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"The Good Enough Guide" is a tool for response teams in the early days following a disaster
When a disaster strikes, what do humanitarian teams need to do to start saving lives?
"The Good Enough Guide", published this week by a ACAPS, a consortium of three non-governmental organisations, is a tool for response teams in the early days after a disaster to help them assess the needs of affected populations.
"(The guide) is trying to simplify something that's quite complicated and make it accessible and usable, particularly for national staff working in the field," Paul Currion, the author of the guide, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview.
Currion said one reason this guide is needed is that response teams, usually staffed with seasoned veterans, often assume they know the needs simply because they have worked in disaster zones before.
The guide does not explain every activity needed in a post-disaster assessment, but aims to help field teams through practical steps, tools and resources to ensure they do their job right.
Accurate analysis, getting basic facts, coordination with other teams, identifying who needs what and where are just some of the issues the guide identifies as necessary for a good assessment.
"One of the things ACAPS has found carrying out trainings is that people are working on a lot of assumptions that often aren't true," said Currion.
Because assessment requires a very basic set of skills, response teams often unnecessarily turn to technologies such as satellite maps or crowd sourcing to make it more exciting, he said.
"The technology can improve the needs assessment, but if you haven't got the foundation there, all the technology in the world doesn't really help you," he said.
Currion hopes that the guide will trigger a discussion between field staff members and organisations on how to improve their work.
"(The guide) should be a part of (an) ongoing dialogue and feedback that enables organisations to get better in what they do and enables staff to get better at what they do," said Currion.
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