Very thought-provoking comments and thank you Chris for all your work building our capacity!
Some organisations, e.g. the Red Cross, ensure all dispatched aid workers receive standardised / overall competency training as well as a handover / etc. more specific to the work they will be undertaking. However, with the diverse array of humanitarian organisations that operate worldwide, there are certainly many challenges to ensuring everyone has the same standardised level of training – particularly given there has been a historical tendency for many to operate in ‘silos’. All things discussed in earlier modules though, before I retread that familiar turf!
There are some common-ground things that can (or should) be taught to humanitarian workers across all clusters – things like cultural capacity training, dealing with stressful situations, dealing with some common emergencies, etc. It would be difficult to help others if you were unable to help yourself! I’m reminded of an example with the earthquakes in Nepal – an organisation of doctors from the Asia-Pacific dispatched a team of volunteers to provide medical assistance, but a lack of preparation beforehand ensured they rapidly ran out of food and became a further liability in Nepal, draining much-needed resources to be able to sustain basic amenities for themselves (they ended up leaving…).