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Beyond Borders Neighbours Together

Read about the TOP Trainers’ Workshop on Preparedness
and the Preparedness Competence Model

After the TOP Trainers’ Workshop on Preparedness

I left the TOP: Trainers’ Workshop on Preparedness with more questions than I arrived with. I mean this as a compliment. Good learning does not always make a subject smaller and easier to define. Sometimes it does the opposite: it shows us how many dimensions were hidden inside a question we thought we already understood.

One of the strongest lessons I took from the workshop was that preparedness can — and perhaps should — begin with the person. Before procedures, emergency plans, equipment and institutional structures, there is a human being experiencing uncertainty.

What happens to me when I am stressed? Can I recognise my own reactions? Can I remain functional without pretending that I am unaffected? Do I know when I am reaching my limits? Can I ask for help? Can I rest before exhaustion begins to affect my judgement?

The Preparedness Competence Model captures this through Inside Me, alongside In Action, With Others and In the System. Its understanding of preparedness deliberately connects self-regulation, crisis competence, relational capacity and systemic thinking rather than treating them as isolated skills.

I strongly support this starting point. And I would not want the next generation of preparedness training to replace it with another collection of emergency procedures.

We need to talk about the people who help

Through years of working in civil society and in situations connected with COVID-19, the Polish-Belarusian border crisis, support for people fleeing the war in Ukraine and the 2024, floods in Poland, I have learned how powerful — and sometimes dangerous — the idea of the “helper” can become.

When people around you need support, it becomes difficult to say: I am tired.

It becomes even more difficult to say: I need help myself.

There is a strong culture of commitment in NGOs, humanitarian organisations and emergency services. That commitment saves lives and makes extraordinary things possible. But commitment can easily turn into a culture of heroism. We admire the person who works for sixteen hours+. The leader who never leaves. The volunteer who is always available. The person who keeps going despite everything. Sometimes we ask about the cost only afterwards.

This is why I see self-regulation, awareness of limits, recovery and mental health not as “soft” preparedness but as operational preparedness. The Preparedness Competence Model already makes this connection: recognising limits, distinguishing between operational and personal support, asking for help early, delegating beyond one’s expertise and intentionally including recovery, all are part of being prepared.

Humanitarian practice supports this perspective. The Antares Foundation, to take one example, treats staff wellbeing not only as an individual responsibility but as something that must exist at individual, team and organisational levels. Its guidance covers organisational policies, preparation, monitoring, ongoing support and crisis support for humanitarian workers.

So, for me, Inside Me is the right beginning. My question is what comes next…

From a prepared person to a prepared organisation

The TOP Workshops and Preparedness Competence Model already open this door. The model speaks about NGOs, volunteers and communities within the wider system. It includes mobilising community resources, sustaining collective action and mutual-aid networks. It explicitly suggests using the competence model to develop organisational strategy and review crisis procedures.

So I do not think the organisational perspective is absent. I think there is an opportunity to make it more operational. How do we move from prepared people to organisations that know how to become responsibly useful when their context suddenly changes?

This matters particularly in youth work: Erasmus+ and the European Solidarity Corps organisations, coordinators, trainers, youth workers and leaders as well as the National Agencies of the both programme and the SALTO Resource Centres.

Most of these organisations are not humanitarian organisations. They should not pretend to be. But crises do not ask organisations what is written in their statutes. A flood may happen in their town. War may affect the families of their participants. Thousands of displaced people may arrive in their community. A prolonged blackout may affect the neighbourhood around their youth centre. A public-health emergency may suddenly change what local people need from them. And an organisation that yesterday was running youth exchanges, cultural activities or educational workshops may discover that it already possesses important crisis-response assets:

• a building,
• a kitchen.
• vehicles.
• communication channels,
• volunteers,
• young people who want to act,
• relationships with local authorities,
• people speaking different languages,
• knowledge of a neighbourhood,
• connections with particular communities,
• and perhaps the most valuable resource of all: TRUST.

Preparedness Competence Model highlights this point beautifully: “Trust is not an emergency resource that appears when needed. It is something we build beforehand.”

