Disaster Management Teams
Disaster Management Teams are made up of people with the following skills: community/public health educators, water and sanitation engineers, team leaders, project managers, finance officers/accountants, personnel managers and logisticians. Sometimes, the skills needed for some of these tasks are transferable from other jobs. Direct relief experience is desirable but not essential; a willingness to be an adaptable team member is! Previous overseas experience is essential.
To find out more about individual DMT programmes, click here.
Disaster Management and Partner Support Advisors usually work alongside one or more partners in a variety of community development and/or disaster response situations. The skills and experience required for each position are detailed in the job description.
Rapid action for effective response
Wars, earthquakes and floods are just some of the situations that Tearfund’s Disaster Management Team (DMT) has responded to in recent years.
The prime goal of DMT, within the context of Tearfund’s mission, purpose and values, is to substantially reduce death and suffering of vulnerable people from communicable diseases, malnutrition, exposure and trauma, through operational relief programmes with a focus on complex disasters. Complex disasters are calamitous events, which lead to a significant loss of life and extreme suffering, mostly for the civilian population. They are complex due to:
- their causes (war, internal conflict or persecution of one group by others due to political, ethnic, cultural and religious intolerance and violent crime)
- scale of disaster
- substantial negative effect on local coping mechanisms
- involvement of international humanitarian aid agencies or military forces
- influence of powerful outside forces
- media attention
Complex disasters often oscillate between instability and stability over a number of years before a crisis is resolved.
Whenever possible, Tearfund works through local partner organisations. However, sometimes our partners are unable to adequately respond on their own, or the disaster occurs in an area where we have no partners. In these cases DMT sends teams in.
Tearfund launched the operational disaster relief teams in 1994 to meet the vast relief needs generated by the Rwandan genocide. Since then it has responded to disasters in countries such as Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Afghanistan and the Balkans. Teams are currently working in Sierra Leone, Sudan, Afghanistan, Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo.
Partner support
DMT supports and advises Tearfund partners to enhance their disaster response and mitigation capabilities, bringing a Christian dimension, preventing and managing conflict, and working alongside communities for a sustainable solution. Recent work includes the response to Hurricane Mitch in Latin America, the eruption of Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the food crises in southern Africa, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Staff are currently working with partners in countries such as India, Chad, Uganda, Ethiopia and Afghanistan.
Tearfund also has a number of staff working in community development roles supporting its network of partners worldwide. Staff are currently working in countries such as Nepal, Honduras, Kenya and Sierra Leone.