What do team members learn from a MapAction disaster simulation?

MapAction team members get ready for deployment through our annual disaster simulation exercise

In June MapAction volunteers from all over the world headed to Gloucestershire for their biggest deployment team training event in the calendar.

These simulations are a chance to practise many of our standard operating procedures, and an opportunity to build team cohesion.  

This year’s simulation focused on reinforcing field skills and rapid analysis whilst operating with limited connectivity in a demanding setting. The scenario took place in a fictional country, where an ongoing 15-month drought was causing food insecurity. A sudden migration event tipped this into an emergency and triggered a MapAction ‘deployment’ in support of an alliance of international and national NGOs. 

As with previous simulations, facilities were deliberately basic and participants had to camp. One night also involved an overnight stay in work areas as venturing outdoors was deemed to be ‘currently unsafe’ within the scenario. Team members might encounter such insecurity on a field deployment.

For MapAction Volunteer Alice Goudie, who joined us in 2018, the training was a good opportunity for her to test out some of the skills she’s picked up on deployment:

“GIS skills are only part of what we do, a lot of the skills are more to do with working in harsh environments, communicating, and working under pressure.”

Alice has been on a number of deployments with us but knows that each situation is a learning experience,

“In the four years that I have been deployable I have been on an International Search and Rescue Advisory Team (INSARAG) mission to Armenia, two emergency deployments to The Bahamas and Madagascar, one emergency deployment which ended up being remote for Equatorial Guinea, and I’ve done two remote covid projects in Libya and Kenya and worked on a CSO project in Nepal and Indonesia.“

Laverne Rogers volunteers for MapAction’s Caribbean section. She normally works as a GIS Manager for the Government of Montserrat. She was inspired to join MapAction following the devastation that hurricanes Irma and Maria brought to the Caribbean. She recently deployed to support one of our partners, CDEMA, following a volcano eruption in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. 

Our training events are also a time where we can mentor and develop new team leaders in a safe but challenging environment.

For this simulation exercise, Laverne had the opportunity to be a Team Leader:

“I learnt how to manage a team during a disaster response, understanding safety and security requirements for the team and also being able to understand the situation on the ground in order to provide suitable support to our partners and guide the team members to do that.”

MapAction’s internal and external training is supported by USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance.

Our largest training event of the year

On 17-19 September, MapAction held it’s largest annual training event, a realistic simulation of a humanitarian emergency, with colleagues from partners including the British Red Cross, Insecurity Insight, Save the Children and Tearfund.

This exercise provides an opportunity for MapAction team volunteers and staff to hone skills, share learning, test protocols and embed new systems and technologies in a challenging but safe environment. It’s also a chance to catch up with friends and strengthen team relationships. Due to COVID-19, this is the first major training exercise of this kind we have held since June 2019, so it was great to be back in the thick of it again.

We’re grateful to the U.S. Agency for International Development Bureau for Humanitarian Affairs for funding this event and to our partners and guests who took time out of their weekend to participate in the exercise and/or present to our team.

This video gives a flavour of the weekend:

First in-person team training since COVID-19

Over the weekend of 22-23 May, we held our first face-to-face team training event for over a year. Forty one human members (and four dogs) attended the COVID-compliant event, which was held mostly outdoors on a member’s farm in East Sussex, UK, with people joining online from around the world.

GIF of photos of the weekend including indoor and outdoor learning activities, campfire chats and dogs

The focus was on getting back into a deployment mindset, with some practical training on GPS and satellite communications equipment, along with talks on GIS support to urban search and rescue and civilian and military coordination. There was also an opportunity to socialise and catch up with each other after a long time apart.

Tweet by MapAction volunteer Ian Coady "IT's been fifteen months but it's so good to get together with MapAction colleagues and get deployment ready."

MapAction members recognised in New Years Honours

MapAction’s Chief Executive Liz Hughes and one of our long-serving volunteers, Alan Mills, have been awarded an OBE and MBE respectively in the Overseas and International Honours List 2021 announced last night. The awards come in recognition for their services to international development and humanitarian crisis operations.