I would extend that idea, adding: “Organisational capacity is not an emergency resource that appears when needed either. It is also built beforehand”.

Ordinary organisations can become important crisis actors

We have seen this repeatedly. A youth centre can temporarily become a distribution point. A training room can become storage space. Young people can become organised volunteers. An organisation’s vehicle can transport supplies. People normally responsible for communication can help circulate verified information. An NGO that already works with migrants may help public institutions communicate with groups that formal structures find difficult to reach.

Sometimes the contribution is even smaller. Imagine a neighbourhood during a prolonged power cut. A local association or a community group organises a barbecue or fire outside the apartment blocks. It would be exaggerated to call the barbecue itself “emergency response”. But just look at what it creates: People leave isolated apartments. They meet. They share food and information. Someone learns that an elderly neighbour needs support. Someone has a charged power bank. Someone else has transport. Parents meet other parents. Children experience some normality.

This is micro-level community resilience.

Its value is not the barbecue. Its value is the network of relationships and mutual assistance activated around it. We have seen much larger versions of the same dynamic in Ukraine. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, UNHCR says it has supported more than 500 community-based organisations across Ukraine that respond to local needs while contributing to resilience, inclusion and social cohesion.

We saw similar adaptation in Poland after February 2022. In Lublin, local authorities, civil-society organisations and volunteers combined their capacities, while the local NGO Homo Faber used its existing knowledge of the community in supporting refugees and distributing assistance.

The lesson I take from examples like these is not that every NGO should become a humanitarian NGO. Rather that: ordinary organisations can possess extraordinarily useful capacity — if they recognise it, prepare it and connect it to a wider response system.

Good intentions are not preparedness

This is where I also want to put a clear limit on my own argument.

More civil-society involvement is not automatically better. An unprepared organisation can create additional problems during a crisis. Volunteers may be sent into unsafe situations. Donations may be collected without knowing what is actually needed. Unverified information may spread. Several organisations may duplicate the same service while another need remains unmet. People may take on tasks beyond their competence. Safeguarding may be forgotten. And highly committed staff may simply work until they collapse.

So I would not tell NGO leaders: “When a crisis happens, start helping”. I would rather say: Before the crisis happens, understand what you can do, what you cannot do, what resources you have and how you connect to the wider system. This distinction is fundamental.

It also fits the EU Preparedness Union Strategy, which describes preparedness through an all-hazards and whole-of-society approach, involving organisations and individuals rather than leaving preparedness only to professional responders.

The Rand Engaged Toolkit goes even closer to the question I am asking. It helps NGOs assess their existing capabilities for disaster response and recovery, understand their previous disaster experience and use this assessment for future emergency planning — individually or together with other NGOs.

In other words, the idea is not to turn everyone into a rescuer. The idea is to help organisations know where they can add value without creating harm.

I would not add a fifth quadrant

My first instinct after the workshop was to think: perhaps we need another dimension — Organisation — next to Inside Me, In Action, With Others and In the System.

I am no longer convinced that this is the best solution. An organisation is not simply another competence. It may be more useful to see it as a place where the four existing dimensions become operational capacity.

• Inside Me asks whether the people involved can function sustainably.
• In Action asks whether they can make decisions and perform useful tasks.
• With Others asks whether they can build trust, communicate and cooperate.
• In the System asks whether they understand institutions, responsibilities, information and context.

An organisation brings those capacities together and asks: Can we turn them into responsible collective action? That is the development I would like to explore.

What would organisational preparedness look like in practice?

It could begin with a simple pathway: PROTECT -> CONTINUE -> MAP -> ADAPT -> CONNECT -> SUPPORT ->
CARE -> LEARN

Protect. Are our people safe? Before helping anyone outside the organisation, we need to know what has happened to our staff, volunteers and participants.

Continue. What essential functions must still work? Not every normal activity must continue during a crisis, but some organisational functions may be critical: communication, financial authority, access to premises, data protection, safeguarding or decision-making.

