Community Mobilization Programming Guidelines

Guidelines for community mobilization programming developed by the American Red Cross. The guidelines were developed based on the results of a knowledge audit conducted with the American Red Cross Internal Services Department team with regional program officers, Quality and Learning Advisors and field delegates. 

The guidelines recognize that a resilient community is one that possesses the physical, psychological, social, and economic capacity to withstand, quickly adapt to, and successfully recover from a disaster. While the programs may focus on different sectors such as Health, HIV/AIDS, Water and Sanitation, Sheltering or an integrated approach, each program requires some level of community mobilization, particularly for sustainability reasons. 

While the guidelines were designed specifically to support American Red Cross teams to provide technical assistance to other Red Cross Red Crescent National Societies to facilitate development of more resilient communities in a variety of contexts that may include, disaster affected communities, refugee camps and other communities that are vulnerable to a potential disaster in both rural and urban contexts, the tools and approaches outlined in the guidelines also have a wider relevance and can be adapted to other contexts.

American Red Cross, August 2014.