HELP Course Wrap Up

While the last two weeks were not exactly what I had expected, I am coming away with a lot of new knowledge which hopefully I will never have to use.  One of the hardest things about the course for me, besides the 9-5 hours, was the fact there was no finite answer to questions posed and situations presented.  Instead this class forced us to think about different disaster scenarios and taught us to ask the right series of questions while considering limited monetary and personnel resources.

A few of the major take always:

• COLLABORATION is key. While this seems like a no brainer it is many times not actually practiced in the field. As a result, services end up overlapping and the simplest of ideas can be thrown to the waste side. 
• Always start with an initial assessment. Again it seems like a no brainer, but this is another thing that can be forgotten.  Thankfully everything I learned in undergrad/grad school was centered around this concept which means it is usually the first or second thing I bring up in these scenarios. 
• More water is better than cleaner water and sanitation is better than clean drinking water in preventing disease (two things that are practiced in opposite in real life). Sanitation is just not sexy and as a result it is harder to get funding. 
• Always think about security. One of the guys at my table is active serving military and he was constantly thinking about how the population we were serving and the NGO workers would be protected. 

Here is the motley crew who were trapped in the same room for 80 hours over the last two weeks - still smiling until the bitter end. Also I did not take this picture, I am mearly using the one taken by the professor.  There are some people missing due to flu which is hitting the rest of the country.

The only thing that stands between me and the official end of the course is a 2500 word paper