This episode discusses 'community engagement': recent wins, as well as the continued struggle to move beyond tokenism to achieve meaningful change – and whether 'bureaucracy engagement' might better reflect the complexities of the engagement.

In this episode, Kristin Vestrheim (Moderator), Eminenur Çınar (Board Member), and Yakzan Shishakly (Board Member) discuss their network – the Interagency Community of Practice on Community Engagement in Displacement Response. They explore the consequences of treating community engagement as a narrow, technical problem –rather than a political one — and suggest more radical and integrative solutions to help shift power back to the people.

The forum is part of the Camp Coordination and Camp Management (CCCM) cluster and you can check it out here.

[Lars Peter Nissen] (0:47 - 4:27)

The way we as an industry engage with crisis-affected populations is one of the key issues and challenges facing the humanitarian sector. These days, we call it several different things. We sometimes talk about accountability to affected populations, AAP, community engagement, and even the participation revolution. There's broad agreement that we must do better on community engagement and develop a deeper and more meaningful connection to the communities we serve. And a lot of really good efforts have gone into strengthening that side of our work in the past years. However, in spite of all these efforts, I think it's fair to say that we have not yet seen a meaningful shift of power from big aid to the affected communities. Maybe the clearest sign of how deep this crisis runs is that we actually have to create a specific project to engage with the people we serve. It doesn't happen as an integral, natural, organic way of the way we do business. We have to create a project. That's why I'm split when it comes to current efforts on community engagement. It is, of course, very positive that we are trying to do better, and it's fantastic that progress is being made. But if we frame community engagement as a fairly narrow technical problem, which can be solved by training and building capacity, developing some new policy and some terms, and hiring some community engagement experts, then I fear that, once again, we are seeking technical solutions to what is really political problems. I believe that at the root of the lack of responsiveness we see today are the perverse incentives that are built into the humanitarian business model, incentives that drives us towards caring more about donor requirements than about the people we serve. You'll hear this basic skepticism shine through in my conversation with Kristin, Emi, and Yakzan, three members of the Interagency Community of Practice for Community Engagement. I think it's fantastic what they do. It's great that we have a community of practice and that we are developing better and deeper practices around how we can connect in a more meaningful manner with the communities we serve. At the same time, I have a beef with the overall lack of tackling the obvious structural issues that are holding back humanitarian reform, and I think you'll see that tension play out in this conversation. I should say that, of course, the three participants are speaking in their personal capacity and not as representatives for the organizations they work for. As always, we appreciate your feedback and your ideas for new episodes. So drop us a line on LinkedIn or write an email to info@trumanitarian.org. As always, most importantly, enjoy the conversation.

Today, I'm joined in the studio by three members of the interagency community of practice on community engagement. It is Eminenur Çınar, who is coming in from Pemba in Mozambique, where she works with IOM. It is Yakzan Shishakly from the Maram Foundation, and he is in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. And finally, we have Kristin Vestrheim, who is the moderator of the interagency community of practice. She works with NRC, and she's coming in from Ireland today. A big welcome to all three of you.

Now, I think we should begin with the origin story here. What is the Community of Practice on Community Engagement in Displacement Responses (which is the full name)? How did you come up with the idea? What drove this?

[Kristin Vestrheim] (4:28 - 5:46)

Almost two years ago, anyone working on community engagement in NRC and had done a lot of trainings for people, both within NRC and for other agencies as well, on community engagement, we were receiving a lot of questions from people asking about tools, asking about experiences from other contexts, from other agencies, asking for support and trainings. And it was all going through myself and my colleagues working on community engagement in NRC, and we thought there must be a better way for people to reach out to others and easily find these tools without having need to bottleneck everything. So we created a forum of community of practice and the name Community Engagement Forum came about in a poll that we had with the initial members. And we started out with the website and it's this interactive website where they can chat to each other on the wall, ask for anything they need, any resources, any advice, through the collective hive of knowledge and community engagement in this space.

