Photo: GDC Europe
Building resilience in our workforce is everyone’s responsibility and there has been many projects to support this commitment. The recently launched Wellbeing Cluster, an endeavor of the Mindfulness & Wellbeing component of the Transforming Surge Capacity project, and part of the Start Network's portfolio of projects under the Disasters and Emergencies Preparedness Programme (DEPP) funded by UK Aid, offers promising possibilities to address and manage wellbeing in the sector and support a shift of practices and policies. More on this in this blog from Hitendra Solanki, Mindfulness and Wellbeing Advisor.
“Voluntourism” and the debate around the “white savior complex” sure keep social media channels busy, with creative (controversial…) memes, tweets, and conversations. For example, a blog post by Jayne Cravens offers some illustrations and reflections on the “Campaign against voluntourism” while Alex Jones issued a call for action to “Talk about racism – in the development sector” and Frances Longley asks us to face the “Uncomfortable truths to make our workplace more equal.” The road is still long to see the justice we advocate for in our sector be part of the organization culture of all stakeholders. but I see these debates as a useful part of the journey.
The use of technology for staff learning and development has seen a lot of development in recent years. While not written by or for our sector specifically, this recent roundtable featured four e-learning experts taking stock of the current situation and discussing recent and on-going trends and development in the learning space supported by technology, with interesting take-aways that are very relevant for capacity building of humanitarian staff and volunteers:
Humanitarian U, in collaboration with Medair and the Humanitarian Leadership Academy, launched a report examining the perceived effect of online learning programs for aid workers around the world. This study serves to better understand how competency-based eLearning training programs are having an impact on humanitarian work. Not only how these have an impact, but specifically in what ways the transfer of learning from these training program experiences are ultimately contributing to strengthening and/or improving coordination and service delivery in humanitarian action.>
Christine Williamson from Duty of Care International focuses her work on duty of care. In this recent guide, she offers practical guidance to HR teams for how to collect and provide employment references. In particular, she provides guidance to ensure duty of care is embedded into this stage of the recruitment process and that safeguarding practices are integrated.
The CHS Alliance has worked with Dr Debbie Hawker for many years to provide debriefing training. In this blog, Dr Hawker shares some key reflections on the importance of debriefing mechanisms, and share the latest version of the tool kit she has developed.
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