IASC Event on Launching of Shelter Projects 2015-2016, an inter-agency compilation of Case Studies
Geneva
Shelter Projects 2015- 2016 (www.shelterprojects.org).
Shelter Projects is a flagship product of the Global Shelter Cluster. It is a truly inter-agency shelter publication containing over 40 project case studies contributed by 20 agencies with a project steering committee of 13 different agencies, implemented with financial contributions from 8 organisations. It builds on a previous 5 editions of the publication with a running total of over 300 contributors and over 200 case studies of humanitarian shelter responses spanning over 100 years.
Shelter Projects 2015-2016 is entirely based on interviews and content drafted by operational field staff who implemented the projects. Each case study discusses detailed strengths and weaknesses of the project implementation, with the goal of supporting learning and building evidence to support future responses. It has been used by operational project staff, coordinators, donors, government staff, students and academics.
The panel discussion will include descriptions of shelter case studies including the Syria response, the role of the Shelter Cluster, thoughts on the nature of learning and evidence in humanitarian response, and will highlight shelter as a process and not a product.
The Panel will be moderated by Belinda Holdsworth, the Chief of the IASC secretariat.
Presenters for the briefing
Matthew Sayer is Team Leader for Health, Shelter and WASH at the Policy Development and Strategy Unit of ECHO – the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations of the European Commission. In his policy role he has been responsible for the Commission's single reference policy documents for Humanitarian WASH, Humanitarian Health, and this year for Humanitarian Shelter and Settlements; as well as specific studies in these sectors, such as global governance lessons to learn from the West Africa Ebola crisis. He has also been responsible for ECHO's global capacity building funding and notably its contribution to advancing the Transformative Agenda, especially the role of the Global Clusters. Previously he worked in the ECHO Operational Directorate: as Team Leader for Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2005 – 2010; for the Horn of Africa from 2000 – 2005; and as a field officer from 1998-2000 in Kenya, Somalia and Uganda, and from 1995 – 98 in West Africa based in Liberia.
Jim Kennedy holds a PhD in refugee camp design, and has been a shelter and reconstruction professional, working in conflict, natural-disaster and complex-emergency responses for more than 13 years. Jim has worked with a variety of NGOs, the Red Cross movement and the UN, in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Europe. He has been a head of programme for transitional shelter programmes in Sri Lanka (tsunami), Pakistan earthquake), Democratic Republic of Congo (armed conflict), Haiti (earthquake), Iraq (armed conflict) and Greece (refugee and migrant influx), amongst others. He has been technical coordinator or hub coordinator for clusters or other coordination forums in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Iraq and Nepal. Jim has taken the lead in establishing at national levels, Shelter-HLP working groups, Shelter-WASH technical working groups on issues of mobility and accessibility for those with disabilities, and has represented shelter coordination groups in coordination with CCCM and also Cash coordination forums. Jim has been the author or co-author of a number of articles in peer-reviewed journals, on topics ranging from the use of minimum humanitarian standards in site planning, the meaning of 'build back safer', and strategic direction of shelter coordination in major urban responses. Since 2008, Jim has been the vice-president for research at the Fred Cuny Center in Washington, DC. Jim has been an author, contributor and member of the editorial team for Shelter Projects on every edition since the first edition in 2008.
Ela Serdaroglu is currently holding the position of Shelter Lead at the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) at the organization’s headquarters in Geneva. In this capacity, she is also the Global Shelter Cluster Coordinator for the IFRC, co-leading the Shelter Cluster with UNHCR. Before assuming this position, Ela has worked for the IFRC, Netherlands Red Cross, HealthNet International and UNICEF at field and headquarters levels on a variety of programs covering the full range of disaster management continuum, venturing into some development and organizational development and capacity building. As part of her dedication to progressing the humanitarian shelter, Ela is one of the chapter lead authors for shelter and settlements in the upcoming revision of Sphere handbook.
Born and raised in Turkey, Ela holds a Bachelor of Science in city and regional planning from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, two masters degrees from Harvard University in the USA and University of Groningen in the Netherlands on urban planning and international humanitarian assistance respectively. When not working and thinking about humanitarian challenges, she translates and edits children’s books and works on improving her silversmithing skills.
Nadia Carlevaro is a Swiss freelance architect and co-founder of mobilstudio architects. Since 2010 she is member of the Swiss Humanitarian Aid Unit of the Swiss Department for Development and Cooperation (SDC), and regularly deployed on mission as Construction Expert in various humanitarian context such as Ecuador, Nepal, the Philippines, Haiti and Myanmar. She had spent the last 9 month in Syria, as Senior Shelter Cluster Coordinator for UNHCR.
Since 2007, she has been invited as lecturer for various conferences (S-DEV Palexpo, Chandighar, Anchorage) and held regular workshops on reconstruction after natural disasters and conflict in universities in Switzerland (EPFL, SUPSI, HESSO, HEPIA). She is currently assistant professor in Architecture at HEPIA (Geneva), for a semester master level workshop on “Architecture de Crise”. Nadia is also co-author of the « Guidebook for building earthquake-resistant houses in confined masonry » (SDC-HA / EERI, August 2015) and the « Guidebook for trainers. Educational exercises for the training in confined masonry. » (Architects CCR, CSA, SDC-HA. French version August 2013).
Joseph Ashmore is the Shelter and Settlements Expert and Global Shelter Coordination Focal Point, in the Department of Operations and Emergencies at IOM Geneva. He is also a coordination focal point for the Global Shelter Cluster. In his 4 years at IOM he has established a team who provide remote and in-field operational and technical support to shelter and NFI programmes that assisted 5.22 million people in 52 countries in 2016. He actively supports activities of the Global Shelter Cluster and works with IOM missions on shelter coordination activities in 24 countries.
Prior to joining IOM, Joseph worked in humanitarian operations, including as a cluster coordinator and cluster technical advisor, for at least 16 operational agencies in Africa, Asia, Middle East, Latin America and Europe as well as in academic institutions since 1998. He was the lead author for the first four editions of Shelter Projects, and additionally compiled practical booklets supporting humanitarian response on: tents, plastic sheeting, timber, shelter kits, selecting NFIs for shelter and evaluations of shelter designs that have been translated into multiple languages.