[Lars Peter Nissen] (5:47 - 6:02)

Right. So you sit there in NRC with your colleague and of course, a lot of questions coming in from across NRC and you're overwhelmed and you think there must be other people like us in the other organization and you then get people together on this platform. How many people are you now?

[Kristin Vestrheim] (6:04 - 6:19)

We started out with about 60. So that was the OG trainees from different community engagement training. And then now we're over 260 in this closed community practice.

[Lars Peter Nissen] (6:19 - 6:22)

And is that 216 {260} really active members?

[Kristin Vestrheim] (6:22 - 6:51)

[Lars Peter Nissen] (6:51 - 7:02)

So that's where the original idea comes from. But maybe I can ask you, Yakzan, you work for a Syrian NGO where you were the founder of the Maram Foundation. What's in it for you?

[Yakzan Shishakly] (7:03 - 8:51)

Well, when I founded the Maram Foundation, I don't know if we really can, we call it Syrian NGO because we registered in the States, we registered in Türkiye, we work from Türkiye with the Syrian and even the host community. So we're like a multinational NGO. What's in it, you mean, by the community engagement? Honestly, when I found, yeah… So community engagement is really big deal for me as a Syrian American who work with the Syrian. I found the international agencies that including UN agencies as well. They way coming from different approach where the locals, where the recipients of their support are not agreeing with. And they feel like this support coming from outside with a parachute with the ideas we don't really necessarily as a Syrian, we agree with because it's away from our culture, away from what our expectation. And it's really, we have some sort of miscommunication, even though both sides, they really wanna communicate, but the agencies coming with expertise, they did in different countries. Many of them, they think they can do the same. And us as a local community, see those things doesn't make sense to us. It might be right, but we're not really introduced to them in the right way. So that's where I believe there is a gap, not only with the Syrian community, with any local community, there's a big gap when it comes to the international system.

[Lars Peter Nissen] (8:52 - 9:13)

And so when you describe it in that way, what I'm thinking is, are you a member of this community to sort of educate the big INGOs, the IASC agencies? Are you there because you're facing this issue in your own work in the Maram Foundation that you actually also feel that you're not sufficiently connected and responsive to the people you help with?

I think educate is a really big word. I mean, everyone believe they are educated in their own way. So we all educated to a certain level about the communities and local communities. But I'm here just like to help filling the gap between the both communities. You know, it's like, it's not only when it comes to the refugee community or internally displaced or an assistant. It's just, and somehow a gap between Western civilization and other civilization as well. So when you come with it, yes, you come with some funding and support, but you should not try to impose your ideology, whether in a good way or bad way. It's just like you're coming with all the good intention to help, but you're bringing some new ideas to the society. So I found my role, just, I will, again, I will not call it educate to help both sides to get together in order to get better results.

Emi, how does it look for you? You work in Mozambique, you work with a UN agency. How do you experience some of the challenges that Yakzan has just described?

So in terms of approaching to the local context, I guess what he brought up is really important. And it is one of the core values of community engagement that we need to go very open-minded and also adapt ourselves to the local context and culture. And actually it is one of the right now, one of the biggest discussions in the, I guess, whole humanitarian sector about localisation and the linkages between localisation and AAP or community engagement is a very important topic. I guess one thing that I'm sure we will be discussing in our session today, but giving the voice to the local communities is the most important part of community engagement, but giving a meaningful voice. And we do believe that local organisations play a very significant role in doing that because of their closeness to the communities, their access to the communities, but also their expertise and knowledge about the context and how we should be approaching to the communities as well. And in that sense, I can definitely say that there is a huge interest from UN's side for localisation and it's one of the biggest agenda points for all of us. But beyond that, I mean, we also discuss localisation from very different perspectives, but community engagement is itself a localisation in the sense that when you give the voice to the communities or the real participation to the communities, even if you don't have a registered local organisation in the picture, you still do things in a local way and it is part of the localisation as well. So I would say that definitely community engagement and localisation or like the importance of local organisations and communities is very significant.