Head and shoulders picture of Alan Mills smiling to camera
MapAction volunteer Alan Mills becomes an MBE

Alan Mills has been a MapAction volunteer since 2005, applying his knowledge of geospatial systems to help get aid as quickly as possible to people caught up in humanitarian emergencies. He has undertaken many emergency missions including to Beirut for the Syria crisis, hurricanes in Jamaica, the Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands, cyclones in Vanuatu and Fiji, floods in Namibia, Benin, Djibouti and Serbia, the Libyan migrant crisis and Ebola in Mali.

For the past ten years, he has also coordinated MapAction’s preparedness work, helping governments and disaster management teams around the world put in place the skills and technology they need to access essential geographic information in the event of a humanitarian emergency. As well as this, he has helped to run numerous training courses including in the Caribbean, South East Asia, Europe and Nepal and served as a Trustee of the charity from 2012-2018. In his day job, Alan runs his own consultancy business specialised in geospatial systems.

Picture of Liz Hughes smiling, seated among MapAction team members
MapAction’s Chief Executive Liz Hughes has been awarded an OBE

Liz joined MapAction as Chief Executive in 2013, after directing humanitarian operations at the Red Cross, Save the Children and Oxfam. She is recognised not only within MapAction but across the humanitarian sector in the UK and globally as a truly inspiring leader. She has helped shape our reputation for technical excellence and value in providing real-time critical information for humanitarian crises and has led us to provide far more than might be expected of a largely volunteer organisation of the size of MapAction. When the Covid-19 crisis prevented operational deployments, at the same time as demand for our services surged to unprecedented levels, she lead the team to rapidly switch our operating model to remote delivery. She is greatly respected by all for her knowledge, clarity of thought and incisiveness and greatly appreciated for her passionate, persuasive and empathetic nature.

MapAction’s Chair of Trustees, Nick Moody, said “Liz has transformed MapAction. Under her inspirational and trusted leadership, the charity has greatly expanded its deployment of geospatial professional volunteers in the face of humanitarian need. She has also grown its technical and operational capability to the extent that the charity could triple its service delivery worldwide during this, the most difficult of years for humanitarian operations. None of this would have been possible however without the dedication and professionalism of volunteers such as Alan.”

Reflecting on World Humanitarian Day

By Liz Hughes, MapAction CEO

Today is World Humanitarian Day and the theme this year is Women Humanitarians. I find that an interesting theme. I am, indeed, personally grateful to all the female humanitarians – including our own volunteers and staff – who inspire, challenge, advise, listen and make a difference. As well as experiencing barriers to participation in formal humanitarian responses, women are often also at greater risk in emergency situations. So anything that highlights and begins to address these issues is to be welcomed.

World Humanitarian Day is often interpreted as being about the workers, not the affected communities. Yet, it seems to me that humanitarianism is in fact about people’s suffering and what helps. So, in general, I think the message should be about the amazing survivors of conflict and disaster, the ways communities recover together and the women in those communities who contribute to that. 

It is good to make note of differences of perspective (gender being just one), but we need to take care that that is not where our acknowledgement of difference starts and stops, with just one day. If we want to promote a really inclusive humanitarianism, we need to think about these differences and contributions every day, and make our efforts towards inclusion and diversity part of the way we live and work. There is much more work to be done.

To this end, we are in the process of examining in detail and systematically improving our own working practices. During our monthly team training weekend in July, our Diversity Working Group presented the findings of a recent team survey on the topic of diversity within MapAction. Although the sample size was too small to be statistically significant, it enabled us to ask some good questions. Together we discussed some concrete next steps. We will share more on these once they are more fully developed.

Our journey towards equality

By Liz Hughes, MapAction Chief Executive

International Women’s Day is as good a day as any to reflect on gender diversity in the humanitarian and geospatial technology sectors and on what MapAction is doing to ensure equality of opportunity for everyone.

