The STRESS process at Mercy Corps

A Strategic Resilience Assessment (STRESS) is a methodology for applying a resilience lens to strategy development or long-term program design. It builds an understanding of the dynamic social, ecological and economic systems within which communities are embedded. Using STRESS, Mercy Corps teams, partners and stakeholders learn to analyze their socio-ecological contexts in order to design and develop long-term, measurable resilience strategies. Through a series of STRESS workshops and collaboration with a wide range of actors, Mercy Corps creates a cohesive strategy for the places where we are engaged and established measurable theories of change that become guidelines for the implementation of interconnected programs. Mercy Corps is using STRESS to develop resilience focused country strategies, design new long-term programs, and re-energize existing programs using a resilience lens.