Humanitarianz

Who is this course for?

This course is deal for first time managers, for managers with some experience coming into a more managerial role i.e someone more technical, or even managers coming from a different sector into humanitarian work for the first time. This course touches on essential knowledge, skills and competencies for any level manager. It would be an appropriate course also for someone who has been in a management post for a while, but has never had any formal training in management skills and competences. Many managers, experienced or not, have difficulties with team management, and as this is a particular focus of the course, will benefit most managers.

Why do this course?

Most humanitarian aid workers, before going to the field for the first time receive some sort of pre-departure training or induction process. To what level of detail this process goes into tends to differ from organisation to organisation, and greatly depends on the size of the organisation and the resources available to induct, train and brief. However, no matter how good the pre-departure preparation, it tends to be pretty generic and cannot really prepare people well enough for the specificity of their role and responsibilities, or, for the specific context they will be working in.

Having experienced the very steep learning curve first hand, and seen hundreds of others struggle with it at the beginning of new project postings, I have designed this course to try to help make the learner curve easier to navigate and the whole process of starting a new post on a new project less stressful. There is a focus on management because it is directed at people who have something or someone to manage, which is the majority of us in this line of work.

The course also touches on security and safety, not from a management perspective, but from the perspective of a person working on a project and exposed to certain risks. it gives an overview of what security is, how it should be managed, and what you can do to take responsibility for your own security and safety. It is by no means an in-depth course on security.

Course Content & Length

For the most part this course is video based, short videos, usually not more than 5 -6 minutes long, each with a summary slide at the end. The reason for this is to help you to get the main messages as efficiently as possible, without adding to the saturation levels that already come with starting a new post - reading documents, lots of meetings, learning new things, adapting etc. For this reason there is only written material provided where it is considered it necessary.

Along the same line of reasoning, there are no study assignments or testing activities as the course is designed to help you as you arrive and get to grips with your new post, colleagues and context, and is already practical rather than theoretical.

Please take advantage of the course discussion forums to clarify any issues or questions you may have with the content.