Risk Reduction discussions at Interaction

Last Wednesday, the InterAction DRR working group met, with IWG representatives from World Vision, Save the Children, Mercy Corps and Oxfam. Also represented were Church World Service, International Medical Corps and American Red Cross.

Elina Palm provided a presentation on the efforts of UNISDR. Much of her presentation was similar to her presentation last April to the ECB3 group in Washington, DC regarding the background of DRR and the formation of ISDR. She had a few updates, including a recent publication "Words Into Action: Implementing the Hyogo Framework for Action"(Nov 06); the UN Sasakawa Award for Disaster Reduction; and an announcement that UNISDR is going to undertake a best practices initiative, to help map out best practices in DRR, building upon the publication which will be shared at the first Global Platform for DRR, 5-7 June in Geneva. In addition, UNISDR will launch at the Global Platform meeting an effort to perform a cost-benefit analysis on the cost of implementing DRR activities vs. the cost of not having implemented those preparedness activities. It is hoped that the results of this analysis will increase funds for and support further work in DRR programming.

Heidi Chase
Program Manager, Emergencies & Protection
Save the Children, US

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CEOs dive in and make waves

As a team we bust a gut to get CEOs and other senior executives to attend the ECB Learning Event in DC in April - but even when we know the turnout would be good there was a little apprehension. People at this level turn up for an hour or so, encourage the troops and then move on to the next board meeting, right? Wrong, it turns out, at least on this occasion.

It seems IWG senior execs have been making ECB waves since returning to their offices. We have reports of one CEO demanding a high-level consolidation workshop to follow up from the event; a President asking for copies of the Knowledge Fair displays to share internally; another CEO personally distributing copies of the Good Enough Guide to fellow executives at a global board meeting following the Event.

Of course, engagement from our senior leaders does not always make life easier - and those involved with ECB know that these processes of change are a long-haul, not a short hop, whoever is involved. But this level of engagement certainly sets us an interesting challenge. We often say we could change things but our leaders won't listen - now they're listening, what do we want them to hear?

Matt Bannerman

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The Good Enough Guide in Ireland

On 10th May, I was asked to present on ECB and the Good Enough Guide (GEG) to the agencies that are members of Dóchas, the Irish humanitarian network. We had staff present from Plan international, Irish Aid, World Vision, Troicare, Irish Red Cross, Independent consultant and DORCAS. It was a very positive meeting and the guide was well received by all.

Irish Aid in particular really surprised me with the level of research they had done on ECB, including reading the Mid-Term Review and all the background documents. They all felt that the GEG had applications beyond just response and should be looked at it in our development work as well, and asked how we were working with our development wings to mainstream aspects such as the complaints mechanism. The timing of my presentation also worked well as the following week the Red Cross was presenting on their complaints mechanism that they used in Aceh.

Eleanor Monbiot, World Vision ECB Focal Point

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