Evaluation of DEC-funded COVID-19 interventions in Bangladesh

The British Red Cross (BRC) received funding from the UK’s Disasters Emergency Committee’s (DEC’s) Covid-19 Appeal from August 2020 to January 2021 (Phase 1) and, again, from February 2021 to July 2022 (Phase 2), to support activities in five countries, of which one was Bangladesh, a country that has received more than 740,000 people fleeing unrest in neighbouring Myanmar since 2017.

Funding from DEC has supported different components of the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society (BDRCS’) Covid-19 response and recovery operations in Cox’s Bazar, as follows:
• the health component of the BDRCS Covid-19 Plan of Action, targeting guest communities in specific camps in Cox’s Bazar;
• a pre-existing BRC-BDRCS Resilience Programme in Teknaf Upazila, funding livelihoods, WASH and health interventions; and
• Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)-related activities targeting guest communities in Camp 18, as part of a consortium between the Swedish Red Cross (SweRC), BDRCS and BRC.

The purpose of this independent end of project evaluation was to evaluate, summarise and generate lessons on both service quality and the impacts implemented in response to Covid-19 in Cox’s Bazar and Teknaf Upazila, with particular emphasis on the approaches and implementation support provided by the BDRCS in its auxiliary role to the government. The uniqueness of this pandemic – including the responses taken – means that there is a great deal of learning potential from this, in particular to understand what it actually takes for a National Society (already engaged with many other programmes) to adjust to the needs and priorities of an event such as this.