Agency-driven and community-driven impact in livelihood recovery: Beneficiaries stories

This study aims to explore how agency-driven and community-driven approaches were perceived by the community following the 2018 Central Sulawesi Tsunami. A qualitative research method involving focus group interviews (FGI), interviews and participatory rural appraisal (PRA) was used to explore and capture community narratives and collective storytelling to produce a visual analysis of the community’s problem-solving strategy and management. The effectiveness of agency-driven and community-driven recovery approaches is a discoursive material that appeals to many disaster management practitioners, scholars, international donors or governments. Meanwhile, the community has never been part of this discourse as beneficiaries to obtain its perspective on both approaches. Loli Dondo village, which received agency-driven and community-driven livelihood recovery after the 2018 Central Sulawesi Tsunami, was purposively selected as the site of investigation.

Based on the results, the community-driven recovery approach fulfilled the community standards and provided more impact than its counterpart. Several essential viewpoints were underlined for all approaches as follows: (1) the agency’s transparency to the community about financial conditions, (2) communication and active community involvement and (3) preciseness of the aid to community needs. These elements are expected to improve the implementation of such recovery programmes, thereby increasing quality and accessibility. The insightful community storylines, experiences and reflection support in building a better practice of livelihood recovery approaches for beneficiaries and also contribute widely to their implementation according to the community’s perspective.