On 28 September 2018, Central Sulawesi was hit by a series of earthquakes, triggering a tsunami that reached up to three metres, causing landslides and liquefaction. As of 18 July 2019, 4,845 people had been declared either dead or missing; 110,000 houses listed as destroyed, damaged or lost; and more than 172,000 people displaced.

The Central Sulawesi response was the first time a collective approach to communication and community engagement (CCE) had been implemented in Indonesia. The Central Sulawesi Earthquake Response Plan, launched one week after the disaster, aimed to use the experiences of UN agencies, NGOs and the Red Cross Movement to ‘strengthen collective approaches to gathering, analysing and responding to community feedback’ and ‘to support Government feedback systems that are already in place’.

This case study aims to understand how collective approaches to CCE can be implemented in locally led humanitarian crises where there is a strong, functioning government in charge of the response and a heavy presence of local and national actors.