Yeah, localisation, it's such an interesting challenge, right? I mean, we've had it on the agenda, especially since the World Humanitarian Summit. We call it the participation revolution, which is a very bold statement. I sometimes sit a little bit on the sidelines and I look at some of the residual problems we have after having worked with the grand bargain. I think we're on version 3.0 as it is now. And to be honest, I don't see a lot of energy. Well, I see energy going in. I don't see a lot of results coming out. Why do you think it is so difficult for us to actually listen to the people we serve and engage with the people we serve?

That we need to have specialists like yourself teaching the rest of us how to engage.

One of the questions that I receive most often from practitioners, whether they're working on community engagement or want to start working on community engagement across any sector is, where do we start? What do we do? It should be maybe in theory easy enough just ask the displaced people what they need. But it's not as easy as that. It's sometimes it's, let's say you have a mass displacement. There's hundreds of thousands of people crossing a border or internally displaced. Who do you ask? How do you know who to ask? What type of assistance they need? How can you be sure that you are reaching the most marginalised people? How can you make sure that you're asking the right questions? And we keep talking about sectors and intersectoral. If you're coming from a certain sector, you're going to ask sector related questions. If you're a wash engineer, you're going to say, how many liters of water are you accessing every day? Is it enough? Is it meeting fair standards? But they might have issues around heat. They might have issues around connectivity reaching their family members that are displaced elsewhere. And so just having these kind of tools available and expertise from elsewhere where displacement has happened before, experienced people coming in and helping out. We can hit the ground running and asking the right questions and making sure that we find the right people and the ones that used to represent people before they were displaced or that people find trustworthy among their own community in the displacement context. The people with maybe invisible disabilities, etc. All of these things will help us ask the right questions and to the right people so that we can make sure we're reaching everyone and the assistance is relevant.

Yeah, so I'm just gonna give an explanation that we often discuss in the community engagement forum. Also, I guess this is because Kristen hasn't mentioned it in detail, but we do have coffee chats in community engagement forum, which I find very safe space and many interesting topics are being discussed with very provocative thoughts. And it's definitely a great place for all types of practitioners to learn from each other, but also express themselves. So we always discuss in the forum that community engagement or participation shouldn't be just checking a box, basically. It's like it's much beyond that. And it's about shifting the power that we always talk about.

Why it is difficult is that it's not that it's too complex, but it's kind of requires change in the ways and systems that we work in. Because right now, the system itself is very much established on the inputs from ourselves and donors. It's not necessarily, it doesn't necessarily have the space to input what community actually thinks or wants to do or wants to decide, even in the whole project timelines. And this kind of approach requires lots of flexibility, adaptability, and something that I always say, embracing the failure. Because community participation cannot always be very positive, cannot always be just success. And we need to also give the space for embracing the failure whenever it comes. And yeah, just it's not too complicated, but it's not too simple. It's not as simple as just going around and running a couple of surveys. I guess that's one of the reasons why we could not really champion participation yet. And it requires a bit of shift in our own mindsets as well.

Yeah, as you were speaking, I was thinking maybe we should rebrand this thing. Instead of calling it community engagement, we should call it bureaucracy engagement. Because I don't think there's anything wrong with the communities, but there's quite a lot wrong with the bureaucracy. And when you talk about, we must be adaptable, agile, and embrace our failures. I would say if I had to describe a UN agency or an INGO, those are not the first three things that I would put to describe how the culture is around these big organizations. I don't think we're very adaptable. I don't think we're very agile. And I surely don't think we tend to embrace our failures. I think we are very worried about risk management fiduciary sort of concerns. And that is often what stifles something as critically important as community engagement. Now, after that big sermon that I just delivered, or the little rant, or whatever you want to call it, please tell me that we have some light at the end of the tunnel. Tell me your success stories. Where have we seen the participation revolution turn the bureaucracy upside down and really empower the people we serve?

Yes. I would not call it failure to start with. I mean, I would call it not being very successful.

