Resilience policymaking in Nepal: giving voice to communities

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An intensive resilience policy-making process is currently underway in Nepal, a country with a recent history of conflict and disaster that also faces future risks resulting from environmental change. This ground-breaking project will utilise a participatory video (PV) approach to create new and potentially challenging interventions in that process, whilst simultaneously developing methods and approaches that could have broader applicability. Using PV - an innovative methodology that has successfully achieved policy impact elsewhere - we seek to address the gap that exists in Nepal between national-level resilience policy-making (undertaken with the support of international donors and experts) and community-level perceptions and expectations. In so doing, the project will seek to give those most-affected by the overlapping challenges of poverty, conflict and environmental change a powerful way to engage with - and potentially influence - high-level policymakers.In particular the project will examine:1. What are the study communities' own perceptions of the threats they face? Are these reflected in the views and perceptions of policymakers?2. How have the study communities faced previous challenges to their wellbeing? What adaptation strategies have they employed and what can be learned?3. What are the perceived/identified roles of government (national and local) vis a vis building community resilience? How effectively is government seen to be fulfilling those roles? Working in three communities alongside a well-established development NGO, small groups of residents will produce short films capturing their experiences and perceptions of risk and resilience that will then be shared and discussed with key audiences at the village, District and national levels. The overall aim is to facilitate and improve the sensitization of policymakers to community-level perceptions, thereby potentially opening up new policy directions, ideas and opportunities.