News
RedR's Technical Support Service receives financial boost
17 December 2009
RedR has been awarded funding from Vodafone Foundation, World of Difference programme to develop its Technical Support Service (TSS). From April 2010, John Heelham will be working as Technical Support Officer for two months. John’s main focus during this time will be to build up a searchable on-line library of humanitarian resources, and collate together past answers to TSS queries, which aid workers can use as a first port of call to help them solve problems in the field.
RedR’s free TSS enables aid workers to send in queries on-line from anywhere in the world. These queries are then passed to a pool of experts, who provide solutions based on direct personal experience. All the experts are volunteers with strong humanitarian experience and technical expertise. Last year, over 65% of the questions received advice within 48 hours. Topics include everything from queries about water and sanitation, to construction, IT, health and logistics. RedR hopes to greatly increase its TSS to meet increasing demand from individuals and agencies.
The number of queries sent to the TSS has been steadily rising. TSS Coordinator, Toby Gould comments: “I am sure we are only scratching the surface of the need for this type of service in the aid world, and we are keen to expand the breadth and number of enquiries we can deal with, supporting more relief workers to provide effective aid to those in disaster situations.”
This post is the start of planned expansion to the TSS, with the aim of transforming it into a broader Humanitarian Support Service, which is able to respond more quickly and in more depth to a wider range of queries, making use of an expanded network of qualified and experienced individuals. The service will also provide information to aid workers using different tools such as the on-line reference library and knowledge base of collated answers. In order to achieve this additional expansion, further funding is being actively sought. If anyone would like to make a donation, please contact Anne Durrant anne.durrant@redr.org.uk
For more information on RedR’s TSS, please visit www.redr.org.uk/TSS
View RedR Member and Shelter Expert Joseph Ashmore speaking on Channel 4 News about the Haiti quake.
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