Because, I mean, we're learning by the... We're going and we're trying to help. Of course, there's a light. We being here, it's a light. The engaging the community to be part of the community engagement form, it's a light. And again, I mean, I see where you're saying community engagement is not the right name. We're probably... We should be partner with the community, not engaging the community. So it's a partnership base. But we're not going to fight about the name. I mean, I think what we are here, when we have donors who's really interested and that's the question ... we were talking through emails just like a week ago. Many donors are interested in our communication, how they improve the communication and having the community be more as a partner with our response. That's a successful story. When we have you asking us these questions, we being here, that's a successful story. Unless we start somewhere, we will not succeed. So basically, I think the community engagement form is a start. And we've been really, I think, doing good as a starter. Having the number Kristin mentioned, over 200 members, that's also a good start. That's being aware we're not the best when it comes to involving the community in the response. And also having media interest to talk about us, to talk about the failure and successful story, that's success itself.

Yakzan, you are both a much better, more patient and more positive person than I am. Thank you.

Of course. I mean, if we're not positive, we will not be alive until today. It's very stressful work, right?

Yes.

So we have to be positive. And I believe the future will get better. In many ways.

No, it's great to hear. And I think it is right to find the positives in the situation we're in. But I would love to hear a concrete example. When you sit and discuss in your forum, who is it that comes and say, "I had a wonderful day today. Today, I felt like we really managed to respond to the people we work with. And I could see it. I could see that the work we do with community engagement makes a difference." Give me that story.

I can give you a basic story if you want. But it's on a very low level.. When I was working in Lebanon, we were engaging the communities, the displaced Syrians. This was 10 years ago. We're engaging the displaced Syrians and supporting the establishment of representation committees and then supporting them in really becoming part of the coordination, as we call it. So identifying needs and deciding how best to address the needs. And then actually communicating with the service providers, saying what they need and giving them feedback if it's not great. Now, this is a very simple low-level participation example. But we'd been working with this one representation committee in one informal camp for a while. And we visited them one day and they were so excited and so proud. And they were telling us that one service provider or one group of people had come to the camp and said, we want to give your children a vaccination. And they said, because of what we learned from you guys, wait, who are you? We need to see a logo. And also, can we see some paperwork on what is this vaccination for? Why are we selected? What's the age group for the children? They were asking all the right questions. And they said, don't come back until you have an ID card for your organization, who you are. We need a phone number for follow-up. And then they came back the next day with all of this. It was a legitimate organization. It was a legitimate vaccine campaign. But just even something simple as asking for their rights to information and knowing who does what, where in their area of influence, etc. And getting that support to become representatives, because we can't just ask, like coming back to what I said before, we need to know what to ask and then support.

I can also give one. This is, I guess, something that I again need to give credit to Community Engagement Forum. Kristen worked on that a lot over the last year or even last two years that we are trying to promote everywhere is the community-led projects. Because we want to change the community engagement just from listening, just running a couple of focus group discussions, which I'm not saying that they are not important, but changing it from just asking the inputs of the communities to occupying communities to make their own decisions and to take the ownership fully. This is the direction that we want to go for community engagement and participation, I guess. And community-led projects and community-based participation is, sorry, community-based planning has been a really, really, I think, innovative method of community engagement recently. And we have really great examples of that also in Mozambique and in different contexts in terms of how communities can take the full responsibilities and ownerships of the processes and of the things that they are concerned about in their communities, about their needs, and how they can lead the process and also carry some learnings and opportunities over the generations and have sustainable structures in place. But of course, CLPs, community-led projects, or community-based planning need or require lots of preparation too in many contexts. So it doesn't mean that you just go to one community and just run a session for two hours and leave and then leave the whole project to the community. Again, it's also about occupying the communities with what they need to start those processes, which sometimes requires different kinds of trainings, lots of consultations, but also very inclusive processes. So not focusing on one group in a community, but really pushing for inclusivity and then also providing necessary materials to start those processes. And I guess it's a really good success story on our side that we are trying here as well.

