This week at National Headquarters we’ve welcomed communications representatives from 60 different Red Cross/Red Crescent National Societies. It’s amazing to hear so many accents together in one room.  We hope to share our best practices and to understand one another’s goals so that we can work together cohesively.

The gathering began yesterday – below you’ll find first impressions from American Red Cross communicator Michael Oko:

Today is the first day of our Global Communications Forum. The turnout is incredible: there are nearly 100 people here from about 60 countries—from Denmark to Uganda to Singapore. We started the day hearing from leaders in the humanitarian field discuss some of the global trends that affect our work, such as the crowded humanitarian field, urbanization, climate change and disaster risk reduction. Jeremy Barnicle, from Mercy Corps [www.mercycorps.org], gave us this advice: “Communications is a means to an end; but we must understand what the ‘end’ is.”

Even though many of our colleagues were fighting jet lag, we rounded out the day with Kristen Grimm of Spitfire Strategies [www.spitfirestrategies.com] who challenged us with 10 tips to build support for communications inside our organizations. She reminded us that we need to think about the impact of our communications, not just count media hits. The best part of today is simply putting faces to names with our counterparts from around the world.

Filed under: International