Community Resilience Evaluation of Haiti Earthquake Emergency Response

The Tulane Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy (DRLA) is leading an evaluation of the humanitarian aid programs initiated in Haiti following the earthquake of January 12, 2010.  The evaluation seeks to assess changes in resilience in affected individuals and communities, rather than simply delivery of resources or coordination of effort.  In effect, the DRLA seeks to answer not the question of what got done and how, but rather did it make a positive change in the Haitian’s ability to weather future crises.  The DRLA has partnered with the University of Haiti to both aid in the collection, analysis and presentation of data and to build the capacity of Haiti’s primary institution of higher education to lead future evaluation initiatives.  The DRLA will bring together expert faculty from various schools and departments at Tulane University to provide technical expertise and will, together with the University of Haiti, provide an analysis of the humanitarian response as it is occurring, so that stakeholders and donors can, wherever possible, make programmatic adjustments to better support increasing Haitian resilience to future disasters.  This project is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.