Climate Resilient Clean City (3C)

Narrative Summary

BDRCS recognizes the growing urban pressures and seeks to develop a strategic approach to urban programming. Its RCRC Movement partners and donors are similarly aware of urban opportunities and challenges. While the urban realm features countless opportunities for more systematic and expanded volunteer management and resource development, urban BDRCS units require managerial capacity support to pursue long-term engagement with ULBs.

The “Climate Resilient Clean Cities” project will build on successful initiatives and lessons learned from the previous urban project, 440525 Urban Empowerment and Resilience. Recognizing that collaboration with partners from government and private institutions, and the role of RCRC Movement and BDRCS as auxiliary to government is the key to addressing the multitude of risks and hazards to communities within the ever-increasingly urban population of Bangladesh, this connectedness will be a key success factor for project performance and sustainability. Movement partners and BDRCS will commit to supporting, activating, and expanding the urban desk’s advocacy role. The goal is to move from an individually funded and siloed urban project to a broader BDRCS-led urban project that strengthens linkages between BDRCS Units, HQ, and partners.

Co-financing initiatives with city corporations and communities in the previous urban project illustrated willingness and commitment; this project will further expand on this modality, seeking greater ownership by the government and the community, acting as an enabler to bring various stakeholders together in a coordinated and cohesive manner.

It also recognizes the position of BDRCS as an auxiliary to the government and as a member of the Disaster Management Committees. Strengthening this role, particularly with its existing Unit Structure, building the unit capacity to raise localized funds and advocate for government funding allocations, along with playing the role of connecting communities and LGIs in, planning, and responding to climate-induced events, will leverage the position of the Units through this project assessment.

The flexibility and innovation of the BDRCS-SRC collaboration will essentially recognize urban needs beyond the scope and funding of this project. Building on pilot initiatives, the project will raise awareness and knowledge through urban platforms as an enabler to upscale and replicate.

Finally, the goal or long-term vision is to have BDRCS recognized and acknowledged as a leader in addressing the challenges faced in increasing urbanization in Bangladesh, championing the rights of the most vulnerable through tailored and scalable interventions.

Geographical location/map

BDRCS followed a rigorous process in selecting the project locations. The Urban working group considered the following key documents and processes while selecting the project location:

• BDRCS’s draft Urban Strategy: As defined in the draft urban strategy (attached as Annex 1), all 12 city corporations were categorized as high, medium, and low priority, considering the city’s poverty rate, vulnerability to disasters and hazards, climate migration, community-led initiatives, and readiness for Intervention.
• Avoid duplication- BDRCS avoided the districts with ongoing projects supported by other PNSs/IFRC.
• Commitment of city corporations to engage and contribute through resources to the project
• Capacity of the Units to be enablers to engage with government authorities and communities
• Furthermore, BDRCS also considered the Climate Vulnerability Index (Source: LGED)

Intervention Logic and Result Framework

Beneficiaries

This project has three (03) distinct target categories of beneficiaries. All are interlinked but require different engagement strategies and coaching levels. Whilst not in a prioritization order, they are:

• The BDRCS Units (branches) in Gazipur and Khulna interface with the city corporation and the communities. As mentioned above, there is already a technical and line management connection between the BDRCS NHQ and the Units, ensuring an approach that is as local as possible but also has the potential to scale up across other geographic locations.
• The second are the City Corporations in Gazipur and Khulna. Through this project, city corporations will be equipped with the necessary tools and skills to effectively plan and deliver services to the communities in DRR, CCA, and resilience building.
• The third are the slum dwellers of the 4 selected communities in Gazipur City and Khulna City. The following table shows the household and population information of the selected slums.

City Corporation	Ward No.	# of Household in Ward	# of Household in Slums	# of Household (Targeted)	# of Population (Targeted)
					Male	Female	Total
Gazipur	34	8500	609	609	1523	1569	3092
	55	20000	16280	1450	2857	2943	5800
Khulna	21	6450	4250	925	2332	2310	4642
	22	3971	2382	1510	3585	4022	7607
Total		38921	23521	4494	10297	10844	21141

Within this informal settlement group, the project will take into consideration gender relevance: i) recognizing that women and men have different needs, ii) understanding that women tend to have more limited access to information and more limited opportunities to participate, and iii) designing project interventions to ensure that men and women benefit from them equally and that neither group is inadvertently disadvantaged or ignored.

Participation

SRC and BDRCS will regularly review the service provision and adjust when required. Recognizing that active stakeholder participation is essential for project success, emphasis will be given to ensuring active involvement from communities, city corporations, and BDRCS units throughout the project lifecycle, from design to implementation.

Participation of women and other excluded groups: Consistent generation of gender, age-segregated data, and disability information in applicable cases will be practiced in tracking the engagement of traditionally excluded groups with project-supported activities. This will inform the deepening of social mobilization strategies to ensure the inclusion of marginalized and disadvantaged groups in project-supported actions. Women’s representation in City and Ward level institutions will be ensured both at the membership and leadership levels.

Democratic participation at the community level: During the project design phase, rapid assessments were conducted to understand specific vulnerabilities and needs. Through focus group discussions, the participation of various stakeholders was ensured. In the implementation phase, selected slum communities will be organized into groups and sub-groups. Awareness-raising activities will be conducted through these groups, and they will also participate in the decision-making process for selecting beneficiaries and executing community-led interventions. Additionally, representatives selected from these groups will participate in the Ward Disaster Management Committee (WDMC), ensuring community connectivity with city authorities.

Volunteer Participation: BDRCS will support the establishment of a strong cadre of community volunteers (apart from branch-level RCYs). Evidence from the previous phases reveals that they command greater acceptance and trust of the community, enabling transparent communication and higher engagement with project activities. In addition, the mediation of community volunteers could better facilitate connectedness with external entities. Gender parity amongst the cadre of volunteers has a proven value and shall be ensured in the current phase.

GoB/City Corporation level Participation.

City Corporation’s engagement was ensured from the very beginning. The City Corporation actively participated in selecting the targeted wards. During implementation, the City Corporation’s active involvement will be ensured by engaging them in city-level and ward-level planning. Additionally, the City Corporation will facilitate the finances to the disaster management plan and climate action plan developed by the City Corporation and ward-level disaster management committees. It was evident from the previous phase that the City Corporation participated more actively once they were engaged in the planning process and co-financed community initiatives.

Branch-level participation: Units will participate and serve as key actors in implementing the project at the city level. Under the leadership of the unit secretary, BDRCS representatives in different DMCs are the driving forces behind the implementation of this project. Additionally, volunteers will be engaged throughout the process. To expand BDRCS services, RCY members will be appointed from respective targeted communities. The project will provide capacity-building training to BDRCS representatives in DMCs and volunteers to facilitate the WDMCs and CCDMCs in achieving the desired outcomes. Furthermore, the project will facilitate units to co-fund certain community initiatives to enhance their ownership.

The Community Engagement and Accountability (CEA) mechanism will be integral to the project, striving to meet the communities’ needs meaningfully and continually reflecting upon conflict-sensitive approaches and interventions. Concrete actions include resilience star exercises, which will be carried out in every community – a first step towards building relationships of trust and enabling communities to assess their own strengths and weaknesses as a basis for determining areas of needs and interest for intervention. A cost-sharing modality between the project, LGIs, and beneficiaries will be applied for all small-scale and HH-level mitigation measures in line with the RRAPs.

Safeguarding measures will keep people safe from any form of harm caused by the misuse of power by ensuring that the staff, volunteers, projects, and communications do no harm to children and adults or expose them to abuse or exploitation.