What if one of the most important skills in disaster management is knowing when not to be the loudest voice in the room?

In this solo episode of But We Had A Plan, Jess digs into localisation, co-creation, and the uncomfortable question beneath both: Who actually gets to decide?

Drawing on lessons from humanitarian response and disaster management, Jess explores why the people closest to risk are often also closest to the solutions, and why communities are still too often consulted only after programmes, priorities and definitions of success have already been decided.

From ants predicting drought to funding flows, local leadership, indigenous knowledge and community-led resilience, the episode asks what meaningful localisation really requires of humanitarian and international actors.

It also looks at why localisation remains difficult nearly a decade after the Grand Bargain, including questions of funding, risk, short project cycles, whose expertise we value, and whether organisations are genuinely willing to share power.

Because co-creation is not asking communities to validate a solution we already designed, and localisation is not giving people more responsibility while keeping the money, authority and decisions somewhere else.

Sometimes building better resilience starts with something much simpler: Just shut up…and listen.