Janardhan Rao, Mercy Corps Country Director in South Sudan, published an opinion piece in The New Humanitarian that describes findings from research that Feinstein conducted with Mercy Corps. He urges humanitarians in South Sudan to adapt their thinking to the South Sudanese context.

“South Sudan is a collective society, but currently the way much aid is delivered mirrors how Western donors think and is often modeled on their own societies. Organizations tend to work with individuals or households, but in the South Sudan context, everything is communal. Aid actors need to shift our Western notions of individual and household vulnerability to consider our response from a collective perspective.”

Rao’s article is based on the Feinstein  project Social Connectedness, Livelihoods, and Resilience in Complex Emergencies. The research he references was written by Alex Humphrey, Vaidehi Krishnan, and Roxani Krystalli.