Redr Australia E-News Bulletin October 2011
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RedR Australia e-news bulletin October 2011 From the office UN Secretary General’s visit to Australia United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and his wife visited Australia briefly in September. The Governor General hosted a dinner in their honour at Yarralumla in Canberra. It was pleasing to have RedR Australia on a guest list of just 30 people, including current MPs, the Australian Federal Police, various women’s development groups which the Governor General supports, and three aid agencies with direct UN links. There was an opportunity to chat one-on-one with the Secretary General, who was still processing his visit to Kiribati and his realisation that the sea poses such a threat via tsunami and/or sea level rise. I was able to outline the RedR Australia role, to which he said how difficult he expects it to be to mobilise sufficient capable people in the years ahead. Some of the other guests introduced themselves to me, seeking to find out more about RedR. This included two of the Governor General’s own staff. Funnily enough, I had a couple of the RedR brochures in my pocket….. Alan McLean, CEO Foreign Minister invited to speak at 2011 Annual General Meeting Elizabeth Taylor, Chair of RedR Australia, has invited Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd to be guest speaker at the Annual General Meeting of RedR Australia, in Melbourne on Monday 24 October. The invitation read, in part: “As I am sure you know, RedR Australia recruits, selects, trains, prepares, deploys and supports some wonderful Australians who make excellent humanitarian contributions to United Nations relief agencies arising from international disasters and emergencies. We are very pleased with their representation of our organisation, and they are fine ambassadors for Australia, as strongly expressed by UN agencies, AusAID staff and others. Our AGM would welcome your perspectives on this form of Australian aid, and I am certain you would find interest in hearing how we undertake our mandate.” Standby Register personnel also invited A specific invitation is to be issued to everyone on the Standby Register for the 2011 Annual General Meeting. Now AGMs are not everyone’s billy of tea, but they are important. For statutory reasons in our case. Every significant organisation, whether a company limited by guarantee or an incorporated association, must have an AGM. RedR Australia’s event is always very positive. Quick reflection of the year completed, some projections on the year ahead, and best of all we hear some recent field experiences from two or three deployees, relatively fresh back from assignment. That is the really rich component, with some good interaction for all who attend. I hope some Victorian-based Register people can join us. I recognise that few if any interstaters would make a special trip, but perhaps some have reasons to be in Melbourne around Monday 24 October at 2pm. Engineers Australia’s Engineering Excellence Awards RedR Australia’s Standby Register Technical Specialist Dinesh Jayasuriya was shortlisted as one of five finalists for the Young Professional Engineer of the Year 2011 Award, at Engineers Australia, Victoria Division’s biennial Engineering Excellence Awards, held Thursday 22 September. Dinesh’s work as an Information Management Officer for UNICEF in Pakistan and occupied Palestinian territory piqued interest among the judges. Dinesh’s first assignment with RedR Australia involved working for three months with UNICEF to develop a system to track Human Rights Abuses against children under the UN Security Council Resolution 1612 Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism. Last year, Dinesh spent over three months working in Sindh Province, an area devastated by the floods. RedR Australia congratulates Dinesh for making it through to the final round and for highlighting the work of engineers in emergency settings. Welcome Lauren Our team re-building continues. On 5 September we welcomed Lauren Jones to the role of Deployments Coordinator. Lauren transferred from Australian Red Cross where her responsibilities included identification of field roles, the selection and briefing of personnel for those roles, management of welfare of staff in the field, together with recruitment and training activity. She has worked overseas for five years, most significantly in our terms within the Australian Volunteers International programme, developing and supporting the administration of the Namibia Training Authority in 2010. With Dominic managing the International Assignment Service, and with Jessie, Aruna and Lauren now added to the RedR experience of Jen, Jaimee, and Kim, it won’t be long before we are charging ahead with recruitment and selection, then deployment and support, at full speed. Looking around the planet right now, it is painfully obvious that we need to put all shoulders to the task…… So it is a warm welcome to Lauren. Register