The rising trends in disasters have increased the involvement of NGOs to respond to the needs of affected communities which necessitates the increased involvement of local authorities, community members and human resources. For an effective humanitarian response to the increasing number of conflicts and crises, it is important to capacitate the local staff on the issues, systems and practices related to working in disasters. Understanding this emerging need to empower the local population who often act as first responders in such situations with adequate knowledge and skills, organized a training session on “Essentials of Humanitarian Response” supported by Caritas Australia for those implementing programs on the ground from the North, South, East, West and North-east zones of the country.

A total of 46 participants from across India were trained on the core concepts of humanitarian response and global standards to further enhance the implementation of emergency response programs in their respective states/zones. These trainings were organized in two batches, the first one in Bengaluru from 14th -16th June 2023 and the second one in Kolkata from 21st to 23rd June 2023.

In the inaugural message given by Fr. (Dr.) Jolly Puthenpurra, Assistant Executive Director of Caritas India, highlighted the “Do No Harm” approach and the need to take proactive measures in being responsible consumers by curtailing the damaging impact on natural resources which has aggravated the impact of hazards. An external Resource Person, Mr. Rahul Dey has more than 15 years of experience in the humanitarian sector having worked with multiple humanitarian organizations including RedR, OXFAM, UN, Seeds, Action Aid, and ADRA to name a few, and facilitated over 290 trainings on emergency response, Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and associated topics, facilitated the training in both the cities.

Through the course of the 3-day training in Bengaluru and Kolkata, participants were provided with a detailed understanding of the global standards on humanitarian response, such as Sphere Standards and Core Humanitarian Standards to ensure that Caritas India’s ongoing and future responses are corroborated with these non-negotiables of humanitarian practice. The knowledge of the participants on topics including beneficiary targeting, needs assessment, sectoral response, proposal development and budgeting, and monitoring and evaluation was also further enhanced through various theoretical and practical sessions, which included a detailed simulation exercise as well.

Fr. (Dr.) Paul Moonjely, Executive Director, also joined to motivate the learners across the states by highlighting the importance of localization and incorporation of Safety, Access and Dignity in our respective responses. Simplifying these global standards and their incorporation at Caritas India’s Level, CI staff from the HA-DRR desk, Ms Tanuja Raghunath and Ms Aditi Kumari, also facilitated sessions on CI’s Emergency Response SOP and Cash SOP. It helped enhance the knowledge of the field responders on the processes and systems in place at the organizational level along with the details of the persons accountable at each level and the timelines. During these sessions, participants were briefed on procurement-related matters, feedback handling, and overall monitoring along with enhanced information on cash-based assistance and its different modalities used in emergency response.

In conclusion, a detailed feedback session from the participants was taken on the suggestions and recommendations to be incorporated into future training programs. Increasing the duration of such training to 5 days instead of 3 and having detailed sessions on needs assessments and response planning were some of the effective suggestions put forward by the participants.