News

7 June, the LACER Project hosted a webinar on the European Union training and certification procedures for competencies in disaster risk management. The briefing attracted more than 40 participants from ASEAN member states, the ASEAN Secretariat, AHA Centre and EU experts in the field of DRM.

The AHA Centre, together with the ASEAN Secretariat, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), co-organised a side event as part of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction (GPDRR) 2022.

Mr. Krishna Putra Tanaja started his position as Deputy Executive Director of the AHA Centre in December 2021. Still fairly new to the job, but in no way is he a rookie in the field. Krishna started his career in humanitarian assistance and disaster management back in early 2005 for Save the Children. This was just after the December 2004 tsunami struck, heavily affecting the region and Krishna felt that he wanted to contribute and to be part of the response to this major disaster.

On January 27th, LACER hosted the fourth webinar in the brown bag series of mutual exchange and learning. The theme of the discussion was Host Nation Support (HNS) in ASEAN and the EU. The webinar included a presentation by ERCC Liaison Officer Simon Stermann on the EU role in HNS and use of the EU Guidelines, followed by a facilitated discussion with the AHA Centre on HNS in ASEAN. Thereafter, LACER experts Martin Sjöholm and Peter Månsson briefed participants on the Swedish national experiences with HNS relative to support from other EU countries.

The LACER Project and AHA Centre are inviting partners to the fourth event in the brown bag series: a discussion on Host Nation Support in ASEAN and the EU.

I had the pleasure of meeting Agustina (Rina) Tnunay, AHA Centre Assistant Director, Preparedness & Response, over a nice chat online. We talked about leadership and the changes seen at the AHA Centre over the years – as Rina has been involved there since the early years.

It has been an eventful first year of implementation of the LACER project. The global COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented change to everyone’s daily lives. For this reason, we are even more proud of the project’s accomplishments thus far and know that the results achieved would not have been possible without our joints efforts working together in the spirit of partnership, mutual learning and ownership.