election coming up Close of business Thursday 6 October is the last opportunity for people on the Standby Register to offer themselves for the 2011 election by the Register to the RedR Australia Board for a three-year term. Jessie Gamble circulated the details on Tuesday 20 September for anyone wishing to re-visit their emails. Enquiries about the Board role or the election process should be directed to [email protected] or phone Alan. RedR Australia’s involvement in 2011 Spatial Summit RedR Australia was invited to present at Surveying & Spatial Sciences Institute’s (SSSI) annual Victorian Spatial Summit, held on Wednesday 14 September in Melbourne. SSSI’s Humanitarian and Disaster Relief Sub-Committee hosted a session on disaster relief in which veteran deployee Robert Crigan detailed his involvement with RedR Australia’s Standby Register, his recent assignment in Liberia and field equipment and computer programs which he uses in the field. Thank you Robert for your time and engaging presentation! Speaker wanted Engineers Australia’s Western Australia Division is seeking a structural engineer guest speaker for an event in Perth on 15 November. If you are interested in sharing your field experience, please email Belinda Johnston for further details or call (03) 9329 1357. International Assignment Service As you will have read in the last e-news, we remain committed to providing the best level of service possible to Register personnel, UN agencies and vulnerable people around the world. We have started calling Register personnel and will continue to do so throughout October in order to discuss your deployment availability, your career goals, capacity development opportunities and all things RedR related. I encourage everyone to offer their honest feedback when contacted. The better we understand your desires, the better we can support you. As the tragic situation in the Horn of Africa continues, we are now all watching as the monsoon season in Pakistan again brings with it large-scale disaster and widespread devastation. RedR still has David Youngmeyer in Pakistan (David has provided a diary entry from the field below) providing essential assistance to UNICEF. He will be ably joined this week by Michael McDonnell who will be assisting WHO with their massive logistics operations. We will no doubt see an increased call for assistance in response to this emergency in the coming weeks and months. In July we had the pleasure of deploying Christine Clarence to Nepal as a Child Protection Officer. One of Christine’s main tasks was to help emergency preparedness and response mechanisms and to assist with national and local child protection in emergency contingency plans. Nepal was affected by three significant earthquakes recently and over 130 after-shocks in the days following. Thankfully, Christine was unharmed (although she did end up a little wet and muddy as she stood in a field near her residence). GeoHazards International recently conducted a study that determined that Kathmandu is the most vulnerable city in Asia to another earthquake causing large scale destruction and loss of life. Christine’s work, like so many of our deployees, is at the forefront of minimising the impact of humanitarian disasters. As always, if you are travelling in, around, or through Melbourne, I encourage you to drop into the office for a coffee. See you all soon! Dominic Bowen Manager International Assignment Service From the field Field diary, UNICEF Pakistan, September 2011 David Youngmeyer is on deployment with UNICEF Pakistan as an Emergency Communication Specialist. More than 5.4 million people in Pakistan are currently being affected by new monsoon floods, with Sindh province the hardest-hit area. In this field diary David describes the situation. Badin district, Sindh province – On an emergency map of Pakistan’s new monsoon floods, Badin district, in southern Sindh province, is coloured an angry red. It is a fire engine red that flashes disaster. But the map simply A young girl holds a water bottle outside her family’s says: ‘severe intensity of floods effect’. makeshift camp on the main road in Badin district, Sindh province. © UNICEF Pakistan/2011/Zaidi That red colour on the map tries to sum up what is a severe and developing emergency for the children and families of Badin district. More than one million people, or two-thirds of the district population, are affected by the floods. Over 78,000 people – the vast majority children and women – have been displaced to 275 relief sites, in schools, public buildings and makeshift camps. More than 380,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed. Badin district is only one small part of Sindh province. I was part of a UNICEF team that visited the district this week that assessed the impact of the disaster on children and families, and helped to A UNICEF-supported water tanker fills up a water coordinate emergency assistance. What had been dry river beds are now bladder with clean water at a roadside relief site.