That's great, Emi. And try to give me, talk about a concrete project that you went to where you could see this process that you have described make a tangible difference in how effective the project was or how empowered people felt.

We have multiple of them. So I will just give two examples. One is a project specifically for women. It was a business project, like business startup project with women. Most of the time, we have the tendency to go with our predetermined kits in our minds to give to women for them to start their businesses. But we wanted to try a different way here. And we made the process completely community-based. They came up with their own business ideas. They formed their own groups, but also they presented the ideas to their communities. And then their communities selected the ideas that are going to be supported. And then in this process, there were lots of trainings and lots of educational opportunities and mentorship. But also women, we were trying to give some freedom to women to make their own purchases and decisions and find their own suppliers. So we use micro grants for them to go and decide their business's inputs. And it is going quite well. And we really see the difference in the lives of women and also in their roles in the community. That's one example. And another example is an example of community-led project that we worked with authorities and communities at the same time. And for example, communities were provided land for them to conduct livelihood activities. And again, authorities were part of these discussions and consultations and communities were part of it. And then with the coordination with other organizations active in the area, they were provided with materials for their livelihoods. So it's all about coordination and putting the community in the center to make the decisions.

Thanks, Emi. That's great. Yakzan, from your side, you run a somewhat smaller organization, I imagine. What does community engagement actually look like in your work?

Well, I mean, as a local NGO, we are the community. So basically, we are part of the community. So community engagement is like, it's really to be a partnership with the community. And this is something, as you mentioned, it's not like coming from far away with some funding, I want to do this project. No, it has to start from zero. We have to have the community to decide what project, the community to be part of the design, the community to be part of implementation. We had a very good example, I recall, with the bakeries in northern Syria. Some of the bakeries, we start working, building the bakeries. We worked with the local councils and we trained them how to manage those bakeries and we left. So basically, those bakeries still running and managed by the local council, which is from the community. And we trained the community to manage those bakeries. And now we really have nothing to do with it, all what we have to do to go and enjoy the project we did a few years ago.

So you've all three given really good examples of things where we can say that that power is beginning to shift, that we're moving towards a situation where the people we work with or serve or whatever you want to say, have more agency. But I think we would probably, all of us also agree that we still have a long way to go as a professional community and that we still see a lot of projects that are not like that. What's the missing piece? Why doesn't it always happen?

It's a million dollar question, right?

Welcome to Trumanitarian.

So sometimes the time doesn't help. The time and the emergencies doesn't help to like, you know, it's like, let's say flooding war zone or earthquake. You just need to jump and implement and help. I mean, you really have not enough time to include the community from A to Z.

And so that's something we can't really do anything about. So should we just accept that when it's a sudden onset or rapidly unfolding crisis, hey, that's how it is. It is a bit of truck and dump and then we have to tidy up afterwards.

No, that's why we have tools. We have a quick tools and Kristin can talk about the tools we have.

Okay, I'd love to hear about the tools, but I think you're absolutely right, Yakzan. It's much more difficult when things are moving quickly to really do the preparatory work and the community engagement in the way you would like to. What are some of the other bottlenecks you can see?

If you're asking me, I mean, I will give the floor to Kristin as well. I think restriction, because we're talking about system being established for tens of years. We cannot just come and say, we want to change the system in one year or two years. No, it really takes some time. And there is a really restriction from all the way from the donor who's giving the funding to the agencies, to the implementation. So we're trying to put our hand and not only on the problem and highlight the problem, but to put our hand and bring everybody together to reshape. I would not say reshape the system, but to help the system to get better.

Okay, so we talk about the speed of operations. We talk about the bureaucracy, the way the whole business model is put together. What else do you see as the bottlenecks? Because I think we all agree on this. We all agree that community engagement is very important. You don't hear any humanitarian saying, 'ah, it's gone too far, this community engagement'. Let's stop that, right? I mean, it is something we all agree should happen. And we're all frustrated when you see it doesn't. And so, as you say, the million dollar question, it's speed, it's bureaucracy. What else is it?

