I had a very uplifting experience in Yemen. We went there in order to implement in a practical way our new theme of partnership called “HOPE” (humanitarian operational partnership engagement). We started our adventure with an 8 hour mountainous car journey from Sana’a to Aden, which made some of us drowsy. This was the first step of building operational partnerships. This state made everybody cross the barriers put up by everyone else. It was wonderful to hear everybody talk freely about the strengths, dreams and activities of their organisation.
The second milestone was our field visit to the local organisations and we worked together as a group to identify a local problem and design a local programme.
The third milestone happened when there wasn’t a consultant from a boardroom to lecture the local CBOs/CSOs, but every group was deeply engaged in discussing the project frame design, life cycle, funding and outcomes.
I felt very uplifted because of the spirit of discussions, the depth of knowledge and the diversity of opinions presented by the participants. As an example, from the 18 women present, half were wearing the niqab (head and face cover) and had strong and educated views. This teaches us not to judge people on what they look, but listen to them instead and engage them in a pertinent discussion.
I can see that within the next years we will have new international humanitarian leadership emerging from Yemen. Let us give them our FAT (funding, advocacy, training) to achieve not just HOPE for Yemen, but hope for us all.
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