Collaboration and Crisis

I wrote this several weeks ago and thought I'd already put it up.

Collaboration and Crisis

Will we be able to look back on this year of crisis and say it was an impetus for partnering among the Body of Christ? That we were able to work within the context of communities facing didasster in a way that offered hope and modeled relationship?

No, sadly not. From the Tsunami in Asia and Africa, to the earthquake in Pakistan, to Hurricane Katrina in the US, there were few -- if any – good examples of groups working to reduce the massive duplication and coordinate their efforts. This despite virtually all of the relief and development experts, and those evaluating local projects, saying that cooperation would be a much more effective approach than what we currently see.

But, before we go and blame the groups and ministries that were offering relief during these crises (or in the case of Katrina, FEMA), it’s important to note that developing collaboration during crisis is virtually impossible. Why? Because the foundation of good partnering is relationship and trust, and there is little or no time for that kind of work while lives are being rescued and families being looked after.

The needed work of collaboration among disaster response group needs to take place before a crisis happens. Relationships need to be established, vision shared, potential joint projects excplored, and, most importantly, groups must learn to develop how to share success -- long before the fund raising machines are geared up to secure the resources needed to respond to a calamity. Once the marketing department gets ahold of the issue, the difficulty of developing cooperative strategies and talking about shared success is hard to overcome.

So the question becomes, how can we encourage the advance work needed for a collaborative response? It should be easier than it is given the lip service that most non-profit organizations give to the notion of partnering. However, the work of partnering takes hard work, dedicated leadership, intentionality, and the knowledge and skills necessary to really make it happen.

Those are the kind of things that REACT Services offers to its clients, and offers as assistance to our ministry projects. See: http://www.REACTServices.com

-- November 8, 2oo5