HCRI Research Seminar- Tackling multiple challenges at once: Are we drifting away from our core mission?
| Dates: | 30 October 2019 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 19:00 |
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| What is it: | Talk |
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| Organiser: | School of Arts, Languages and Cultures |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, External researchers, Adults, Alumni, Current University students, General public |
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| Speaker: | Sophie Delaunay , Jiho Cha |
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HCRI's third research seminar of the new term will be with guest speaker Sophie Delaunay.
Event title: Tackling multiple challenges at once: Are we drifting away from our core mission?
Event abstract: Humanitarian organisations operate in complex environments where providing assistance to thousands of people is rarely their sole challenge. A wide range of constraints including insecurity, lack of adapted resources, management of public perception, local administrative requirements and/or hostility towards humanitarian actors may co-exist and frequently combined. These multiple challenges force humanitarians to not only focus on their specific efforts but to invest in many other activities that are not necessarily core to their social mission, but essential to conduct their work. As a result, many organisations are inclined to expand their scope of intervention, and to develop know-hows in various areas from advocating for affordable and adapted medicines, to negotiating access to restricted territory, analysing and navigating national legal environments or understanding regional political dynamics. This local complexity faced by NGOs has been in recent years amplified by growing public demands for higher standards of financial accountability, environmental preservation, or equity and behaviour on the part of humanitarian stakeholders.
All these constraints put humanitarian organisations under tremendous pressure and can contribute to uncontrolled growth and sometimes mission creep. This is when comes an additional challenge: not losing direction and finding the right balance between the need to adapt to and address prevailing obstacles, and an organisation's ability to focus on its core mandate. This is the tension that will be explored in the group discussion through a series of recent examples.
Event format: Welcome and introduction by Chair Dr Jiho Cha prior, to presentation by Sophie. A audience Q&A session will then proceed followed, by a networking session at 6pm. Free drinks and snacks will be available.
Please note this event is open to members of the public and no booking is required for this event, so simply turn up.
Price: Free
Speakers
Sophie Delaunay
Role: Former Executive Director
Organisation: Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) USA
Biography: Sophie first became involved with MSF in 1993 in administrative and finance roles, then worked extensively in program management both in the field and at headquarters. Delaunay has worked on MSF projects in Thailand, Rwanda, China and Korea, as well as in the French and US offices. She also conducted in-depth evaluations of MSF programs in Liberia, Darfur, Central African Republic and China. Besides her MSF work, Delaunay worked for three years as program director in ESTHER, a French government AIDS agency, where she supervised the organization’s programs in 18 countries. She holds a master’s degree in International Business from Le Havre University in France, and a master’s degree in Political Science from Yonsei University in Korea. She has contributed to multiple publications, including a book about North Korean asylum seekers.
Jiho Cha
Role: LEAP Programme Director and Senior Lecturer in Humanitarian Studies
Organisation: HCRI
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
C5.1
Ellen Wilkinson Building
Manchester
