Cristian Goldberg, Director, Lift Chile Challenge Foundation, after Chile's magnitude 8.8 earthquake in 2010
The government is normally the first responder in the wake of a natural disaster, the first stabilizer, and the first restorer. Yet exceptions come to mind. When the government of Haiti was barely functioning in the wake of its 2010 earthquake, international agencies came to aid the injured. When local authorities in the US were caught short by the scale of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005, retail companies like Walmart jumped in to resupply the stranded.
We are seeing that same spirit of volunteerism now in Nepal after its 7.8-magnitude earthquake on April 25. Civil groups ranging from Students for Nepal and Read Global to Nepal Rises and Smart Paani have mobilized everything from relief funds and homeless shelters to tent distribution to power supply.
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Michael Useem Rodrigo Jordan
We are familiar with a similar response by civil groups in Chile after it was hit by an 8.8 magnitude earthquake on February 27, 2010. Having studied Chile's recovery from this event and having even taken part in it, we draw out several leadership suggestions for Nepal's own recovery.
Chile Experience
Many civil groups stepped forward in Chile to complement the government's actions, doing what the latter could not. One private group, for instance, assumed sole responsibility for temporary housing in one of Chile's most devastated regions, and a second took charge of rebuilding public schools in another region. A third, the Foundation for the Eradication of Poverty, had been active in the region hardest hit by the earthquake, where damage to roads, electricity, and telecom had made governing nearly impossible. Many public officials found their own offices uninhabitable, and into that vacuum stepped the foundation, organizing emergency committees to orchestrate recovery, identifying areas most in need, and channeling volunteers toward them.
A fourth organization, Vertical Foundation, filled still another gap. Vertical had been running programs to develop leadership and teamwork through wilderness training. Its outdoor guides were already well accustomed to living with no power, no housing, no food, no water, and no Internet. And now, residents of the most affected region had been forced to do without the same. While the government was naturally focused on Chile's largest cities, Vertical chose to focus on its rural villages, and it brought to them what it knew best: surviving and even prospering without permanent shelter, indoor plumbing, or kitchen stove.
To ensure that the outdoor guides would deliver what the communities really required, the foundation first sent reconnaissance teams to identify the villages most in need and what they most needed. And the latter proved to be far more than just hard goods, extending to village governance and even emotional rehabilitation. "We didn't know how to help," explained one foundation director, "until the villagers told us," and that turned out to be one of the initiative's assets. "We got their empathy," he reported, "when they realized we wanted to help with something beyond the material."
One villager kept pressing foundation volunteers to help her retrieve a mobile phone from the rubble of her home before turning to build an emergency shelter. It was initially unclear why a cellular device could be more urgent than erecting a shelter. When the team finally found the phone, it realized that it was the villager's lifeline to family and friends—and that it allowed for contact with a host of service providers.
Foundation staff also came to appreciate that the villagers needed more than just their homes back. Residents lamented the lack of common ground, and in response the foundation erected geodesic-domed tents with 650-square feet of meeting space, allowing villagers to talk about their future, to have a schoolroom for their children, and to simply gather socially. And the foundation leveraged its assets in still other ways. It had long run leadership development programs, and when the government organized a training program in Santiago for village leaders from across Chile, Vertical delivered the content.
Leadership Dispatches
From our direct experience with the Poverty Foundation and Vertical Foundation and our study of other civil groups responding to Chile's 8.8 earthquake, we have come to better appreciate eight leadership principles that we believe can serve as useful reference points for civil action in Nepal now:
1. Be there: Direct engagement with those most affected by the calamity can be essential for mobilizing the right kinds of response. Civil groups in Chile only came to appreciate that afflicted residents most needed their schools rebuilt, businesses restarted, and outdoor-living supported when they personally visited the devastated areas.
2. Personalize: Non-government organizations can personalize and empathize with disaster victims the way that government agencies often cannot. Those working with foundations in Chile mourned with the earthquake's victims while they were helping them back on their feet.
3. Take charge: Civil responses are no less in need of management than public agencies. Civil groups took full charge of their relief efforts, assembling experts, disciplining decisions, and exercising oversight.
4. Keep it simple: When time is urgent and need is great, modest solutions can often be best. With a sudden infusion of donated funds and thousands in need of immediate shelter, one Chilean foundation concentrated on a single prefabricated housing model that could be manufactured quickly and deployed massively.
5. Mobilize resources: Civil action depends entirely on contributed resources, and recruiting volunteers and raising cash remain essential functions even during relief and recovery. The leaders of the foundations we tracked in Chile determinedly sought more funding even as they were stretched by the crisis moment.
6. Partnership: When resources are stretched to the extreme in the wake of a catastrophe, public agencies and civil actors can complement one another, furnishing more than either can provide alone. One Chilean foundation rebuilt schools in one region while the government focused on another; a second foundation built temporary housing in one area while the government did it elsewhere; a third foundation helped remote villagers that the government could never reach.
7. Leverage: Civil organizations can draw upon what they already do well to do what others cannot do in a crisis. Vertical offered outdoor survival in stricken areas that the government could neither reach nor provide.
8. Long-term: When relief attention predictably tails off as the immediate crisis subsides, it is vital for foundations to sustain their engagements for months or even years.
"Civil society played a big part in the reconstruction effort," reported a senior government official in Chile. "You always need civil society to work with you." It is evident today in Nepal.
Michael Useem is professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, US and Rodrigo Jordan is founder of the Foundation for the Eradication of Poverty and chair of Vertical Institute in Chile
useem@wharton.upenn.edu
jordan@vertical.cl.
