The Indian Ocean tsunami at the end of 2004 was a turning point for RedR Australia, as it was for many aid agencies. Prior to that time, RedR Australia deployed up to 30 people per year.
In 2005 the figure was 92, in 2006 it was 78, and in 2007 there were 55 field assignments, generally focused on emergency relief actions.
The skills being requested by United Nations disaster relief agencies have also expanded. About half of our deployments are engineers, with logisticians forming a quarter of all placements and the remainder ranging from tele/data communications technicians, public health and social service workers, to project managers, humanitarian coordinators and report writers.
Since mid-2006 almost half the deployments have been undertaken by Register members on their first assignment, gender balance is almost perfectly balanced accross all deployments. RedR Australia’s contribution within the Australian NGO sector has risen as these organisations sought our services to train their staff for humanitarian response work.
Staff from NGOs now make up half of the 600 training course participants annually. The tsunami also highlighted the need for specialist training in humanitarian logistics and water and sanitation for emergencies, and these courses are now an integral part of the RedR Australia training calendar.
