Responding in Emergencies: Our Volunteers in Training

We’re now six months into our fabulous RespondIR volunteer programme and we’re delighted that things have been going from strength to strength! Our volunteers have bonded wonderfully as a team and are steadily developing their skills and experience as lifesavers.

Now a quarter of the way through the programme, this October we welcomed our guest partners the British Red Cross to Islamic Relief UK for a weekend-long session focusing on crisis response and how best to respond in local emergencies.

Staff from the British Red Cross providing training to our RespondIR volunteers

Over the two days, our volunteers were able to learn, ask questions and find out about the realities of providing emergency response in cases of disaster. And they really did get stuck in!

Day 1 – Introduction to emergencies enabled our RespondIR volunteers to learn all aspects of dealing with an emergency, including government legislation the Civil Contingencies Act. More importantly, various discussions were had in groups around the need, the people and the role of emergency services and first responders.

Our RespondIR volunteers in action during the latest training session.

Day 2 – Psychosocial framework called CALMER was introduced to the learners, thus making them more effective in dealing with the ‘multidimensional psychosocial needs of individuals and communities’. More importantly as volunteers they are able to look after themselves and their peers.
Just take a look at some of the great work in action!

Our RespondIR volunteers in one of the working group during a role play exercise, during the latest training session.

Both myself and Volunteer Coordinator Abdulla were delighted at how well the session went and are looking forward to the next training on gender and inclusion – another critical (yet very diverse!) area.

So on behalf of myself, Abdulla and everyone at IRUK, we’d like to say a big thank you to the team at British Red Cross for providing such a wonderfully informative day and a big well done to all of our volunteers. See you at the next training session!