Yeah, I was going to actually add a point. I guess, I mean, I will focus on the positive again a bit, but there is an increasing interest from the donors. And I guess from many different humanitarian players on the ground. And I think this is one of the key points for community engagement to be really successful, because it should go beyond dedicated community engagement activities. What I mean is, it should go beyond one program or one unit in an organization conducting a couple of community engagement activities. But rather, it should be in the center of all kinds of humanitarian assistance and services. That's why sometimes it is as basic as developing the capacity within the humanitarians for them to understand the importance of community engagement. But in a concrete way, like you said, it's not only on the paper, but also sometimes to put the necessary resources beyond, again, units and programs as requirements to be in place. And I think one thing that we should develop in all of the humanitarians is the trust. We discussed that a lot with Kristin in the past, but we always think that how we can make the communities trust us, like in our complaint and feedback mechanisms, in our activities, we always focus on how we can make the communities trust us. But also the question is, how much do humanitarians trust the communities? Really? Like how much do we trust that they can make their own decisions without us being there and telling them what to do? So this is something that needs to be developed in every single humanitarian.

I think that's an excellent point, Emi. But the feeling I'm left with, because I really do share what you said, namely that the way it should be is that community engagement reflecting the, if you want, customers, make the customer king, if you want. I know we can't look at it as a market, but if we are not driven by what they need and want, then what the heck are we doing? And why is it a little extra silo in the edge of the humanitarian architecture that we have now created another patch on an already very patchy system? And so I think maybe what I'm hunting for is the theory of change behind your community of practice. Because what are you saying? That it's because people don't have the technical knowledge to understand how to engage with communities. So we must teach them how to do that. Are you saying it's a cultural issue? They simply don't trust the people we work with. They think they'll just steal the money and run away if we give them money. Is it a trust issue?

Is it a bureaucracy issue or the policies, procedures? And my boss won't let me. What's the problem? And what's your theory of change? And how are you going to change this?

I think it's a little bit of all of that. Like when you said before, we all agree, we need to engage the community for the best possible response. I don't think we all agree. I think in this conversation, the four of us all agree. But you know, as we've been talking about all the different methodologies and tools out there and how we can do this, and it takes a lot of work to do it right. And we want to do it. We don't want just with like tokenism. We want meaningful participation. And to do that, it takes time. It takes resources. It's very hard to take a picture of this. What does success look like for a donor report? You're going to need money to do assessments before a project is even designed. We don't even know what we want to ask for within what sector, et cetera. And who's going to fund that? We need flexible funding. We need a change of mindset that we always think right. We need also more flexible internal systems like within our organizations. Like trying to find money for these community led projects. We obviously need flexible funds, right? Because the whole idea is that the community tells us what project they want. We need to say, we have $2,000. What do you want to do with it? Getting that $2,000 without having done three quotations beforehand and identify the supplier and have the right donor for it. Very, very hard.

So let me be a little bit sharper in my questioning here now, right? Because I sometimes have the feeling that the root problem is all around financial controls and risk. And I think that if we truly want to engage communities, I know our work will be better. I also know that from a financial point of view, it'll be more expensive and it will be riskier. So if I am the head of finance, why would I do something that is more expensive and riskier? That's the problem, right? And so my question to you as community engagement specialist and practitioners is, what do you do in that situation? Do you just do a training course to teach people how to engage with the community when you know the real problem is with the financial side of things? And what are you doing to tackle the financial and administrative superstructure that is holding this back?

Well, we have conversations with donors asking for flexible and long-term funding, for example. Because, yeah, this is expensive at the start, but then it pays off. First of all, you don't make the mistakes of giving irrelevant, useless assistance, but you do it right from the start. And then also you have trained community members who can continue running this, like Yakzan was saying – we leave – and then it pays for itself. So continue to have to advocate for this type of approach, both within our organizations, within our sector, and to donors. And then we have to provide success stories and tools to make sure that it's possible.

