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Published on 1 February 2006

The Kashmir earthquake of October 2005, which killed more than 70,000 and left three million homeless, had humanitarian agencies struggling to deliver relief and save lives in an extraordinarily difficult, mountainous terrain. Among these agencies were CRS and CARE, both of which sent their ECB1 (Staff Capacity Initiative) technical advisors to Pakistan to help in the response.

Glenn Ausmus of CRS and Ros Macvean of CARE never did see one another in Pakistan, but their collaboration – initiated during the monthly ECB1 teleconference immediately prior to their deployment – was no less effective. CRS has worked in Pakistan for about 50 years, although not in the quake zone, so Glenn’s job was to set up and staff sub-offices in Manshera and Basham, Kashmir, with support from CRS’ cadre of skilled workers in country. CARE, meanwhile, had just established a presence in Pakistan when the earthquake struck. With backup from her agency’s global emergency team and staff from CARE offices in surrounding countries, Ros labored around the clock in Islamabad to put in place basic human resources (HR) policies and procedures and to recruit staff both for the new main office and for the relief program,

“Before I even went [to Pakistan],” says Glenn, “I had our staff do job postings. So when I got there, we had at least 1,000 resumes.” If candidates were highly qualified but unsuited to CRS’ relief program – for example, if they were not able to relocate from their homes in Islamabad –Glenn suggested they present themselves to CARE’s nascent office in the capital. Ideally, he notes, he could have forwarded candidates’ credentials to Ros via email. But most CVs were on paper, so he referred individuals verbally and highlighted particularly interesting candidates to Ros during their frequent telephone conversations.

Ros, meanwhile, was challenged by the need to hire people from various locations across the country. Upon hearing of Glenn’s success in recruiting directly from Manshera and surrounding earthquake-affected areas, CARE hired a Manshera liaison officer who, among other coordination tasks, was able to perform basic HR and hiring functions.

Reflecting upon her experience in the Pakistan crisis, Ros notes that “it was very reassuring to know that I had on call an HR colleague in another agency who was dealing with similar tasks and issues. Though the frenetic pace of our work meant that we did not get to meet face-to-face, we both knew that, if really needed, we could reach one another to discuss or share any pressing concerns.”

The ECB1 network may now be a catalyst for changing the way peer agency HR staff collaborate. In her previous field experience, Ros has always observed that in the programming context, colleagues from the various agencies regularly gather for inter-agency coordination meetings and, thus, see each other from one emergency to the next. In the HR context, however, personnel have tended to work in isolation from each other because their focus is on the internal workings of their agencies. Glenn readily finds an example of how the ECB1 network made a difference for him in Pakistan, where one of his tasks was to ensure that CRS’ salaries and contracting procedures were in general alignment with those of other NGOs. He’d done similar compensation surveys before – in Sudan, for example, where his questions were often met with guardedness. In Pakistan, however, “having the [ECB1] network made a difference. I called Mercy Corps as part of the survey and mentioned my counterpart’s name. That opened the door. They were happy to talk to me.”

Glenn foresees plenty of opportunity to build upon the network in the future. Like anyone in the humanitarian response field, he hesitates to speculate too precisely about where and when the next disaster might strike. But he has no doubts about what actions he will take: get a census of responding IWG agencies, determine how and with whom to best collaborate, and, in particular, share CVs by sectoral specialty. “If we’re doing shelter but not wat/san, I want to be sure wat/san NGOs get the good candidates that we can’t use.” Ros echoes his ideas. “It will be very useful in the future for agencies trying to establish themselves in a country at the onset of an emergency to gain basic information from well-established agencies, for example local salary and per diem rates, labor laws and visa processing issues. It will also be useful for agencies to consider how they can collaborate with joint trainings on topics such as Sphere, prevention of child abuse and sexual exploitation, humanitarian accountability, and the Red Cross/ NGO code of conduct.”

“We get the question a lot: ‘So what are we getting out of this?’” concludes Glenn. “If nothing else, sharing contacts and sharing experience is huge. It makes us all better, and makes our responses better each and every time.

By Catherine Toth, ECB Writer

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