instance, following the crisis in Lebanon in July 2006, CHF tapped into our extensive network of partners and communities, an effort which revealed a major gap in humanitarian assistance programming that had previously been overlooked by donors and NGO organizations. Based on community and stakeholder feedback, CHF designed a specialized economic relief program targeting the vital fishing population of the Bebnine El-Aabdeh region.

> Understanding Community Development

Darfur: Through a range of activities, CHF is improving quality of life for thousands of displaced families in Darfur, Sudan.

CHF International’s base in community and economic development provides a lens for immediate life-saving actions, allowing us to see important linkages to longer-term reconstruction and recovery. Weaving specific livelihood and asset restoration activities into humanitarian relief, CHF has successfully created enduring and productive economic opportunities for women, households, and under-served populations. An example of these linkages can be seen in our program in Darfur, which is providing a range of services to assist more than 200,000 displaced men, women, and children, and ensuring that those living through the traumatic experience of internal displacement are active participants in efforts to improve their own lives. Our livelihood activity focuses on the provision of temporary shelters. Through increased capacity for local weaving, women provide woven walls for shelters using locally appropriate materials and techniques.