Caritas India, with the support of Caritas Germany, conducted a 2-day Real-Time Evaluation/Reflection (RTE/R) on COVID-19 Humanitarian Response, a mega pan India humanitarian response undertaken by Caritas India. The event took place at Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India from 13-14 December 2021. It was led by the Humanitarian Action and Disaster Risk Reduction (HA-DRR) thematic of Caritas India and attended by focal persons engaged in the COVID-19 Response.

The RTE/R was conducted with the overall aim of reflecting on the impact of the COVID-19 response in terms of its timeliness, relevance, effectiveness, appropriateness, coordination, connectedness, and accountability, discussing the needs and gaps in the current emergency response and recovery programming, and identifying the programmatic and management recommendations to support improvement in emergency response.

The program began with introductory remarks by Mr. Anjan Bag, Thematic Lead Humanitarian Aid and DRR-Caritas India, and Fr. Jolly, Assistant Executive Director-Caritas India, regarding the idea of conducting such an RTE as a space for Caritas India staff and consultants to share their learnings and experiences of the COVID-19 emergency response, who then welcomed Fr. Paul Moonjelly, Executive Director, Caritas India to facilitate the opening session of the day.

In the words of Fr. Paul, Executive Director-Caritas India, the purpose of conducting this “institutional learning session” was “in the good spirit of learning and improvement” and “to strategize future responses”. Fr. Paul spoke about the aspects of Caritas India’s COVID response that went well including the dynamic leadership and operational plans of the teams involved and the increased visibility of the Caritas brand. He also touched upon how the direct implementation of projects gave way to direct ownership and control and led to strengthening coordination with the local administration, DSSS partners, donors, alliances, and networks. The COVID-19 response also helped build a large network of volunteers to support Caritas India’s work and utilize existing church infrastructure such as hospitals, community centres, schools, and institutional buildings.

He also shed light on how the response to the pandemic was the first of its kind for Caritas India and how it came with its own set of unique challenges for that very reason. This included the lack of sufficient human resources which further led to multitasking and multiple responsibilities falling on the shoulders of certain personnel and eventual staff burnout and the extended period of response which impacted other development programs of the organization.

The remaining sessions of the day were facilitated by Mr. Ray Kancharla, Senior Consultant of Caritas India. Mr. Ray began by talking about the importance of conducting an RTE, which acts as a catalyst for conversations and strengthening the learning culture of the organization. He also summed up the expected outcome of conducting such an event in the following way:

“Caritas India emerges with a Robust Humanitarian System with necessary Resources (Human, Financial and Technical) towards High Impact Delivery of Need-based Humanitarian Assistance of adequate scale and scope to the Affected Communities, embedding Accountability, through its New Ways of Working”.

Through his sessions, Mr. Ray stressed how the “story of humanity” lies within each one of us, and how “SPL/ Saving and Protecting Lives” must be the “humanitarian vision” of every organization. Through detailed group activity, all participants were made to better understand the importance of imbibing the 9 commitments of the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) at every stage and timeline of the program management cycle, which also encouraged participants to discuss some of the case studies related to the response in their respective locations.

Yet another group exercise of the day provided participants with the opportunity to reflect upon various MEAL related aspects of the program such as analysis of the FLTC, SLTC, ISC and data capturing tools used during the response, good practices for providing accountability to the affected communities and accountability in donor communications. This exercise also helped participants ponder upon other significant questions such as the systemic interventions needed to strengthen CI’s processes and practices related to the response as well as its internal and external capacities.

The sessions for the day were wrapped up with a final group exercise on developing the humanitarian agenda of the organization in the short, medium, and long terms to “become better prepared and remain a strong player in the humanitarian/development sector”.

In conclusion, Mr. Ray highlighted the fact that “responding to crises is not an option, but part of our mandate”, and it is the role of the organization to understand the severity of any crisis and build the response scenario around it accordingly. The importance of localisation of response and building on the strong volunteer base of Caritas India were other key points that emerged from the discussions of the day.

The second day of the RTE/R began with presentations on the lessons learnt and challenges faced during the response by the thematic, operational, financial, MEAL, and Communications Leads of Caritas India. Concrete recommendations and action plan to better systemise future responses, including capacity building and skill development of the staff/consultants based on the needs, preparation of a humanitarian roster for Caritas India, and development of MEAL and Communications plans specifically for emergency response, were also drawn up at the end of these presentations in consultation with the ED and AED of the organization.

This was followed by the sharing of experiences by Fr. Sushil Modi, Administrator-Caritas India, on the procurement process and the challenges faced during the response at the central, state and partner levels. Following group presentations by the regional teams on the challenges faced at their end related to procurements, recommendations for the future including digitalization of the procurement process using Office Automation System (OAS) and development of humanitarian response guidelines for procurement for volunteers were also discussed at length.

Mr. Ghanshyam Jethwa, Head of Programs – Caritas India, concluded the proceedings of the RTE by summing up the key takeaways and action points discussed over the two days, which was followed by concluding remarks by Mr. Anjan, Fr. Jolly and Fr. Paul.