Opportunity Knocks: Realising the potential of partnerships in the Nepal earthquake response

Opportunity Knocks

The Opportunity Knocks report was commissioned by a consortium of UK-based international non-governmental organisations, which included ActionAid, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Oxfam GB, CARE, and Tearfund.

In the Oxford online dictionary, the definition of 'opportunity knocks’ is given as ‘a chance of success occurs’1 and this is true of partnership in the Nepal earthquake response: for the first time in Nepal and for one of the first times in response to a large-scale disaster, the international humanitarian community have been united in their early adoption of partnership as the dominant modality of providing relief and recovery. At the time of writing, the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) has acknowledged the importance of using and not replacing local capacity, and it is hoped that the findings from this study will provide practical support to efforts to ‘localise’ humanitarian response.

Abstract
This report is part of a series of studies originally commissioned by five UK development and humanitarian agencies (ActionAid, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Oxfam and Tearfund) that have been collaborating since early 2012 to document and research partnership experiences with local actors in humanitarian responses.E.