Amjad Ahmad from Welthungerhilfe (WHH), Pakistan, presented a truly inspiring and honest account of experiences this May, when his team and partners pilot tested early actions in four cities in response to previous year´s heatwave-related deaths of thousands of people. We loved that he not only shared the successes but also what went wrong, and how WHH will take these learnings into account to improve their responses in the next heatwaves.
Lessons learned included: switching heatwave awareness-raising from loudspeakers/posters to the preferred online and social media channels; to be better prepared for implementation when funds are received very quickly; to appoint celebrities as Heatwave Ambassadors and pass messages via youth and teachers; that despite having the knowledge, changing practices takes time, so a barrier analysis is needed to better understand how to change behaviours.
Lastly, Amjad briefly shared on their flood responses on 15 September which involved distributions of typical relief items “We need to change the mind set of practitioners from classic reactive response, toward risk reduction and early actions so that once funds released, and before the hazard has hit the ground, everything is in place”.