MERCY CORPS

Who are the people you serve with your mission?

Mercy Corps supports communities - and the most marginalized within them - to emerge from crisis in the face of conflict and climate change and build towards a more inclusive, resilient future. We partner with and support those who are systematically marginalized, those living at risk of extreme poverty, and those most affected by conflict and climate change.

How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?

To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals, other

What significant change resulted from feedback?

To ensure the safety, security and empowerment of program participants, all programs are required to set up three feedback channels as a component of Mercy Corps’ Community Accountability Reporting Mechanisms (CARM) policy for all community members to provide feedback, suggestions, complaints and concerns in a manner that is safe, confidential, transparent and accessible, informing both programmatic and safeguarding adaptations. In one program in Indonesia, for example, community feedback demonstrated that staff and partners in one specific geographic area were not following COVID protocols. This allowed us to follow up in that specific geographic area, provide refresher training, and bolster COVID protocols in line with those being followed by the broader program.

Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?

We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We take steps to get feedback from marginalized or under-represented people, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on demographics (e.g., race, age, gender, etc.), We look for patterns in feedback based on people’s interactions with us (e.g., site, frequency of service, etc.), We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive, We tell the people who gave us feedback how we acted on their feedback, We ask the people who gave us feedback how well they think we responded

What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?

We don't have any major challenges to collecting feedback