Location: India (as part of the regional surge roster)
Project: Transforming surge capacity
Background: Cyclone Vardah hit the coast of Tamil Nadu in December 2016, causing deaths and destruction that triggered an emergency response from Christian Aid India. With a capacity gap in supply chain management, and its teams on the ground already stretched to their limits, Christian Aid decided to use the Go Team Asia regional roster to fill its capacity gap through a collaborative deployment with Save the Children. Go Team Asia was set up at part of the Transforming Surge Capacity project, to allow agencies to draw on their peers’ capacity in times of need, and strengthen civil society collaboration in disasters.
Impact:
Go Team Asia facilitated the timely deployment of Madan Prasad Gyawali, Logistics and Supply Chain Manager from Save the Children Nepal, to help with Christian Aid’s response in India. Originally, Christian Aid predicted Madan’s mission to take four weeks, however he was only available for two weeks. Despite this constraint, he was able to set up a whole supply chain mechanism within Christian Aid’s local team and partner, thanks to his 12 years’ experience as a logistics specialist around the world.
Shivani Rana, Madan’s line manager at Christian Aid India, commented on his role during his deployment; ‘It really filled a capacity gap in the team. Madan trained our local partners on post-distribution monitoring surveys and built their capacity in stock and supply chain management very effectively.’
Besides providing logistics expertise and building capacity for Christian Aid’s team and its local partner, SASY, Madan’s deployment also taught him to mobilise and collaborate with the local actors Christian Aid was partnering with. ‘Distribution of relief supplies through local partners, and especially collaboration with the community leader and volunteers, was a new experience for me,’ Madan recalls. Working effectively in unfamiliar contexts, and in collaboration with others, is indeed part of the training Madan received when joining Go Team Asia, and which he reported using during his deployment.
This joint deployment was a good example of effective, cross-agency gap filling during an emergency response. It showed how collaboration can increase both agencies’ capacity, but also raise their profile as good performers in a particular sector. This first Go Team Asia deployment was also an example of clear and fast communications across agencies, and of effective HR organisation and line management.
More information about this deployment can be found in the full case study of the Surge regional platform.
To find out more about Go Team Asia, please contact the Regional Roster Coordinator hamad.latif@plan-international.org