The Southern Africa Crisis Appeal was a new departure for the Disasters Emergency Committee. Here for the first time was an appeal that was intended to prevent a humanitarian crisis rather than respond to one. This led to a response that was a mixture of traditional relief activities together with activities that were more akin to rehabilitation or traditional development. The evaluation team found a mixed picture. It encountered a large number of examples of better practice, with instances from all the DEC agencies. However the quality of the interventions varied between countries and between agencies, and sometimes between different country programmes belonging to the same agency.