Strengthening Humanitarian Crises

Can an aid shipment be half empty?

I began to think how can a glass be half empty. Wouldn't half of empty be empty. The same goes for an aid shipment. I would prefer to think it was half full atleast. Kerry has established that the last records we have from Brian is that half the aid shipment went to the delta to releive suffereing for the disaster victims as we are calling them now. The suppliers and NGOs however say they have shipped all the goods and they were distributed. The taxi driver of Kerry has confirmed that in the areas where the deliveries took place that he did see the goods like those that were purchased but that many organisations were delivery the same type of goods similar to the UN distributions.So I think in this case we have to give the local organisations the benefit of the doubt as we still can't locate Brian.

The local organisations have formed a consortium called the Delta Development Forum and they are keen to work with on the recoevry phase of the operation as we now have 3 million USD targeted from our public appeal and instituational donors. Kerry is helping to consolidate the forum and has been holding workshops this week with the partners. The involvement of local organisations is unique in an operation like this and we are excited by the development.

Dave our Asia Emergency Coordinator will be leaving on Friday with Jennifer the Public Health advisor to assist in developing the next phase of the operation. The Asia desk will also be looking at sending someone in the next week as the crisis team will likely hand over the operation to them. Talk to you soon.

Missing Brian and Visa

Kerry arrived yesterday at Brian hostel and could not find him. His friends from the hostel who have been helping on the response said he disappeared 48 hours ago after some of the suppliers arrived and a government official asked about his visa whether he had a business or work visa. Since then nothing has been heard. His backpack and clothes have gone. This create a real problem with the suppliers as we can't access Brians Visa and Master cards. Our appeal still has money to cover the $500,000 or so committed already one of our Inepd affiliate organisations has been able to help getting cash into the country now. So hopefully Kerry will be able to deal with the partner organisations and suppliers. They have formed a consortium to negotiate us with us which will make things go smoothly. Most of the local organisations thankfully have local registration so we should have limited problems with the government. Will update you soon. let's hope we can find Brian.

Visa Limit

Brian informed us that he has ben having trouble making payment to suppliers as his visa card has a $400 USD daily withdrawal limit. This makes it difficult for him to access enough of $540,000 to pay suppliers as they will only take cash.It was ok for the first week where he was making deposits and buying small things for his hostel office room. His family have been great and we are trying towork with them and the bank to increase his credit limit. He also has a mastercard so we have topped that up so he will be able to access nearly $1000 a day. Really difficult conditions to work under. Well we are all behind Brian and we know he will be able to keep good relations with the suppliers until we resolve the money issue.

Kerry leaves tomorrow for Yangon and will be able to give a Brian a much needed break on a few fronts. Kerry has been giving really detailed briefings to the crisis team and it is a credit to here she has been able to absorb and distill all the information coming from reliefweb, alertnet and bbc world service. Well I'm off to the pub with some of the staff from the crisis team. We sure need a beer after the week we've had. Trish the Asia Manager wanted to present her teams problem tree on the cyclone but I think it can wait till next week.

Organising Disaster

I thought it might be interesting for those interested in Humanitarian work to see what type of organisation structure we use to organise a disaster. Below is an Organigram from HQ down to the field level of the people involved in the disaster response. As you can see I am not the only one managing the disaster and the crisis team is full of expertise needed to make the right decisions to aid the response. More news from the field and our first aid deliveries to the beneficiaries later today.

Our man in Yangon

It has been a really tough time since news starting breaking of the devestation from the cyclone. Our appeal has been bringing a large amount of money and the management team are now putting pressure on the emergency team to come up with ideas on how to spend it. We luckily made contact with a guy who had volunteered for Inepd as a high street fundraiser and was on holidays. It was great to have a familar accent so that the media had an Inepd voice coming from the field. His first hand accounts have really helped raise our profile. Hopefully Brian will be able now to come up with plans on what is needed and start to organise the initial emergency response. We hope we can get some of the emergency team into action but visas can be tricky. I have to go we have another meeting with the management team and key key staff who are part of crisis team. Kerry our programme oofficer has been doing a great job with the briefings for the team. Brian will also be in on the conference call so that we stay grounded as well as getting that on the ground advice.

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.