UN OCHA and UN IRIN organized a one-day training course on humanitarian reporting for UAE based reporters. The training was hosted by the Dubai Press Club and the International Humanitarian City. During the day 36 from 25 journalists were introduced to subjects such as the international humanitarian system, Sphere, technicalities of humanitarian journalisitic reporting, challenges faced by responders in the field. It is hoped that similar events will be organized in other countries to strengthen cooperation between humanitarian agencies and the media.

Three months after the cyclone Sidr struck the Bangladeshi coast, Oxfam is issuing this note to take stock of a reasonably successful emergency response while also underlining communities' massive recovery needs - above all in terms of housing and livelihoods.

In response to the Tsunami (26 December 2004) which resulted in massive loss of life and property along the Sri Lankan coast line, RedR UK, in affiliation with the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies Sri Lanka (CHA) established a Learning Support and Capacity Building Programme (LSCB). Formal humanitarian training programmes and District (field level) Learning Support Offices (DLSO) form the backbone of the programme.  This case study considers the goals, roles, principles and approaches of the District Learning Support Offices (DLSO) operating in 4 districts in Sri Lanka against good practice field level learning.

The document can be downloaded from this link.

After the July war in 2006, Lebanon had many lessons to be learned and among those lessons was disaster preparedness and coping mechanisms. A thorough assessment identified needs on the community level and was validated further with community volunteers, and Lebanese Red Cross. It was realized that all stakeholders had no knowledge of the Sphere standards and limited or no knowledge on emergency preparedness and response. Therefore, it was decided that a Sphere training program designed to build capacities of the local community on emergency preparedness and response including Sphere Standards, risk assessments and disaster mitigation was needed to respond to any emergency in the country.

 ALNAP and ProVention consortium recently published a paper of lessons from responses to flooding in the expectation that it will prove useful to those who are involved in responding to the flooding in southern Africa.

The overall sales figures provided by Oxfam Publishing and Al Shorouk Publishing for the period of May 2005 – April 2007 show that promotion of Sphere materials, particularly the Handbook in English, French, Spanish and Arabic, has been successful, with a 42% increase in the value of sales between 2005-6 and 2006-7.

Sales of all Sphere available materials (handbook, DVD, training pack) in 6 languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Russian) in GBP were:

The Libyan Agency for Relief and Humanitarian Assistance (LIBAID) delivered a training on Sphere, the Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response from 4th to 6th of December 2007. The training was lead by Mr. Mostafa Osman and Mr. Abdel Hamid El Madani.

For more information, see the LIBAID website.