COVID-19 has caused massive disruption to large-scale national and international mobilisation. Reduced international travel and the lockdown of stations, ports, borders, transportation and supply lines has disrupted the operations of many INGOs, making it virtually impossible to deploy surge capacities. As a result, many local organisations have been forced to step up and carry out locally coordinated responses to this pandemic.
Gang Karume est natif de la République Démocratique du Congo (RDC) et a travaillé pendant plus de 12 ans, entre 1998 et 2009, comme Coordinateur des opérations dans l’équipe globale d’urgence d’International Rescue Committee (IRC). Ici, nous parlons avec Gang sur comment il s’est engagé avec Start network et sa vision de l’action humanitaire en RDC.
Gang Karume Augustin is a DRC national and worked for 12 years as the Global Emergency Coordinator for IRC from 1998-2010. Here we speak with Gang about how he got involved with the Start Network and where he sees the future of humanitarian action in DRC.
Concern Worldwide was one of the founding members of the Start Network when it was first conceived under the Consortium of British Humanitarian Agencies 10 years ago. Here Bob Ruxton, Director of Programme Support at Concern, shares with us some thoughts on being a member of the Start Network and highlights the importance of working collectively in challenging the system and the potential of the hubs as the source of future energy for the Start Network.
I, like many of you, have been reading about and watching videos on the riots, the police brutality, the incidents of racial injustice and racially motivated violence of the last several weeks linked to the murder of George Floyd by US police in Minneapolis. This makes me deeply sad and deeply angry.
Last month I received a letter from a group of emerging leaders within the Start Network, who are working together to build ‘hubs’, groups of civil society organisations that will form the backbone of the Start Network once they evolve and grow.
Hugo Icu Peren, director de ASECSA y miembro del equipo de liderazgo del Hub de Guatemala, nos habla del nuevo documento de los Hubs destinado a catalizar una respuesta más local a las necesidades inmediatas de COVID-19 y a acelerar un cambio de paso duradero en la respuesta humanitaria.
Hugo Icu Peren, director of ASECSA and member of the Guatemala Hub leadership team, tells us about the Hubs' new paper aimed at catalysing a more local response to the immediate needs of COVID-19 and to accelerate a lasting step-change in humanitarian response.
Shonnasgacha is a small village of Keshobpur Upazila of Jashore district where 210 families live in a 1.5 sq. km area. While the country was waking up to the COVID-19 threat in the early stages of the lockdown, the locals of Shonnasgacha village took measures to protect themselves.
The Start Fund continues to be alerted to climate-related disasters and flooding is a particularly common hazard, with 12 flood-related alerts raised in 2020 so far. One of these alerts was raised by humanitarian agencies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo when the Mulongwe River flooded after heavy rainfall.
