The author serves in the Policy and Planning Department as a member of World Vision's Early Warning System team. Another of his responsibilities is to help facilitate enterprise development with the organization's field offices. The basis of the traditional disaster model is that linear interventions lead from relief to sustainable development. In this paradigm, no serious breaks or discontinuities disrupt the progression of projects and programs designed to assist beneficiaries. The traditional model is open to criticism on two counts.
Practitioners assume that discrete subsets of activities are associated with each phase.
Certain interventions are done in the relief stage but not in rehabilitation or relief. Likewise, rehabilitation or development are associated with their own set of strategies and operations. This classification of activities into relief, rehabilitation, and development interventions is often arbitrary. This specialization of activities associated with relief, rehabilitation, and development produces a double-edged sword. On the positive side, professionalism is encouraged.