WAR SURVIVORS ADVISORY  

UPDATE: FEBRUARY 16th, 2018  |  Thanks to all of you who helped so far on last year’s Crowdrise fundraiser! For 2018, we have now switched to Youcaring which is a much better platform and are about to announce this brand new campaign. Contact us here: humanitarianbazaar@gmail.com.

SUPPORT CIVILIANS BEFORE THEY ARE HIT

MISSION  |  Humanitarian Bazaar’s War Survivors Advisory project aims to reduce the numbers of civilians trapped, injured, and killed in mass violence by helping civilian survivors of past wars transfer their skills and recommendations to those facing war for the first time in the gap before humanitarian aid reaches them. How We Survive, the related documentary film-in-development, tells the story of heroes we met doing this  in Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, and Bosnia.

_

HOW IT WORKS  |  We research, record, curate, and cultivate survivors’ skills and recommendations for staging on a global digital platform, and then we invite local organizations in high risk areas like hospitals, childcare centers, disabled care centers, and fire stations to work with us to pull the training content and tools they need from that for delivery through them offline via peer trainers, videos, radio spots, manuals, and posters in the areas most at-risk. While advocating to prevent war, and providing humanitarian aid and landmine removal is critical, our project helps local people to try to solve the gap before outside assistance arrives.

_

WHAT EXACTLY?  |  Our local survivor heroes offer training and tools for (1) earlier first aid stations, (2) special evacuation technique, (3) shielding & sheltering, (4) childcare in combat, (5) disabled care in combat, (6) gender in crossfire, (7) isolation preparedness, and (8) keeping hope alive.

_

As for team members, we have brought on a new senior Advisory Group of filmmakers Olga Kravets, Laura Battaglia, Mirta Jusic, and A.H., as well as humanitarian entrepreneur Almut Rochowanski. Meanwhile, our field teams are on standby until new funding arrives to advance the field production and surveys. Thanks to all who have helped so far! The website will be updated soon with new visuals and video. Peace and safety,

–Daniel and the team at Humanitarian Bazaar

Meet some of the many brave families who are taking part in our War Survivors project in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Ukraine, and soon Syria and Somalia. Photo credit: Humanitarianbazaar.org.

HOW OUR PROJECT WORKS

Helping to solve one of the most difficult challenges in human history isn’t easy, of course. But given our collective experiences working with international humanitarian agencies and local communities in some of the toughest places, here is our modest action plan:

• Phase 1.1: Global research on existing civilian protection and disaster risk reduction, along with local survivors in war areas and post-conflict areas. (Bosnia, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Lebanon, and global) DONE!
• 2: Launch HB’s own multi-country assessment research in eastern Afghanistan, eastern Ukraine, and in post-conflict Bosnia. Include special needs grants for most seriously at-risk families when we can afford to. DONE & ONGOING!
• 3: Follow through on survey with advisors located also in Syria, Yeman, Somalia, and/or Gaza to ensure all sectors of need are covered in the data–urban/rural, high/low education, moderate/conservative in terms of gender, economics, etc. ALMOST THERE!
• 4: Produce “How Civilians Survive War” starting documentary about civilians who are calling for more “pre-combat,” faster, and more affordable support for self-protection assistance, shielding, and evacuations. Show skills we have harvested to pass forward. Distribute doc to assist advocacy organizations in calling for end to violence and avoidance of civilians in conflict. ALMOST THERE!
• 5: Produce starting manual, first draft of book, “How Civilians Survive War,” by, for, and about the people of front line communities. ALMOST THERE!
• 6: Bring our work to the UN and field coordinating bodies to propose absorbing more of this method of pre-combat disaster risk reduction into protection and d.r.r. interventions. Apply for larger grants to continue. ALMOST THERE!
• Phase 2: Build partnerships with larger organizations and launch new interventions in two focus areas: (1) Communities at-risk of spread of existing conflict nearby, in which currently affected communities can assist in our efforts; and (2) Communities at-risk of new conflict.  WHEN PARTNERSHIPS & GRANTS ARE WON.
• At a minimum, with your help, we produce the film and book “How Civilians Survive War,” detailing practical survival skills people need in the gap before humanitarian aid reaches them, which will be available globally and can be used in advocacy to call for avoiding violence and avoiding civilian casualties.
• At a maximum, we have innovated new approaches which can be mainstreamed into international aid and local resilience to reduce the numbers of innocent civilians killed or harmed.

