News

The Mitchell Group (TMG) and major partner, IMC Worldwide (IMC), meet in Nepal this week to initiate a performance evaluation for the Office of Foreign Assistance (OFDA).

This evaluation focuses on two ongoing Disaster Rick Reduction (DRR) projects funded by OFDA in Nepal between 2010 and 2016. The (2) two projects are the Program for Enhancement of Emergency Response (PEER) and  the Building Code Implementation Program in Municipalities of Nepal (BCIPN).

The PEER’s purpose is to reduce the lives lost during disasters and increase the survival rates of disaster victims in selected Asian countries by enhancing professional as well as community-based disaster preparedness and response capacity of public, private, academic, social and non-governmental organizations.

The BCIPN focuses on assisting local governments in Nepal to enhance their capacity to regulate building permits and ensure improved seismic performance in urban and urbanizing areas. The approach will include helping municipalities develop effective mechanisms, enhance earthquake awareness, enhance technical knowledge of official on earthquake risk management, and increase the knowledge of earthquake-resistant construction designs.

TMG’s evaluation will improve OFDA’s understanding of the performance of its DRR activities in Nepal. It will be focused on the performance of key activities funded by OFDA and the outcomes they achieved. To the extent possible, the evaluation will use the Gorkha Earthquake of 2015 and its powerful aftershocks as one means to assess the degree to which OFDA’s DRR activities in Nepal were successful in achieving their desired outcomes.

The primary user of the evaluation will be OFDA itself, which wants to develop a clear understanding of the performance of its DRR approach in Nepal. The evaluation will, in turn, inform future OFDA disaster risk reduction programming in Nepal in particular, but also more broadly the Office’s efforts to promote more disaster-resilient societies worldwide.