To meet the strategic commitment of becoming more responsive to clients – people affected by conflict and disaster around the world – the International Rescue Committee (IRC) launched the Client Voice and Choice Initiative (CVC) in April 2015. Under this initiative funded by DFID, the IRC partnered with Ground Truth to help it to improve programming and business practices by bringing client perspectives more systematically into decision-making calculations.

The CVC initiative was piloted in four different countries and humanitarian settings: South Sudan, Syria, Kenya, and Greece. In each of these countries, IRC and Ground Truth established a mechanism to regularly collect and respond to feedback from clients about IRC’s. 

Close analysis of key issues on how the listening process and the collected data was used to course correct as well as IRC staff’s feedback on their experience, alongside perceived improvements in programme responsiveness by clients themselves, all contributed to project learning. The intent was to capture learning from the pilots to inform the CVC’s initiative’s recommendations on how the IRC may further and better embed client responsive practices into its programming. Relevant learning has been shared across the humanitarian sector.