Map. What do we already have? People. Skills. Languages. Buildings. Vehicles. Equipment. Communication channels. Partnerships. Trust. The question is not only what do we need? It is also: what capacity already exists around us but has never been viewed through a preparedness lens?

Adapt. Can an ordinary resource safely take on a different function? A youth centre does not need to become an emergency shelter by default. But could it become an information point? Could a kitchen serve meals? Could its volunteer network support a professional relief operation? Preparedness means considering those options before improvisation becomes necessary.

Connect. Who do we coordinate with? Municipality. Fire service. Civil protection. Humanitarian organisations. Schools. Social services. Other NGOs. A prepared organisation should know whom to call before it needs the number.

Support. What can we responsibly contribute? Now — and only now — comes community assistance. Not everything. Something useful. Something safe. Something that fits our actual capacities.

Care. Who looks after those doing the helping? Shift rotations, psychological support, supervision, breaks and permission to stop should not depend on whether a heroic leader remembers them after three sleepless days. They should be part of the preparedness system.

Learn. What changes after the crisis? Preparedness is cyclical. Beyond Readiness rightly connects mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery rather than treating them as separate moments. After every crisis, organisations have new knowledge. The question is whether that knowledge disappears when normality returns or becomes preparation for next time.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) makes a useful distinction between contingency planning — preparing how an organisation will respond to a particular emergency — and business continuity planning, which protects the organisation’s ability to maintain essential functions during crisis. Its contingency-planning guidance also stresses that organisational planning should be collaborative and connected to government and partner systems.

What this could mean for youth work

This is where I see a particularly interesting opportunity for youth sector stakeholders. We already bring together the people who could multiply preparedness in thousands of communities.

I would keep the work on stress, self-regulation, uncertainty and mental health. I would keep experiential learning. I would keep the relational and systemic dimensions. And then I would give organisational leaders opportunities to practise converting them into organisational decisions.

• Give them a scenario and ask them to map their real resources.
• Ask what their organisation could realistically offer after six hours, after 24 hours and
• after three days.
• Ask them to identify the three people they would call first.
• Ask where safeguarding risks appear.
• Ask what volunteers could safely do — and what they absolutely should not do.
• Ask what happens when the director has been working for eighteen hours.
• Ask who has authority to spend money if normal procedures become impossible.
• Ask how they verify information before sharing it with 5,000 followers.
• Ask them to leave the training with one page they could actually use on Monday
• morning.

That would not turn youth workers into emergency professionals. It would make them better prepared civil-society leaders.

Preparedness should not create more heroes

Perhaps this is ultimately the part I care about most. Preparedness should not create a new expectation that every individual must become stronger, more resilient and capable of solving increasingly complex crises. Nor should it create an expectation that every small NGO must become a miniature humanitarian agency. It should help people understand themselves. It should help groups build trust. It should help organisations recognise their capacities and limits. And it should connect them with systems that allow different actors to contribute according to their roles. For me, the picture therefore looks less like a ladder and more like interconnected layers: I <-> WE <-> ORGANISATION <-> SYSTEM, with ACTION flowing through all of them.

And at the centre is not heroism. It is capacity.

Continuing the conversation

I do not offer this as a criticism of TOP Workshops and Preparedness Competence Model. Actually, I arrived at these questions because of them. The model explicitly describes itself as a working tool rather than a finished product and invites people to change it, test it and add what their context requires.

I would like to accept that invitation. The workshop convinced me that preparedness should start with the person. My experience makes me want to explore the bridge from that person to the organisation around them. And research suggests that this bridge is worth building.

We already have leaders. We already have organisations. We already have community relationships. We already have buildings, volunteers, skills, networks and trust. The question is whether we recognise these things as potential preparedness capacities before we suddenly need them.

Perhaps one of the next questions for preparedness in youth work could therefore be very simple: If a crisis reached our community tomorrow, would our organisation know how to turn its people, relationships and everyday resources into safe, responsible and coordinated action?

If the answer is not yet, that is not a failure.
It is a very good place to begin.