After each food distribution, ACTED teams assess the efficiency of the relief action by visiting the districts of the beneficiaries. Working in cooperation with the population and the communities’ leaders to secure the impact of the relief operation is something as important as the food distributions themselves.

Every morning, once the daily food distribution in the Sylvio Cator stadium of Port-au-Prince is over, Björn in charge of these operations, continues to work to prepare the distributions of the following day. After the distributing food vouchers to the communities’ leaders, ACTED teams furrow the streets of the city to monitor the situation.

The monitoring is a simple action but is at the heart of the work of relief workers. Monitoring means going on the field after an operation to verify, investigate and secure its impact for the population.

This morning, Björn is visiting the neighborhoods Larraque and Ruèl Plus in the south of Port-au-Prince, his area of distribution. With his team, he assesses that the selected beneficiaries have actually received the bags of rice on the previous day’s distribution. The task at hand: making sure that the food vouchers have not been sold on the black market and were used the selected beneficiaries.

The members of the team go from one house to another, tent to tent with always the same question: “Have you received the rice bags of the previous distribution?” This morning, the results are convincing. “The beneficiaries are satisfied and the success ratio of the distribution is very positive for the future”, notes Jean Louis, a member of the team in charge of the monitoring.

Working with the population

Depending on the neighborhoods, the approach of the team differs. In the area of Bolosse, Björn scans a hand-made tent of a family looking for a bag of rice. Relieved, he points to his team a bag lying in a corner. Further in the alley, the teams scatter to interview the inhabitants. “We rapidly know how things went after a distribution, if there were any tensions or problems in the repartition”, explains Jean-Louis. Then, the challenge is to be every day resourceful and to find new means to reduce the loss ratio. Strategies of distribution suitable to the neighborhood and populations must continuously be identified. “We explain to the communities leaders in charge of distributing the food vouchers how to make sure that the most vulnerable families are targeted in priority. It is not easy but the strategy of empowerment works and every day progresses are remarkable” analyses Björn. Working with the communities leaders, real intermediary between the NGOs and the population, is crucial to ensure the efficient delivery of relief aid. “The simple fact of visiting the communities to explain the initiative and verify the results has major repercussions” notes Björn. This work has also a preventive dimension. The intermediaries can present to ACTED teams the difficulties they meet and can suggest solutions they think best suit to their communities. These assessments within the communities, bringing together all actors of the operation (beneficiaries, intermediaries and ACTED teams), allow constructive exchanges which considerably improve the efficiency of the programs.

Most of the time, ACTED teams are satisfied with the results. “We improve fast and the efficiency of the distributions starts to be very interesting”, rejoices Björn. Nevertheless difficulties arise sometimes and have to be solved: “what is frustrating is that operations can not always be a 100% efficient, but it is part of the challenges of the job and it is our task to find solutions to solve these problems”.