Building Resilience to Recurrent Crisis
USAID Policy and Program Guidance
This policy and program guidance provides an operational vision for the Agency intended to increase our effectiveness. This guidance will help us draw important lessons from the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, where heightened international attention and strong leadership have created opportunities to innovate and build resilience. Although the actions required to build resilience are likely to look different in different contexts that face unique shocks and stresses, our experience in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel will provide key insights as we expand our focus to other areas.
While the concept of resilience has broad applicability to many of the environments in which our Agency works, this guidance is specifically focused on areas where chronic poverty intersects with shocks and stresses to produce recurrent crises and undermine development gains. In these places, we must increase adaptive capacity – the ability to respond quickly and effectively to new circumstances – and improve the ability to address and reduce risk.