ABSTRACT
Humanitarian and development practitioners and donors increasingly regard resilience as a central
objective and a fundamental facet of the development path of communities and countries.
Between 2012 and 2013, a consortium of European non-governmental organisations of the ACT
Alliance set out to strengthen local capacities for enhancing resilience in eight disaster prone
countries: a European Union Aid Volunteers Pilot project led by the Inter-Church Organisation
for Development Cooperation (ICCO Cooperation). Since resilience is increasingly becoming a
central focus of aid organisations, this chapter aims to share lessons that were learned through this
project. The first is that multiple interpretations of resilience are being used. This causes confusion
amongst practitioners and can result in resilience becoming an empty concept. The second lesson
relates to the potential that ‘resilience approaches’ have to bridge different working fields, where
segregated policy and funding architecture, and a lack of unified tools often impede integration.
Third, the motivation behind adopting a ‘resilience approach’ was at times found to be ques-
tionable. Fourth, the cases from the eight countries show gaps in organisational and community
knowledge, skills, capacities and resources that can hinder enhancing resilience. These gaps signal
the need for institutional and governmental commitment and for organisations to network and
form partnerships with others.
