An Interview with Wynn Flaten
ECB Manager, World Vision International
Each of the six participating IWG agencies has appointed an ECB Manager who leads the organisation’s day-to-day engagement with the project across all cross-cutting themes. Wynn Flaten, ECB Manager at World Vision International (WVI), shares his first impressions of the launch of Phase II and gives us a glimpse of what ECB means for WVI’s humanitarian future.
Q. What inspired you to want to join the ECB project as World Vision International’s ECB Agency Manager?
A. One main reason is the “bottom up” approach of the project, where the “driver” is the field rather than headquarters. We check ourselves by asking “Is this field driven, or are we drifting toward a top – down approach?” It’s surprising how many times the answer to this question causes us to drop some ideas or strategies and get back to a field focus.
Q. Can you describe the synergies between the ECB project vision and World Vision’s overall strategic vision for humanitarian emergency response?
A. The ECB Vision of Success is “Improved speed, quality, and effectiveness of the humanitarian community to save lives, improve the welfare, and protect the rights of people in emergency situations.” One of the key phrases is “the humanitarian community”. WVI is constantly improving its own disaster management capacity, including the ECB themes of staff capacity, accountability and impact measurement, and disaster risk reduction.
In a broader sense, though, we also want to contribute to improvements in the humanitarian sector as a whole. WVI’s Humanitarian and Emergency Affairs unit manages more than 98 external relationships with sector networks, research institutes, etc. The uniqueness of ECB for World Vision is that it provides a five year timeframe to demonstrate that intentional collaboration with other agencies and stakeholders on a day-to-day basis, particularly at the field level, enables us to address more effectively issues of disaster preparedness and response.
Q. How will you and your ECB colleagues at WVI benefit most from collaborating with other international NGOs?
A. ECB opens up each of the participating agencies to a level of transparency that is quite exceptional. One simple question can lead down a path of discovery about differences in governance, decision rights, organisation cultures, tools and processes, but this works because there is almost no element of competition. We are in this together, and it is an incredibly positive experience for all of us at both field and agency levels.
Q. Could you give us one example of a new ECB project and explain how this is likely to impact WVI’s work at the field level?
A. One of the ECB themes is Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). The ECB DRR Advisors are currently reviewing the idea to jointly develop a “Good Enough Guide to DRR”. The potential impact on WVI is significant.
World Vision is a child – focussed organisation. The communities where 3.7 million sponsored children live are part of more than 1,600 area development programmes around the world, many in high risk areas. Over each programme’s 12 – 15 year timeframe, the losses from disasters can be significant. Using the Guide as a DRR lens in the programme management cycle would help identify and address risks to communities that threaten immediate and long term improvements in quality of life for the children.
Q. Can you explain ways in which beneficiaries will be directly involved during the implementation and review stages of each ECB-WVI initiative?
A. Over time we will monitor how communities are changing as a result of ECB approaches and tools. If larger scale disasters occur, we will set up community feedback mechanisms, and project evaluations will assess to what extent communities feel their voice is heard, and the responsiveness of WVI programming to their concerns.
Q. What challenges have you faced so far during the launch and planning phase of the project?
A. By far the biggest challenge during the launch has been complexity. Six agencies, five consortia, three themes; bringing all of this together in a coherent, productive manner is not for the faint of heart!
Having said that, the trust and camaraderie among those involved in the project is incredibly high. In the process of building these relationships, we have now identified specific areas to work on, and I am very optimistic that in the years ahead the ECB project will be making a significant contribution to the humanitarian sector.
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