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The Need and Obstacles We Address

The Need

The entire region has been overwhelmed by a devastating and rapidly growing humanitarian crisis at all levels of society due to expanding war and violence, resulting in massive loss of life, injury, and displacement of the civilian populations, and destruction of the local human service infrastructure that would have been relied on to help address the immense need.

At the same time, there has been a significant pulling back or even elimination of international governmental and large system support for critical humanitarian aid – most dramatically in Gaza, as well as Lebanon and Syria – that is resulting in responsibility for supplying this life-saving aid increasing falling on the shoulders of those nongovernmental organizations individually struggling to provide desperately needed services under profoundly adverse conditions.
In the face of this dilemma, strategic cooperation and mutual support between humanitarian service NGOs is vital.

The immediate issues this initiative addresses are the magnitude of this need, the overwhelming challenges and inability of any one NGO attempting to realistically do this alone, and the practical advantages, strengths, and necessity of working together.

The Obstacles to Individual NGOs

Obstacles that limit and undermine the ability of individual health care organizations to more effectively meet the critical needs of massive numbers of victims and minimize overburdening staff and burnout include:

  • Working in isolation,
  • Limited direct service staffing and operational resources,
  • Limited specialized skills among service staff for complex needs,
  • Limited and unequal access to best practice skills training and educational materials and programs,
  • Lack of connection and information on:
    o What other NGOs are doing, where, for what population, and how to access these services to be aware of:
       > Where and how community members can access needed services near them.
       > Where and how NGOs can make referrals to and follow-up with local services.
       > Identified service gaps, as well as duplication that wastes resources.
       > Possibilities for coordinating, complimenting, and mutually supporting like-purposed efforts.
    o Available operational resources that can be shared to help fill service gaps, including logistical and specialized skill resources that individual NGOs either have the ability to share or are in need of (ex. medical NGOs in need of mental health expertise, and vice versa; local service delivery sites that can be shared with visiting health care missions, etc.).
    o Other collected service-related data and lessons-learned by other NGOs 
  • Barriers to virtual communications due to imposed obstructions and damaged infrastructure that prevent or significantly hinder needed tele-services reaching those in local communities.



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