Building on lessons learned from the 2010 earthquake and 2016 hurricane responses, the United Nations family and partners teamed up to accelerate relief and recovery efforts. As a member of UNDP’s pool of SURGE Advisors, Nermine Mohamed Wally arrived to support the UNDP Haiti team in coordinating its response.

“In three days, we were able to visit three departments and eight communities most affected by the earthquake,” she recalls.

“When I spoke with people who lost their homes, I was struck by their will to stand up and regain their lives — many were already working to repair or rebuild.”

Tilini Subodha Kuruppu Arachchige also joined the mission, traveling from Kabul to Kandahar to meet the new authorities and connect with other stakeholders, including women leaders, and set up new programmes.

“We were asked to be careful of unexploded ordnance, the reality of which became apparent as we had to drive over crevasses where previous explosions had done their damage,” she says

Leading a SURGE team days after the storm, UNDP Resident Representative Denise E. Antonio reiterated the Government’s call for resilient recovery based on “building back better”.

 “We must prepare for what is fast becoming the new norm – increasingly powerful and destructive storms that illustrate the harsh reality of climate change,” she said.

UNDP partnered with local organizations and the Government to get critical “build better” knowledge into the hands of the people. It implemented a cash-for-work programme to clean up debris and provided small grants to help small and medium-sized businesses get back on their feet. 

Almost three years later, "The stage is now being set for a hurricane resilient future for The Bahamas,” Antonio says.

“A month into my mission… I got another call from New York. I was being sent to Mozambique.”

 In Mozambique, his mission was to support the growing number of people displaced by militancy and to promote stability. The team identified the remote Macomia District as a priority area. But getting there was complicated by deteriorating security conditions.

 “On our third attempt, we finally got the clearance for a one-day visit — only in armoured vehicles.”

In Ukraine and elsewhere, UNDP’s humanitarian response relies on partnerships with local organizations and citizens, who know their communities best. Mykola Nadulichnyi is founder of an NGO promoting the inclusion of people with disabilities in Ukrainian society. The war forced him to flee his home in eastern Ukraine, making the trek to the western city of Lviv, close to the Polish border.

“We stopped in Lviv district and understood we could not sit on our hands, that people in the east were starving,” Mykola says. “They needed support. So, we decided to shift to humanitarian help.”

In times of crisis, volunteers are among the first to take critical action on the ground. Under the UNV-UNDP Tandem Teams, UN Volunteers work together with international experts, local staff and SURGE Advisors responding to the pandemic, environmental disasters and human-induced crises.

Tandem Teams bring together local knowledge and insights of national and international volunteers. In 2021, 38 UN Volunteers were deployed across the globe in UNV-UNDP tandem initiatives.