Globally, the proportion of women in the humanitarian sector workforce is high compared to other business sectors, but they are significantly under-represented at leadership level. The gender gap is more pronounced in the tech sector, where LinkedIn data indicates women make up just 27% of the total global workforce, and fewer than one in five female employees reach positions of leadership. That is very worrying when you consider that technology is, in a very real way, shaping the world in which we all live.

Some research suggests that women are better represented in the GIS (geographical information systems) sector than in other technology fields, and, according to our friends at Open Street Map, this is particularly true within the fields of humanitarian and disaster response mapping.

All of this indicates that MapAction, operating as it does at the centre of the Venn diagram of humanitarian emergencies and geospatial information, should be able to achieve gender parity. As an organisation committed to equal opportunities, that is certainly our aim, and one towards which we are steadily progressing, but have yet to attain.

We are fortunate enough to have as distinguished a female geographer as Dr Barbara Bond, Past President of the British Cartographic Society and Fellow and Past Council Member of the Royal Geographical Society, as a Trustee. As well as this, our senior leadership team is evenly balanced by gender. However, currently the overall proportion of women in the organisation is around 30%. Within our volunteer team, where much of our GIS and tech expertise resides, the figure is 26% and currently only a fifth of our ten Trustees are women. We can and will do better.

Why diversity matters

This is important for several reasons. It is certainly desirable that women and other under-represented groups have the opportunity to experience the tremendous personal and professional benefits of being a MapAction volunteer, so they can bring all that learning and personal growth back to help their own organisations and careers. In addition, part of the volunteer experience is belonging to a close community of GIS professionals with whom you work, train, socialise and share some very unique and powerful experiences. As one of our volunteers Kirsty Ferris put it, the “great support, understanding and shared geekiness” is invaluable. According to Kirsty, “There are not many places where you can talk GPS and geodesy with such shared enthusiasm.” To have that kind of peer support network can be vital when 62% of women say they do not see themselves staying in GIS for more than ten years. We need to ensure we have a diverse mix of people, so that all members of our team feel they belong.

But over and above the importance of diversity to our team is its importance for the work we do and the people who’s lives we are seeking to save and improve. The maps we create are a product or our collective know-how and team experience. As Andrew Foerch explains in his article ‘The Importance of Diversity in Cartography’, “Maps are more likely to address problems visible to the people who create them. For example, male and female responses might differ significantly if asked to map safe walking routes through a city.”

Thinking differently can make a difference

GIS and technology expert volunteers make up the lion’s share of MapAction’s membership – we have over 80, plus 10 Trustees, compared to a staff team of 17, most of whom are part-time. We recruit our volunteers once a year, enabling us to train each new intake group together, in order to equip them with all the skills they need to operate effectively within a disaster zone.

Our volunteer recruitment drive is an important annual activity and each new year group brings fresh energy and experience as well as new personalities to our team. The number of men applying to volunteer and making it through our rigorous selection process has nearly always exceeded the number of women. This has always been a concern, but the problem became urgent in 2017 when for the second time in three years, all the successful applicants were male, and only three women were recruited during the three-year period out of a total of 25.

To address the issue, we set up a working group of volunteers and staff members to review our recruitment and also working practices and develop a plan of action. A number of actions came out of that process:

  • We reviewed our GIS volunteer profile to ensure it was attractive to and inclusive of under-represented groups.
  • We published profiles of a diverse group of volunteers and offered to connect prospective applicants with them to find out more about what it’s like to be a MapAction volunteer.
  • We made sure a statement about our commitment to diversity and equal opportunities was included in all our recruitment materials.
  • We broadened the advertising strategy of our recruitment drive, to incorporate organisations such as Women in Technology and Girls Who Code.
  • In order to ensure there are no barriers to entry for any particular group due to unconscious bias on the part of those shortlisting candidates, we are looking at removing all information pertaining to gender, age, ethnicity, disability, etc. from applications.

It is still early days, and there is still much more to do, but it was gratifying to see that our 2018 volunteer intake achieved gender parity at least. We will continuously evaluate and improve our approach. There is tremendous commitment within our staff and volunteer teams to achieve our diversity objectives as part of making MapAction as good as it can be. With that momentum behind us I’m confident that we will get there.