Support for shelter managers

MONTEGO BAY, St James — Mundia Williams found that inadequate resources and the crushing weight of expectation from people seeking support were among the most challenging demands of being a shelter manager at Bounty Hall Primary School in Trelawny during Hurricane Melissa. “The thing I experienced that I would not like for others to experience is that you’re in a capacity that everyone is expecting things of you, everybody is expecting you to figure things out,” she told the Jamaica Observer. “You don’t have the resources to help them.

That is what I found very disheartening, to know that you want to help and you don’t have the resources because you weren’t given the resources to help these persons,” she lamented. Williams recalled not having the first-aid skills needed to help individuals who showed up with injuries. Head of programmes for the International Organization (IOM) for Migration in Jamaica, Andrea Dabizzi, addressing participants during a three-day workshop the IOM hosted in Montego Bay last week, starting Wednesday.

“Throughout the storm…we had persons who fell, who got cut by zinc and flying debris coming in the shelter. They would have experienced some form of injury during that period. So I realised that first aid plays a great role, but sometimes we are not well-equipped to manage,” she explained.

Williams was one of the participants in a three-day workshop hosted in Montego Bay by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). She and other shelter managers provided frank assessments of their experiences, particularly in the aftermath of last October’s Category 5 storm. The workshop, which began last Wednesday, offered guidance on how to maximise emergency shelters and the personnel who work in them.

“The target is community centres that could actually be used as shelters in the time of emergency for humanitarian response and a temporary base. Besides the repairing and equipping of the premises, the scope is also to strengthen the capacity of the managers of the centres,” head of programmes for the IOM in Jamaica Andrea Dabizzi told the Sunday Observer. This support is crucial for shelter managers like Williams who said during Melissa she balanced worrying about her children — who she had sent to stay with relatives so she could volunteer to help those in need — with taking care of sometimes unruly shelter occupants.