Humanitarian Futures Programme: ‘Stakeholders Meeting’

TIME: Friday, 11 May, 9 – 12 (Coffee and registration from 8.30)

STED: Save the Children Denmark, Rosenørns Alle 12, 1634 Copenhagen V

The meeting will be chaired by HFP Senior Advisor, Mr. Erling Dessau and HFP Futures Group manager, Mrs. Emma Visman.

If you are interested in taking part in the meeting, please send an e-mail to: Susanne Olejas, [email protected]

TIME: Friday, 11 May, 9 – 12 (Coffee and registration from 8.30)

STED: Save the Children Denmark, Rosenørns Alle 12, 1634 Copenhagen V

The meeting will be chaired by HFP Senior Advisor, Mr. Erling Dessau and HFP Futures Group manager, Mrs. Emma Visman.

If you are interested in taking part in the meeting, please send an e-mail to: Susanne Olejas, [email protected]

Titled Making Futures Real: Current Thinking, Futures Practice, the Stakeholders Meeting will focus on the practices and initiatives that are being adopted to enhance the capacities of organisations and decision makers with humanitarian roles and responsibilities to deal with the challenges of the future.

The meeting will look at technical, operational and strategic changes underway within organisations to enhance their capacities to anticipate potential threats, risks and opportunities.

It will also explore the process of change, itself, and how organisations are moving away from ‘business as usual’. It, too, will look at new approaches to collaboration, focusing on ways that a growing number of humanitarian actors are identifying the value-adds and comparative advantages of non-traditional actors.

Similarly, an increasing number of humanitarian policymakers accept the importance of identifying innovations and innovative practices to meet the challenges of the future.

The meeting will identify both progress – strengths and weaknesses – as well as the remaining gaps and new ways to meet the challenges of the future.

In particular, it is hoped that the meeting will stimulate new thinking and discussion as to what this might mean for national and international organisations based in Denmark.

The meeting is particularly relevant for organizational planners, policy-makers and those involved in developing strategies within the Danish context.

The meeting will be chaired by HFP Senior Advisor, Mr. Erling Dessau and HFP Futures Group manager, Mrs. Emma Visman.

Programme:

08.30: Registration and coffee, 5th floor
09.00: Welcome and Opening Statement
09.10: The state of futures thinking: where we are now

There are clear changes in the ways that humanitarian crisis drivers, their dimensions and dynamics, are being identified, explored and discussed. Yet there, too, remain many unknowns. This session will explore HFP’s portfolio of work and our experience to date working with a range of organisations to better understand humanitarian futures.

09.30: ’New challenges, new regionalism’: emerging approaches and opportunities in a changing
context.

ECOWAS and ASEAN – two increasingly important regional organisations – each are looking for ways to reduce longer-term disaster risks, each are committed to revamping their approaches to early warning and risk reduction. This includes new approaches to collaboration, an increasing commitment to draw on the capacities and skills of a range of diverse actors, and the adoption of new technologies and approaches.

What are the implications of these changes? How should international organisations adapt to these changes? And what do we need to understand about the growing importance of ‘new regionalism’?

10.00: Fit for the future: organisational challenges for dealing with longer-term threats and opportunities.

This session will identify and explore some of the critical organisational challenges and opportunities that face most organisations when it comes to efforts to become ‘fit for the future’.

The recent scoping study, Transition to Transformation: Save the Children in a futures context, will be discussed, with a focus on the relevance of these findings for participants’ own organisations, operations and visions of the future.

11.00: Planning from the future: opportunities for Danish-based organisations to promote longer-term risk reduction and resilience.

This session, an open discussion, will identify key issues that can be taken forward from the meeting and the opportunities that might exist for greater collaboration with and among Danish, Scandinavian and other international organisation.

11.30: Open discussions and recommendations for future follow-up
12.00: Close of meeting

Supporting documents and full programme will be sent to registered participants before the meeting.

Additional information: www.humanitarianfutures.org