Humanitarian Funding Forecast is a website that aims to illuminate the hidden stories in humanitarian funding.
The “What”and the “Why”
There’s a few parts to this. First, the stories. We think that there’s a bunch of really interesting stories about where funding comes from, where it goes, and the features of the humanitarian funding system. But we need to delve into the data to illuminate what those stories are. Secondly, the forecasts. With an idea about what could be in the year ahead, we can make evidence-based decisions today. The forecasts could be useful for resource allocation, advocacy, and programme planning. But we’d love to hear from you how you use the forecast, please let us know via the Contact Us page. Thirdly, the indexes. These are a relatively new addition to the site but we think can provide a useful resource to humanitarians to monitor funding trends in a consistent manner over time.
There’s also another, greater “why”, probably another couple of levels up if we were writing the logframe of why to create the site. Funding is at the heart of a humanitarian system valued at around $20bn in 2021. No funding equals no projects. No projects equals no life saving or life sustaining assistance in terms of crisis. Understanding funding helps us understand who benefits from the humanitarian system, and who is left behind. It helps us understand who has power, and who doesn’t. In essence, understanding humanitarian funding is understanding humanitarianism.
The “For Whom”
For anyone and everyone. We’re still trying to understand whether the site will be useful in the long term, who all the end users are, and how they are using it. Please get in touch over on the Contact Us page – let us know who you are and why the website has been useful for you.
The “Who”
Mike Pearson
Creator of Humanitarian Funding Forecast
Set up as partly “a playground for data and stories”, partly “I’m sure there are untold stories in the funding data”, and partly “something to during three lockdowns”, the website was created by Mike during the tail-end of 2020. Mike was most recently an Information Management Specialist at the Global Child Protection Area of Responsibility, which is part of the Global Protection Cluster. Before this, Mike worked with Street Child, setting up programmes and operations in Bangladesh as their Bangladesh Programme Manager, and has worked at Plan International as well as an Organisational Analyst. There are some other smaller side gigs, including consultancies and volunteering roles.
More than anything else this has been a great opportunity to learn new things. That includes using R to create cool visualisations, learning more about the humanitarian system across all sectors, and learning to build a website from the ground up.
If you are interested in getting involved in the website, please use the Contact page to reach out.