I was actually going to add something to Kristin's point. I guess it's very important to show the success stories. And of course, there are going to be some people who handle the burden of being the first in their organizations, in their missions, to show how this should be working. And it's going to be a difficult process. That's definitely true. But I think what is really impactful and touching about community engagement is that the stories, again, because it takes us beyond the numbers. We always like talking about numbers, like we reach to 3000 people, we reach to 300 women. But how did we reach to them? And how did we change their lives? That is what community engagement is bringing to the table. You can have real human stories and you really can have how you change that one person's life in a very positive way. And I guess that makes the whole story different. And that makes it very important that we need to be showing these successful cases more and more and be the advocates in our own organizations. Sometimes it's going to require internal policing, but we really need people who have the courage to stand up and talk about those issues.

As you were speaking, I was wondering, in your community, those 260 people we are talking about, who are they? Are they working level community engagement advisors? Do you have any donors in there? Do you have any academics? Are any of the bosses in there? Because if we are talking about problems that are at a higher level in some of these big bureaucracies, do you have them in your club?

We do, we do. All of the above. And I mean, I don't know if I mentioned at the start, but we have a rotational advisory board with six months tenure at a time. And both Yakzan and Emi, they're on the advisory board. So we try and include people from different contexts, but also representing different groups working on community engagement. So for example, Yakzan is coming from a more national NGO perspective. And more and more, we're trying to get the participation on the advisory board from displaced people. So this is where we're trying to get the community engagement forum now that we've kind of found our feet in having the online platform and setting up these monthly chats and find out how we'd like to share things. And we need to follow through in our own approach of participation. And we want to learn how we can be useful for the displaced people as well. And we want them to tell us what we can do to be useful for them.

I think that's fantastic. And it was going to be my next question. How are the people who actually receive the assistance present in your network? Now, as you think about including them, how do you think you will have to change to make them feel like this is their forum? Or do you think that it'll be quite a natural process?

I don't think it's a natural process because we have been trying since the start. And there are a few challenges that they're all our fault. But we haven't found the right way of addressing it to make it to facilitate their participation. There's a language problem. It's mainly all in English. And there's the fact that the advisory board members, they're currently doing all this on a voluntary basis for free. They're not representing their agency. They're not being paid to do it. It's not a lot of work, but you have to commit to meeting at least once a month. You need internet connection to do it. And we're trying to find ways to address this that work for individuals that would like to join. But also, if you're working for a humanitarian organization and you're a national staff, even joining and spending your time on something that is not in your job description, it can be difficult to get the permission from your supervisor to do, et cetera. So we're trying to find ways.

As always on Trumanitarian, we'd like to ask our guests to make a prediction, something that you think will happen in the next six months… What is going to happen over the next six months? Something significant that you believe will change the world?

You know, sometimes you mix your wishful thinking and hope with what you think is going to happen in the future. I think whatever war we have in the Middle East has to stop. So I think it will stop. And people will go back to their houses, probably to the destroyed houses. But people will be able at least to sleep overnight without the shelling over their head.

I hope that the compassion in the people worldwide will shine through and we will have a free Palestine.

I don't know if I'm that optimistic. And what I think is, unfortunately, that we will continue seeing one of the biggest human tragedies of the whole human history. And unfortunately, as humanitarians, we are going to continue having lots of jobs. I wish all of us would be unemployed, but unfortunately, there are going to be many jobs for us and we will try to do whatever we can. But unfortunately, we will continue witnessing all of these tragedies, I guess.

Thank you to all three of you for those predictions. We'll call you back in six months and talk to you about whether you were right or not. But from my side, a big thank you to all three of you, Kristin, Yakzan and Emi, for coming on Trumanitarian and thank you for the work you do. It's fantastic to see colleagues like yourselves push forward one of the most important agendas we have in the business. And so I really wish you the best of luck with the community of practice in the future.

Thank you, Lars.

Thank you.