The past year has been challenging for Assam, considering the impact of the 2022 flood. A number of humanitarian responses were carried out by Caritas India across the districts of Hojai, West Karbi Anglong, Cachar, Nagaon, Barpeta, and Lakhimpur with the support of different donors such as ECHO, START Network, Caritas Internationalis, Caritas Australia, Caritas Germany, Siemens, YMCA, and UNICEF. The month of June 2023 marked the culmination of the last of these response and recovery programmes for the Assam floods of 2022, supported by Caritas Internationalis.

As an official closing of the response, a writeup was organised to reflect and share highlights from across programmes and initiatives on June 27th and 28th in Guwahati, Assam. Humanitarian staff from different levels came together to reflect on the past 8 months of engagement to share the lessons learned, best practices, and way forward for future response programs.

Twenty-three participants including Caritas India head office and regional office representatives and field team including Program Extension Associates (PEAs) and Community Mobilizers took part in the 2-day workshop. Fr. (Dr.) Jolly Puthenpura, Assistant Executive Director (AED) of Caritas India in his inaugural address appreciated the efforts and hard work of all the team members for the successful completion of the flood response program, and the direct impact of the work they are doing for the community members.

Ms. Babita Pinto, Head of Programs (HoP), Caritas India further shared the importance of reflecting on the response programs completed along the lines of appropriateness, effectiveness, relevance, timeliness, quality, and accountability.

The sessions of the write shop were facilitated by Caritas India Head Office and Regional Office staffs including Mr. Anjan Bag, Thematic Lead for Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Risk Reduction (HA-DRR), Mr. Jonas Lakra, Zonal Program Lead, North-east zone, and Mr. Thangsha Sebastian, Assistant Program Lead, HA-DRR, with support from Program Associates, Ms. Tanuja Raghunath and Ms. Monisha Majumdar. The sessions largely focused on group exercises for participants to share their lessons learned from the implementation of the flood and storm responses, along with sharing of some of the best practices done in sectors including WASH, DRR, Protection, etc., the gaps in responses and brainstorming on recommendations and feedback for improvement of future programs.

Some of the learnings that emerged from these sessions included improving the timeliness of relief operations to enable better planning of recovery programs, building the capacities of the ground teams to conduct needs assessments, conducting the right kind of impact measurement for livelihoods support, need for community orientation on maintenance of newly constructed raised handpumps and toilets, etc. and having a readily designed IEC material toolbox for future programs/contexts. A detailed discussion was also centered around the field level challenges especially related to fund transfers, considering the large-scale “fund” interventions that Caritas India has been doing in recent responses and the ways to overcome the same.

The second day of the writeshop provided opportunity to the participants to collectively work on the reporting formats including population reach data consolidation with sex and age disaggregated data, analysis of monitoring data, and compilation of feedback and suggestions received from community members, and case stories, photos and videos collected from the field. This was done as a measure to ensure that there are no gaps in the final completion reports being sent to the donors.

The write-shop concluded with the message of Fr. (Dr.) Paul Moonjely, the Executive Director of Caritas India appreciates the team members for their work. He motivated them to take forward the same zeal in the future too, for the benefit of the communities.