You will find here short articles/stories written by community members about their own experience from implementation of Sphere in many different contexts and situations. You will find a lot of hints, insights, practical ideas about how to face challenges of Sphere compliance and Sphere implementation in practice.
You can also write your own article/story and send us your own experience. You have first to login and select "Send Sphere article" from the user menu on the left hand side of your screen. Your article/story will be first reviewed before it is published. Once published, any community member can then comment on it.
My name is James Nyawo a masters student in Humanitarian Programme Management and I am finalising my research project on How Sphere Minimum Standards have influenced the management of water programmes in Northern Uganda.
Mr. Puji Pujiono, the Secretary General of the Indonesian Society for Disaster Management (MPBI), confirms that MPBI continues to be committed to Sphere.
For the first time in response to a new emergency, the Sphere Board agreed to field a Sphere Focal Point to offer support on the effective use of Sphere to agencies responding to the earthquake. Two Sphere ToT facilitators, Rory Downham and Sylvie Robert, shared this consultancy for four weeks during November and December 2005. Church World Service (CWS), a member of the Sphere Board member network, Action for Churches Together, hosted the consultants in their Islamabad office. Sphere Board member and other interested agencies – a total of 15 organisations – contributed the funds necessary to cover the consultancies.
By: Ammar Hamdani Cash for Work Coordinator, Mercy Corps - Mansehra, Pakistan
Lack of coordination between INGO’s regarding shelter kits creates packages of varying qualities that force communities to reject viable packages that they consider less attractive during the current Pakistan earthquake relief effort.
In 1998 the Bahr el Ghazal region of southern Sudan became the epicentre of a famine caused by a number of factors that included the civil war between the Government of Sudan (GOS) and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), and drought and floods in previous years.
Ajiep was a small, quiet town in Bahr el Ghazal, but in a short space of time during 1998 its population grew rapidly from 3,000 to some 21,000 persons. Among the reasons for this rapid growth in population was insecurity and forced displacement and the concentration of services, particularly the general food ration and emergency feeding programmes.
Amongst other activities in Sierra Leone, Oxfam Great Britain (GB) provides water and sanitation for approximately 35,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) in Kenema district, Eastern Province. These IDPs are located in five camps in the district, approximately 30,000 of whom are living in two large, unplanned camps in a peri-urban setting adjacent to privately-held land. As the agency responsible for sanitation, Oxfam is continually closing and re-opening new pit latrines to keep up with demand.
Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama -countries all under the umbrella of the office of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Guatemala - face poverty, extreme inequality in the distribution of wealth, and little government capacity to cope with the rise of malnutrition and the spread of disease. Their populations live under the constant threat of natural disaster as witnessed by the devastation caused by El Niño and Hurricane Mitch. In recent years, several major disasters requiring international assistance have struck the region, including earthquakes (Mexico), floods (Honduras), droughts (Nicaragua), volcanic eruptions (Nicaragua) and hurricanes (Mexico and Central America). These disasters left a trail of destruction, not only taking lives but also destroying physical infrastructures and disrupting production in vast areas of these countries.
