Three years after the floodwaters subsided, we inundated Pakistan again. But this time, thankfully, it was just an exercise.
This was a multi-day, multi-site desktop exercise, in which the capacity of the Pakistan Red Crescent was stretched and tested. A team of facilitators threw one challenge after another at the operations team, moving the goalposts in (fairly realistic) ways designed to probe anticipated weaknesses in the structure, procedures and resources.
It was also a lot of fun.
At the end of the operational phase of the exercise, we took the participants (from all levels of the organisation and its partners) through a detailed process of reflection and analysis. This internal reflection was combined with external evaluation from the facilitation team: together we identified a range of ways in which performance could be enhanced. PRCS showed themselves to be very open to this process, and many of these joint recommendations have since been implemented.