5. Emergencies within CARE’s strategic plan

Emergency response is a top priority within CARE’s 2007 strategic plan. The strategic plan commits CARE to strengthening emergency response capacities to ‘respond more effectively and comprehensively to humanitarian emergencies worldwide and thereby to increase the scope and impact of CI’s emergency programmes, as well as to strengthen donor funding and CI’s profile’ (CARE International Strategic Plan 2007- 2012).

The two specific objectives of CI’s emergency strategy are to:

  • establish across CI overall humanitarian policy and strategy that will guide the confederation’s response to humanitarian suffering
  • strengthen organisational capacities and capability in emergency response and preparedness.

The expected outcomes of this strategy are that:

  • CI’s response to humanitarian disaster will be more timely
  • the quality and accountability of CI’s response to disaster will increase
  • CI will become known for its competence in the three core sectors
  • CI’s emergency revenues will increase substantially
  • a significant portion of CI’s annual outlay on emergency capacity will be recovered.

Some of the key commitments under the strategy include:

  • Where present, CI will respond to all emergencies in operational areas within countries, and all major emergencies in the country.
  • Where CI is not present, or has limited presence, it will consider responding to all major emergencies, whether directly or through on-the-ground partners.
  • CARE will focus on and develop specialised competence in the following core sectors-food/food security, water and sanitation, and shelter.
  • Emergency response will be included as an integral part of CO and regional strategic planning.

A performance metrics system has been developed to measure CARE’s success against the strategy. Data from each emergency response will be measured in terms of timeliness, quality and accountability of response, competence in core sectors, emergency revenue trends-funding, and emergency revenue trends-emergency capacity.

For the full details of the emergency strategy and the performance metrics system please see the following annexes:

Annex 36.2          CARE’s Emergency strategy June 2006
Annex 36.3          CARE International strategic plan 2007-2012 (SD1: Emergency response & preparedness
Annex 36.4          Emergency strategy performance metrics system