In the Shadow of Floods, A Different Strength Emerged: The Story of the BRAND Project

There is a kind of silence that comes after the floodwaters recede. Not the stillness of safety, but the hush of uncertainty. In the flood-ravaged lands of Dadu and Mirpur Khas, silence often followed disaster, not recovery. After 2022, that silence stretched long. Families who had rebuilt before were now too weary to try again. The land cracked under the heat. The sky held no promise. Institutions tasked with rescue and relief were themselves unsure waiting on alerts, approvals, anything that might signal the next move. But nature gave no such warnings, only water, wind, and waves.

In such a context, where systems seemed as fragile as the shelters washed away, the BRAND Project began not with declarations, but with listening. It asked not only what happened, but why were we unprepared again?And most importantly, how can we prepare differently this time?

This project, a collaboration between Welthungerhilfe, Cesvi, and FRDP, was never just about disasters. It was about what happens after the disaster, when the television crews leave and only the debris remains. It asked: how do we build something that can bend with the storm and not break?

What the BRAND Project restored was not simply floodgates or stockpiles it restored a sense of readiness. It did not offer rescue, but responsibility to institutions, to media, to academia, and to communities. And in doing so, it slowly changed the rhythm of disaster response in Sindh.

In Dadu, where floodwaters once arrived without warning, now 16 water gauge poles rise quietly from riverbeds not monuments, but signals. They speak the language of prevention. Farmers glance at them before setting out. Village elders read them like the sky. Where once the alarm came too late, now it comes early enough to matter.

The BRAND Project’s work in planning was not simply about documents, but rehearsals for reality. Provincial Disaster Response Plans, Monsoon Contingency Plans for Dadu and Mirpur Khas, and Taluka-level strategies became more than paperwork they became tools, ready to be used when the clouds gather again.

But the most quiet, transformative work happened in the spaces between institutions where things usually fall apart. At universities, the project helped birth new courses, not just lectures but the beginning of a new generation of climate thinkers,new topics were agreed for researches. In newsrooms, it trained media not only to report disasters, but to shape preparedness through public awareness. In communities, it seeded something more enduring than aid: the belief that response starts with readiness, not reaction.

When the Crisis Modifier released cash to 1,060 vulnerable families in Dadu, it wasn’t charity it was a strategy. Families who once fled with nothing now had the means to secure essentials, protect livestock, even relocate in time. The money came not as a gift, but as trust in people’s ability to decide what they needed most.

Women, often sidelined in such processes, became not just recipients, but responders. They attended planning sessions, managed preparedness kits, and asked the kind of questions that shift entire systems: “How will the warning reach us first?”, “What if the school becomes a safe centre?”, “Who do we call if the embankment starts to crack?”

There were no grand unveilings. The BRAND Project’s success cannot be seen in a single photograph. Its impact is felt in the changed conversations inside government offices, and policy corridors, in the questions raised during workshops with parliamentarians, and in the provincial conference halls where, for the first time, disatser risk financing,anticipatory actions and risk reduction was discussed as part of everyday governance, not only crisis management.

The land is still vulnerable. The heat still comes, uninvited. The floods will likely return. But this time, people won’t be waiting in borrowed spaces. They will already be moving with knowledge, with plans, and with the authority to act.

The BRAND Project is not just a project it is a reminder. That resilience is not built after the storm it is built between them. And that once communities, institutions, and individuals are trusted with the strategies, they remember how to begin again not as victims, but as custodians of their own safety.