The Nepal Urban Resilience Program (NURP) is a five-year program (2019-2024) funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office of the United Kingdom Government (FCDO) to support Nepal’s federal and local governments in strengthening the resilience of growing urban areas to natural disasters through improved building, planning and services.  NURP supports the Government of Nepal’s (GoN) efforts to ensure more resilient urban areas.

NURP has assigned SWN to undertake a detailed economic and social assessment and baseline study on how COVID-19 pandemic has affected three Municipalities currently covered by NURP in key areas of economic enterprises (formal and informal),  individual households with focus on the women and men from the vulnerable groups. Assess the key economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on these respondents. The assessment will involve:

• Identifying barriers to economic recovery and employment opportunities following the recent COVID-19 outbreak, and
• Identify potential interventions to address impacts and promote inclusive local economic development

SWN carries out the following activities to meet stated objectives:

• Refinement of the survey tools and questionnaires.
• Develop plan of the processes and systems for data gathering, data cleaning, and analysis.
• Provide training to the field researchers on study tools
• Collect qualitative and quantitate data from Households, formal and informal business enterprises
• Undertake detailed analysis of the findings
• Present preliminary findings to ICF
• Submit Report with all data set collected during the assessment,

The assignment envisages establishing baseline information for NURP on outcome indicators. The outputs of the assignment are detailed understanding of the impact from COVID on the formal and informal enterprises and the subsequent needs to recover them; impact on the individual household particularly with vulnerability, etc.

NURP, COVID -19, impact and  need assessment, formal and informal enterprises