Navigating an Economic Crisis in Sri Lanka with Continuous Learning

Sri Lanka is facing an unprecedented political and economic crisis with a lack of access to basic needs, daily power outages, and regular protests by citizens expressing frustration and demanding change. The SCORE activity was designed and implemented in 2018 with the overall purpose of strengthening Sri Lankan efforts to advance social cohesion and reconciliation and support Sri Lankan-led efforts to build a more inclusive and resilient society. As the current economic crisis began to impact implementation, SCORE faced new challenges which shifted focus from long-term post-conflict recovery more immediate response. 

To undertake these changes, the SCORE team relied heavily on Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) to gather learnings around the current crisis to understand if a change in the strategic direction was needed, identify opportunities in a challenging environment and leverage them to support SCORE objectives within the framework of the project, and to inform possible adaptations to the SCORE work plan. CLA allowed SCORE to adapt with less difficulty and more precision to support communities to address recommendations based on key findings together with staff and stakeholders in the economic crisis while still keeping an eye on the broader project goal of strengthening social cohesion in Sri Lanka.