Research Partnerships
“The challenges the humanitarian community encountered last year in Haiti and Pakistan clearly demonstrate that it urgently needs new knowledge, new expertise and new approaches. At the same time, there is a growing expectation that decision making and programme design by humanitarian agencies should be evidence based. However, the pressures on today’s humanitarian practitioners to deliver assistance at great speed and often to predefined goals, methods and targets provide little space for analysis, reflection and investigation. As a result, there is a division within the humanitarian community between those who are employed to ‘think’ and those who are employed to ‘do’. This limits our potential to be truly responsive to humanitarian crises.”
Jess Camburn, Director, ELRHA (Humanitarian Exchange 50, April 2011: Humanitarian Partnerships)
It has been acknowledged that there needs to be more done to encourage and understand partnerships that work effectively for the Humanitarian effort. The HERR underpins the value of humanitarian work being informed by evidence and ELRHA sits firmly at this nexus with good links between academics and humanitarian agencies.
Currently, ELRHA is working on the following initiatives to foster better partnership between academics and humanitarians:
Other relevant ELRHA activities
In 2010 ELRHA funded five small projects where partners came together to work on initiatives
- Integrating the science of high probability unpredictable hazards in disaster reduction programmes
- Engaging Tomorrow's Global humanitarian Leaders, Today
- Engineers without Borders- A Rapid Research Response Secondment Programme
- Improving Learning and Practice in the NGO Shelter Sector
- High Science in Low-Tech Emergency Settings
Humanitarian Innovation Fund
The first round of these awards have been made and we in the Research Partnerships team will keep close contact with the HIF team to identify areas within the partnerships being funded that will inform our work.
.jpg){kind=small}