By Juliet Millican
Re-alliance is a coalition of field practitioners, researchers, educators, community leaders and humanitarian and development workers, sharing skills and experience to grow the influence and impact of regenerative development in the humanitarian field.
As levels of disaster and migration intensify, it is becoming ever more important to work in ways that are climate sensitive and to skill up those at every level to respond. We support community organisations who are often first on the scene in an emergency and best placed to understand the social and environmental context, and national and international NGOs who are beginning to recognise the importance of environmentally sensitive and locally-led approaches.
We run regular meetings, webinars, podcasts and peer learning circles and act in a brokering and advisory capacity to larger organisations, linking them with practitioners, trainers or researchers on the ground.
We have run projects with Malteser International (developing home, community and school gardens in camps in N.W. Syria), with Cafod (developing an agroecology hub in SE Asia and the Middle East,) with Regenerosity (our US based sister organisation, running peer learning circles for regenerative practitioners in East Africa and India) and are awaiting the outcome of a tender for work with the Norwegian Refugee Council on mitigating the environmental impacts of humanitarian response.
We were funded by LUSH in 2020 to run a film competition for short films short by partners on a mobile phone, and plan to host a second in 2023.
We are currently involved in a 3-year initiative to pilot regenerative innovations in camps, settlements or contexts of urban displacement, funding partners to trial these and to work with us to produce field level and online materials. So far, we have run projects on grey water use, WASH solutions, food growing (hydroponics, roof gardens) and community composting.
A second round of project applications closes on 31st July 2023 and is prioritising innovations in mushroom growing, communications/energy generation, social cohesion and collaborative camp design. We would welcome applications from existing and potential new members. Materials produced as a result will be hosted on our website as well as with other international publishers and form part of an online course in regenerative response due to be completed in 2025/6.