CARE's Strategy And Proposed Role In Responding To The Crisis

Goal

Establish strong partnerships with the Government of Kenya, the Kenya Red Cross Society, grass roots civil society organisations, the UN and other international organisations for establishing networks that effectively target and provide humanitarian assistance to highly vulnerable people embedded in impoverished conflict affected populations, which includes displaced people in host family settings, as well as displaced people in camp settings—all in a manner that promotes peaceful reconciliation and co-existence of different ethnic groups.

Objectives

1. Provide essential, life saving and life enhancing support in such areas as water, food, shelter and essential supplies to up to 150,000 highly vulnerable poor embedded in conflict affected populations and within internally displacement camp settings.
2. Provide early recovery support for 50,000 highly vulnerable rural and urban poor embedded in conflict affected areas

 The target groups will be displaced people in camp settings and highly vulnerable people embedded in conflict affected rural and urban areas (e.g. child and female headed households, OVC, elderly headed households with OVC, PLWHA, displaced in host family settings etc.). 

The target geographic regions will be the informal settlements of Nairobi and Kisumu and the rural areas of Nyanza Province.

Description of Contingency Planning and Emergency Preparedness

As indicated earlier, CARE Kenya has a very good capacity in terms of emergency response programming and support. Therefore, the CO is able to undertake an emergency response given the security of staff is ensured.

CARE has established a crisis management team (CARE Kenya, Somalia and RMU) in order to provide guidance on staff safety and security during the different phases and scenarios of the crisis.

The CO has updated safety and security contingency plans for all its sub-offices and for the informal settlements of Nairobi and Kisumu.  CARE Kenya's security officer maintains ongoing contact with safety and security focal persons for each operational area.  The CO has an SMS distribution system that allows the security officer to widely disseminate immediate security alerts to staff. 

 The CO has full time security officers in Nairobi and Kisumu, who carry out field trips to verify the security of Nairobi, Kisumu and rural Nyanza distribution points and brief the assessment/distribution teams before they go to the field. 

Norman Sheehan, a security specialist under CISSU, visited the CO in Jan and worked with CARE Kenya's security officer to review and upgrade the CO's safety and security for its humanitarian response.  Together, they completed standard operating procedures (SOPs) for site selection and distribution to Nairobi and Kisumu's targeted informal settlements.  They developed a plan to upgrade the CO's VHF/HF communication systems for Nairobi and Kisumu.  Finally, they developed a plan to operationalise the evacuation plan for all three CARE offices in-country.  CARE USA's Regional Security Advisor for Africa has taken the lead for finalising the evacuation plan for the other two offices in Nairobi (CARE SSS and ECARMU) and is overseeing these offices' planning team who are detailing the plan's operationalisation.