Strengthening aid accountability: Impact assessment of accountability initiatives following the Nepal earthquakes

The 2015 earthquakes in Nepal caused massive devastation, but also mobilized major aid efforts. Innovative GIS-mapping tools using mobile technologies (such as QuakeMap1) were
adopted to identify community needs. An important drawback of these tools is that they remain inaccessible to communities where connectivity is weak or absent. In response, the Nepalese social enterprise Accountability Lab2established ‘mobile citizens helpdesks’, whereby volunteers map where aid efforts are needed, where these have been delivered, and which blank spots remain, combining handheld devices, community radio and community centers. However, a year on, it remains unclear to what extent these efforts actually impacted affected communities and actual accountability of aid to vulnerable communities remains unclear.
This project seeks to respond to this need, toward demarcating reliable impact indicators, implementing these, and developing possible improvements to ensure optimal accountability of aid efforts that reach the most vulnerable affected communities. Drawing on a social science perspective, the project will demarcate what we need to know in order to conduct a reliable impact study, studying existing data in terms of where aid efforts have been targeted and how/why these have or have not realized their aims, and ensuring sufficient information is generated during data collection. We aim at developing innovative and relevant interfaces, for example by developing voicebased and mobile interfaces.
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