Edward Benson
Shelter/NFI/CCCM Coordinator
Duty Station: Yangon, Myanmar
I am addressing the challenge of how UNHCR can locate and select the most suitable candidates for positions that demand coordination of a certain humanitarian sector, with a focus on shelter and camp management but not necessarily exclusively.
This latter point raises one of the issues I am keen to explore. To what degree is technical expertise needed to be an effective coordinator within a sector? Through this Fellowship, I am trying to hone in on identifying what are the key facets needed to be an effective coordinator and how might one determine if a person has those facets?
One key challenge I have faced in my role is recruiting suitable candidates for key field positions as part of UNHCR’s humanitarian coordination responsibilities in shelter and camp coordination and camp management (CCCM). We are heavily dependent on stand-by partners to provide the capacity to lead our humanitarian sectors of responsibility at the field level. Our challenge is to identify and recruit suitable candidates which if we do not can result in a significant waste of time and money, doing the candidate, stand-by partner, those that we seek to coordinate and critically persons of concern, few (if any) favours. For UNHCR, it hugely undermines our reputation to perform and to lead (elements of) a humanitarian response, effectively.
I want to find a solution to this challenge, because it can majorly support UNHCR to perform and lead (elements of) a humanitarian response.