Philippines

With the aim of enhancing community resilience, B-READY targeted 1,959 households in 5 communities of the Municipality of Salcedo in Eastern Samar. B-READY 1 build a forecast model using both global data and local knowledge to create the most complete picture of the potential impacts of these floods so to develop community-based triggers, such as heavy rain and high water-levels. Local stakeholders and financial service provider (FSPs) executed pre-emptive cash transfers twice during the first and the second phase. B-READY 2 is a continuing undertaking of B-READY 1 with the core objective of scaling up and expanding the disaster preparedness capacity of vulnerable communities towards institutionalizing the digital forecast-based pre-emptive cash transfer as part of the anticipatory actions of local humanitarian actors and local government to prepare and mitigate the disaster impact.

Those two phases allowed the population to acquire knowledge on the benefits and management of financial products and literacy and gained increased access to financial services like savings and mobile accounts. As a result, the local government, FSPs and local NGOs are practicing safe, efficient and transparent cash transfers before the impact of a disaster. The successes of those phases lied on the community-led approach investing in preparation actions and inclusive forecasting and the work undertaken with private companies. 

The B-READY project was able to promote more effective mitigation by helping increase the level of awareness and practice of beneficiaries in disaster preparedness. It has reinforced earlier findings that disaster preparedness financing is more valuable than post-disaster response in terms of saving lives and property. It has also brought to the surface areas for improvement particularly in ensuring sustainability through mainstreaming and upscaling, broader adoption by the national government and LGUs, financial sustainability, and support from other sectors at the local, national and global levels.