TOMODACHI NGO Leadership Program supported by J.P. Morgan – Humanitarian Response Workshop
Working in partnership, US-based NGO Mercy Corps and the Japan Platform, a consortium of 40 Japanese NGOs, have just finished a very engaging week-long NGO Humanitarian Response Workshop under the TOMODACHI NGO Leadership Program supported by J.P. Morgan.
Held at Mercy Corps headquarters in Portland Oregon, the workshop brought together 12 Japanese NGO professionals from nine different NGOs, along with NGOs from China, Korea, Taiwan and Mercy Corps programs in Africa, the Middle East, Central American and the US. All together there were 14 NGOs and over a dozen nationalities included among the 25 participants. Almost all of the Japanese participants brought with them hands-on experience from the Tohoku response – and several of them were also experienced international responders.
The workshop was centering on introducing key principals and tools that have been embraced by the humanitarian community. The legal and ethical constructs provided by the Declaration of Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, the UN Refugee Conventions and the Red Cross Code of Conduct were all reviewed as foundation pieces for the contemporary humanitarian community. The group went on to receive and practice many of the tools that are used to organize and plan emergency programs: how to determine needs using international standards; how to gage unintended consequences; how to assess safety and security risks and reduce vulnerability to them. The week ended with a half day simulation exercise that organized conference participants into three NGO groups and sent them out onto the streets of Portland to prepare for an imminent influx of 20,000 refugees. Where could camps be set up using international standards? Where could meals be served, tapping the capacity of Portland’s current public services? Where could supplies and materials be most efficiently procured using sound procurement practices? Despite the rainy morning weather, the participants took the assignment on with vigor and creativity – and clearly had fun throughout!
The Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995 helped propel Japan’s NPO community into the limelight – setting the path toward regulatory reforms that would help to codify the important role of civil society in responding to natural disasters in Japan. Similarly, the East Japan Earthquake of 2011 has again drawn attention to the remarkable capacity of NPOs to support response and recovery at the community level. The TOMODACHI NGO Leadership Program is taking that momentum forward – building new capacity on lessons learned. This one-week workshop provided an excellent opportunity for sharing that experience across national and cultural frontiers, and learning from others new ideas for responding to future disasters. Moreover – the workshop provided a vehicle for demonstrating that when humanitarians work together, they become more than the sum of their parts. There was a definitely a palpable sense of ‘tomodachi’ among the participants by the end of the week!
- To read about the TOMODACHI-J.P. Morgan NGO Leadership Program, click here
- For more photos, click here
