A fourth winter package

The fourth winter response was smaller than earlier ones and better designed, and the second fact is partly a consequence of the first.

What the package consisted of

Cash transfers timed to the start of the heating season, sized to cover the seasonal increase in a household's costs rather than the whole cost.

Household energy items where the grid is unreliable: power banks, small solar chargers, efficient heaters, and generators at community rather than household level, because a shared generator serves fifty people and a household one serves four.

Repair of windows, roofs and heating in damaged but occupied buildings, which is the highest-value winter intervention available.

And heated community spaces with power and connection, which remain the thing people mention most.

The targeting

Concentrated on households with no alternative: elderly people alone, families with disabilities, those in front-line communities, and displaced households in their first winter in a new place.

Broad distribution was abandoned some years ago and nobody involved regrets it.

The honest position

The response is now efficient, targeted and insufficient. Those three descriptions are compatible, and pretending otherwise helps nobody planning for the winter after this one.