By Everett Ressler
Venue: Virtual mode (Zoom)
Objective:
The online guest speaker session was organized exclusively for the MSW students is to discuss and learn about Disaster Preparedness, Mitigation, and Child Protection in Emergency Management from a long term expert
Biography of Speaker:
Everett Ressler HDPi Executive Director, Specializes in preparedness, risk reduction and child
protection Everett has a lifetime of work internationally in the humanitarian and development
fields. He has lived and worked for most of career in Asia, Africa and Europe. The focus of his
work includes organizational development, programme management, research and evaluation,
training and consulting support
Discussion Highlights:
Everett Ressler shared with students that he made a decision that his field of work would be the
field of emergencies, that is working with people in acute distress situations. It doesn’t have
status, and it doesn’t have money. But it has purpose. And he decided that would be his life’s
work. He shared the three factors based on the experience that go together to be a good
person in this field. His discussion covered how students can approach Emergencies in India;
The Myths of Disaster Response; defining Emergency; social workers in Emergencies; what one
can do to prevent conflict and can do to mitigate it. Always take the approach of talking and
listening to people find creative ways to solve problems.
Outcome:
Students got a broad understanding of how to hold onto your values during an emergency, how
to define an emergency, and what the basics of response are in terms of social work.
Participants: 33