Crowdsourced Synthesis of Lessons Learned during past crisis response including COVID-19

This Synthesis of Lessons Learned, developed by the Evaluation Unit of the UNICEF Regional Office for West and Central Africa (WCARO) between April and May 2020, is aimed at all partners and organizations, both within and outside of the West and Central Africa region, who intend to both strengthen their current COVID-19 response and improve their capabilities to respond to similar crises in the future.

This is a living document: while the Synthesis, in its current version, intends to be used as a key reference for all actors involved in the COVID-19 response, readers are free to add new content to it in real time (“crowdsourcing”). Therefore, new Lessons Learned suggested by readers could be integrated into the text of the document at any point in time as long as they meet three key criteria:

• They are relevant to the “crisis response” focus of the synthesis;
• They are “evidence based”;
• The related sources are “adequately referenced”.

This document has a global scope, too: nearly half of the Lessons Learned presented in this Synthesis build on the experiences developed in responding to crises in West and Central Africa. However, the rest of the Lessons Learned discussed in this document are drawn from the experiences of “crisis responders” in other regions of the world. Therefore, regardless of the region where readers are based, anyone is encouraged to share their Lessons Learned.