A. Situation analysis
Description of the disaster From December 2014, Zimbabwe experienced continuous heavy rainfall, which led to widespread flooding across the country, with the worst affected provinces including: Manicaland, Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland East, Mashonaland West and Midlands. According to preliminary assessments, approximately 6,000 people (1,200 households) were affected, of which 2,500 people (500 households) were identified as in urgent need of assistance.
Many houses collapsed due to flooding, belongings were washed away including food and livelihoods items, and water and sanitation infrastructures contaminated.
In January 2015, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) released CHF 192,292 from the Disaster Relief and Emergency Fund (DREF) to support the Zimbabwe Red Cross respond to the immediate needs of the affected population, with emergency food, relief, shelter assistance, water, sanitation and hygiene promotion in Manicaland, Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland East, Mashonaland West and Midlands provinces; over a period of three months. 98 per cent of the activities have been completed.
An extension of one month was approved in order to carry out a DREF operational review/lessons learned exercise. This operational review/lessons learnt was originally intended to be carried out the week commencing 22 March 2015,however it had to be postponed until the 20 April 2015. This was due to unavailable resources from ZRCS and ODK equipment that was required to carry out beneficiary satisfaction survey.
The IFRC zone office and southern Africa regional office (SARO) developed a Terms of Reference and team members were identified from Disaster Management and PMER units. A representative from British Red Cross also participated in this exercise. As part of the operational review/lessons learnt, refresher training on the use of ODK technologies for ZRCS volunteers was done in the field a day before the exercise, thus it was used to carry out the beneficiary satisfaction survey. The DREF operation was completed by 12 May 2015.
This DREF was partially replenished by DG ECHO.The major donors and partners of the DREF included the Red Cross Societies and governments of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the USA, as well as DG ECHO, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) the Medtronic, Zurich and Coca Cola Foundations.
The IFRC, on behalf of the Zimbabwe Red Cross Society would like to extend many thanks to all partners for their generous contributions.