Embarking on the FbF journey in MENA – FbF kick-off workshop in Morocco

As the first National Society in MENA to start a Forecast-based Financing (FbF) project, the Moroccan Red Crescent (MRC) together with the German Red Cross (GRC) kick-started the project with a 4-days workshop in September in Mehdia (Morocco).

The Moroccan Red Crescent (MRC) has been long interested in FbF and will now dive into forecasts, early actions and trigger modelling amongst other steps of FbF. The focus will be on anticipating cold waves, which are a great risk to people and livestock in Morocco's remote mountain regions.

As a first step, with the support of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), a Preparedness for Effective Response (PER)workshop was held in which MRC staff conducted a self-critical analysis of whether MRC has the capacity to act early and provide effective humanitarian assistance before and in the event of a disaster. The FbF project aims at supporting the priorities which have been identified as key for MRC and the implementation of the project.

In a second step, a kick-off workshop on the methodology of anticipatory action was conducted from 17-20 September with the MRC and the support of technical managers from the GRC headquarters and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre. Key learnings from the workshop were the importance of information management of the required data, the role of impact-based forecasting and methods for data collection. Another example of a cold wave Early Action Protocol (EAP) was presented and the challenges of developing them, but also the learnings were discussed.

The team is now ready to finetune the Action Plan and start with the implementation of the project before the cold season in the coming winter.