Emergency Planning: How Volunteers can Help Create a Human-centred Approach

Covid-19 highlighted how in a crisis the public will volunteer to help their community. It also highlighted the importance of taking a human-centred approach during emergencies to ensure vulnerable people receive the help they need.

Naomi Phillips, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the British Red Cross, shared with us their 8-point policy framework for a person-centred approach to crisis response. The framework can be consulted in any crisis to better the understanding of what a person might need to help them through an emergency.

Volunteers and community support are integral to a human-centred approach, as they can help fill the gaps and strengthen emergency responses so that people’s needs are met.

Using lessons learned from Covid-19, we can move forward in emergency planning to include volunteer and community support as part of the preparations. This is how a human-centred response to emergencies can be established in all multi-agency approaches to emergencies.

The public and volunteers are integral in emergency responses and can fill the gaps in response teams during emergencies. Naomi Phillips, of the Red Cross, outlined how volunteers and the community can help fill these gaps to achieve a human-centred response to crises.