November 2007

Making your mind up!

A few comments I got from the Blog and from some colleagues at work asked how do you decide which disaster should you devote your resources to. Well its a tough decision but thankfully we have a decision matrix in the organisations with key questions. There are three key questions and depending on how you answer them as well as what the marketing and communications department and the management thinks, you have a pretty straight forward answer.

• The three questions we ask are:
• Can we make a difference
• Does it have profile in the media
• Will it raise our profi

So at the beginning of last week the mangement was really on top of me to get some more information on Bangladesh as it was a big story. They opened an appeal and I was really under pressure to find a partner there to give the money to. One of the emergency staff had worked there a few years ago, so we thought we might be able to track down a partner. But by midweek there wasn't much interest and only a few thousand pounds had come in. It was clear this wasn't going to be a big disaster for us. I chipped in a few extra thousand pounds from our emergency fund and we will ship this off to a partner in the next few weeks (we have a few leads). So in the end I feel my initial assessment was right and that it was going to be a pretty low key disaster. So I will write again in a few days and let you know how the Inepd emergency unit works and what we all do. Early next week I am off to a Humanitarian NGO conference. Should be really great and I will get a chance to catch up with some old friends and have a few beers (and relive one or two great stories).

Cyclones, Flood and an Earthquake

What a week. Just crazy. The earthquake in Chile took us all by suprise. Management was after the emergency unit to see what we could do in this terrible situation. The marketing directors sister is travelling in Chile at the moment so it was important we got a good fix on the sitution. An earthquake always attracks a lot of attention from the media. It was important that we find out if there is some partner organisation that we could assist. Apart from that the Bangladesh cyclone has made tens of thousands homeless. I will see how things go over the weekend. There are usually a lot of disasters in South Asia and you can spend your whole time responding to disasters there. I find it better to play it by ear on these ones and see if we need to respond. There are also the floods in Mexico which I think we should do something about. One of the girls in marketing is Mexican so I will see if she knows anything.

That's a snap shot of the week in emergencies. the communciations department asked me to write a blog about my job and the work of the emergencies unit. I think its a great idea to let you all into the world of emergencies. We make difficult decisions on a daily basis and have to respond under great stress. At any moment all our carefully detailed work plans could be thrown out the window and we have to respond 24/7 responding to a major earthquake. I wish I could make it sound more glamorous but the truth is its tough and with few rewards in this business except maybe for one. That is making a difference to the poorest of the poor and giving people back their dignity, oh and saving lives.

Well its friday and we usually go for a few beers around the corner at the Duke of Windsor. It has some great beers from all over Europe(I am partial to a good Belgium beer), lots of Inepd staff come for a drink. So I will see you next week and lets hope that it's quiet over the weekend and not to many disasters.