HOW FUNDS ARE SPENT IN THE FIELD

We created this call for crowd-funding (2017) after covering start-up costs out of Humanitarian Bazaar’s core fund (2015-2016) and gaining momentum. Your support goes to:__

• Survival Skills Researchers in the field (currently Afghanistan, eastern Ukraine) are paid day rates for their work through this supplemental funding.
• Special Needs Grants we hope to offer more often to families included in the research who have specific concerns, such as disability on the front line.
• Post-Production on video, survey data, and training modules is essential to complete the long term strategy and design.
• Your support in this pilot phase allows us to design, test, and survey methods we are proposing in larger program proposals we are bringing to the UN protection coordination clusters, INGOs, and humanitarian innovation foundations and mainstreamed in pre-combat and early conflict humanitarian response to reduce the numbers of civilians hurt in mass violence.

REWARDS FOR SUPPORTING OUR PROJECT

If you can help out with a donation (or pay for webinars, workshops, and other things we have devoted to raising funds for this), you’ll get:__

• $25  |  Enthusiastic credit in War Survivors Advisory manual and a cup of spicy tea when we run into you somewhere on the planet!
• $50  |  Enthusiastic credit in War Survivors Advisory manual, credit in “How Civilians Survive” documentary, spicy tea, and free attendance to any two-hour webinar.
• $100  |  Enthusiastic credit in War Survivors Advisory manual, credit in “How Civilians Survive,” free attendance to any two-hour Webinar, spicy tea, and a free hour of consultation for you or your team on any specialty we can help with (media production, humanitarian response careers or skill-building, safety & security, regional studies).
• $200  | Enthusiastic credit in War Survivors Advisory manual, credit in “How Civilians Survive,” spicy tea, free attendance to any two-hour Webinar, a free hour of consultation for you or your team on any specialty we can help with (media production, humanitarian response careers or skill-building, safety & security, regional studies), and a special thank you message and/or Q&A session from our field team to you on video or email.
• $500  | Enthusiastic credit in War Survivors Advisory manual, credit in “How Civilians Survive,” spicy tea and dinner whenever we cross paths again, free attendance to any two-hour Webinar, a free hour of consultation for you or your team on any specialty we can help with (media production, humanitarian response careers or skill-building, safety & security, regional studies), a special thank you message and/or Q&A session from our field team to you on video or email, and free attendance to any of our workshops.
• $1000  | Credit in War Survivors Advisory manual, credit in “How Civilians Survive,” spicy tea and dinner whenever we cross paths again, free attendance to any two-hour Webinar, a free hour of consultation for you or your team on any specialty we can help with (media production, humanitarian response careers or skill-building, safety & security, regional studies), a special thank you message and/or Q&A session from our field team to you on video or email, free attendance to any of our workshops, Associate Producer credit in our documentary, and, if you like, we can produce a thank you video from the field to demonstrate your organization and family how this helped us to help others.
• Note that all donation rewards are provided with the obvious exception of those cases if the donor does something that may cause serious security threats to our teams or civilians in the field, in which case we’ll have to revoke credit in the videos and manuals at a minimum. 

WILL YOU SUPPORT US? 

Thanks to amazing help already from support from our amazing field teams–Afghanistan (OA, AS, SS, NS, et al), Ukraine (Yura, Sasha, Oleksi, Ksenia, et al), Bosnia (Johanna, Jasmina, Amra, Faruk, et al), Arab world (Lena, anonymous, et al)–and recent donors–ET, JW, CG, BG, JC, DK, NJ, SC, MK, JH, FL, and more.

___

• DONATE HERE.
• Sign up for Webinars, Workshops and other things we are doing to devote funds to this project. ===>
• Share this with people you believe can donate, train, or help out.
• Contribute skills: If you are a war survivor, write us and consider submitting a “how to” demonstration video or interview of your own:Humanitarianbazaar@gmail.com
• If you are a journalist, consider covering our work and letting people know that current protection efforts that save lives globally can be improved even more by technology and skill transfer between past survivors to those newly at-risk through existing local networks which can act in the gap before international aid arrives. We can’t over-promise saving lives, but we can try to improve techniques along the lines described by those regular people who have already been through it:Humanitarianbazaar@gmail.com.

THANK YOU! Hvala! Spasyebo! Tashakor! Shukran! Mahad sanid!

___

– Daniel J Gerstle & the team at Humanitarian Bazaar

Sarajevo, Berlin, Nairobi, Kabul, Mogadishu

Humanitarianbazaar.org  |  humanitarianbazaar@gmail.com