December 17, 2021
CPDP Deployment Blog Post: Danièle Wyss’s story
This blog series will focus on the highlights from different Cash Practitioner Development Programme deployments in 2021, allowing practitioners to share what they have learnt and experienced during their Cash School learning deployments.
The Cash Practitioner Development Programme aims to expand the ready pool of cash experts available to deliver humanitarian cash assistance, and to strengthen the community of qualified practitioners with up-to-date skills in all areas of cash assistance. Cash deployments are a key element of participants learning schedules, these deployments aim to enhance skills and confidence in implementing cash based assistance. Some deployments are run in partnership with NORCAP, with practitioners accessing deployment opportunities from a range of humanitarian agencies.
Name : Danièle Wyss
Job title : Cash & Market Specialist – ICRC
Where were you deployed : Deployed to work with the Turkish Red Crescent (Ankara & Gaziantep)
What type of work did you complete as part of the deployment?
During the deployment I worked with the TRC’s Coordination and Project Coordination teams, the deployment aimed to provide experience in strategic CVA coordination, including the ESSN taskforces and coordination mechanisms under the Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan (3RP). I participated in their Basic Needs and CBI Working Group meetings.
I wrote a comprehensive paper on what is KizilayKart, how it works and what makes it such a success. It contains background information on the crisis, the Turkish Red Crescent, the registration process, the current and completed programes, the seven KizilayKart workflows/units, the internal and external coordination mechanisms, links to relevant websites, platforms etc and an ‘interview’ section resulting from my field trip to Gaziantep and Ankara where I was able to ask many questions about the process as a whole.
What have you learned most about?
My key learnings were:
- Good coordination between humanitarian actors and all stakeholder is possible
- Unless there is political will, no matter how much inter-agency coordination and how good it is, the response will not be a success
- AAP/CEA is essential for beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries alike but also for host-communities, staff and volunteers
- For such a response to be successful and to avoid unnecessary tension, the host community must be included in the process and the assistance
What was a ‘stand out’ moment for you on your deployment`?
For me it was definitely the field trip to Gaziantep where I was able to witness first hand all the work done by the TRC. We had the opportunity to speak with various departments from the Gaziantep ESSN office, visit a Community Centre and a Service Centre. We were able to interview numerous people, such as:
-> M&E field team
-> M&E Operators team
-> Call Centre team
-> Outreach team
-> In-camp Management team
-> Deputy coordinator
-> Community Centre team
-> Service Centre manager
It is quite impressive to see everyone’s dedication but also the variety of different nationalities working on the projects. A substential number of colleagues have been involved from the start of the crisis and worked in various departments/workstreams of the TRC and the KizilayKart project. Quite a few have themselves gone through the whole process, which means that they have a deep understanding and knowledge of all the programmes and know how to best address people’s queries and/or worries.