Powerful Business Insights From Humanitarian Aid
By: K K Mookhey
Tags: People, Covid 19, Social Services, Humanitarian, Business

In March 2020, I first ventured into the humanitarian sector by volunteering with a collective called Helping Hands in the aftermath of the NE Delhi Riots. Later, I also volunteered in Mumbai to respond to the humanitarian crisis triggered as a result of the sudden lock-down announced in India. This work covered primarily two operations — dry ration kits to the poor as well as helping migrant workers travel back during the lock-down.

Having spent nearly 20 years as an entrepreneur, this experience has been nothing short of an eye-opener. In this article, I wanted to compare the people aspect of volunteer-driven social work versus a typical business environment and see what lessons we can draw for our businesses and our relationships with the people that work with us.

O rganizational structure

In any company that starts to reach some sort of scale, an organizational structure is very important. There are hierarchies, job descriptions, objectives, key responsibility areas, and so forth. In the humanitarian sector, I saw a complete lack of such a structure. And the most amazing part was that even in the absence of a job description, people came to the fore and did what had to be done at that point in time.

Vishal doing his thing for the next train at Borivali station

Case in point: The third train that we organized for migrant workers to go from Mumbai to Uttar Pradesh was going to be packed to capacity. We had used IVR, SMS and calling campaigns to build passenger lists and get people to the stations. But, I was quite anxious to see how would we manage the crowd and sift the genuine travelers (on our lists) from others who had come to the station anyway to try their luck. By the time I reached Bandra Terminus (the starting point of the journey), I saw crowds neatly queued up already. When I reached the start of the queue, one of our volunteers — Vishal Lamba — had already put in place a system where hand-written chits were being given to people who had our SMS and these groups had then been moved into a separate enclosure. Within the next half an hour, he had completed this process and updated us with the exact count of passengers who had received our confirmation SMS. Since this same train was also going to pick up hundreds of passengers at another station (Vasai), we were able to manage the crowds at both ends and ensure that passengers were properly on-boarded. It turned out Vishal had years of experience in event management. No one asked him to do this, nor did he have any written job description. He simply saw the situation and applied his experience and skills to the task at hand. This process then became our standard operating procedure for all the trains that we organized.

Working hours

In corporate life, we are used to 9-to-5 or some sort of a fixed working hours schedule. Working additional hours is considered a rarity and working over weekends even more so. In the humanitarian sector, I cannot recall a single instance where any volunteer said they were not available because it was the weekend.

Case in point: One memorable day was when there was unseasonal rain in Delhi. One of the largest riot relief camps was set up in the massive courtyard of a mosque — Idgah. The tents got flooded and the mattresses on the floor got wet. People were naturally upset and worried about falling sick if the rains continued through the night. Upon receiving an SOS for 500 folding beds, one of our team members started calling suppliers who could supply these on the same day and in bulk. Once we found the supplier, we needed a volunteer to reach them and travel with the trucks to Idgah. It was already late evening, but two volunteers stepped up to the task. They drove nearly 40 kilometres from their homes in South Delhi to Rohini, and then escorted the trucks another 25 kilometres to the Idgah camp in North East Delhi. They ensured the beds were unloaded and properly delivered into the camp even though it was way past midnight by that time. This won kudos from the Delhi government also.

Job descriptions

People stepping out of their comfort zones or doing things that are not in their job description is again a welcome rarity in the corporate world. However, in disaster relief work, nearly everyone who got involved was facing new and unprecedented challenges.

Homes and shops burnt down in NE Delhi

Case in point: One of the areas where riot victims needed help was in getting cooking gas cylinders. With their homes completely destroyed — often by rioters using these very cylinders to blast homes and shops — they figured that if they had gas cylinders they could at least return back to their homes and set up their kitchens. One of the volunteers, Pallavi Dhody figured out the process, put up a desk in one of the localities, got people to fill up the necessary forms, collected their Aaadhar card details, contacted the gas agencies — all in one day. By the next day, gas cylinders started getting delivered and the dry ration kits that we were supplying could actually be put to good use. And to some extent I hope they got a sense of normalcy back by at least cooking their own meals. Now, she did not say, it is not my job, or I am not sure how to go about doing this. She saw a problem, called a few people, figured out the solution and got the job done.

Standard Operating Procedures

As an organization grows and people come and go, it becomes important to start documenting critical processes. This helps with standardization but can also lead to bureaucratization of work. I did try to document our SOPs, but they changed on an almost everyday basis. It was definitely very challenging to run operations where the ground reality changed so frequently. And this required team members to show a lot of flexibility in adapting to the changing circumstances.

Case in point: In the initial few days of running relief operations in riot-affected NE Delhi, local transportation was unavailable as autos and taxis refused to ferry social workers and relief material into the worst-affected areas. We hired two vans from these localities to help ply people and material to the people who needed it most. Eventually, we hire a larger tempo as we had to transport food packets. These three vehicles became a mainstay of our logistics operations. As the COVID-19 situation worsened, the warehouse we were using to store bulk grains and package these into family-sized ration kits shut down. We then transitioned to helping people procure essential groceries from local stores and began paying the store owners using digital wallets.

Succession Plans

In a company, we spend a lot of time agonizing over succession plans, identifying key management personnel, even taking specific insurance covers for them. For many of our key people, we cannot imagine how that department would function in their absence. In smaller companies, the exit of a key person can handicap an entire operation, impact revenues and reduce profits.

Case in point: In humanitarian aid, it was quite the opposite. Every operation had some key people, but even when they stepped away, others readily stepped in and took on the mantle. During the NE Delhi relief work there were days when I was handling 100s of phone calls, was a part of innumerable WhatsApp groups. And then when I decided to take backseat, within one day, the entire operation had been taken over by other volunteers who very likely did an even better job than me. The same thing has happened with Ghar Bhejo operations as Ashma, Govind, Vishal and others have taken it over.

No parallels

There is one aspect though that I don’t think has parallels in the corporate environment. Volunteers often did what was needed to be done even if it meant a risk to their personal safety. I remember the night before Holi, there were rumors on WhatsApp groups that people belonging to the majority religion would be taking out loud and boisterous processions through minority-dominated localities. The Delhi Police warned all NGOs to have no volunteers on the ground on the day of the festival. There were about 1000 people that we had been providing cooked food to. So, we decided to procure non-perishable food items (bread loaves, biscuits, fruits, etc.) and delivery them the night before. By the time these emergency purchases had been made, it was close to midnight and a curfew had been imposed throughout the area. Our volunteers set out in the dark of the night on scooters and in autos to get these food items to the people. There was a real risk to them, and we remained in constant touch with them till the deliveries were done and they reached their homes. These sorts of situations would be extremely rare in the corporate world but were commonplace in relief work.

Insights for our work and our businesses

While humanitarian aid — typified by the urgency to take actions needed to save people’s lives — is quite different in nature from a business environment, yet there might be insights we can gain from this experience:

When people come together for a shared purpose and believe that they are doing things that go beyond their immediate needs (ref Maslow’s hierarchy), then great things can happen. Ego is truly the enemy. The most successful interventions were those where individuals kept their egos aside and worked for the common cause. Where there was a lot of jostling for credit, it did sour the experience. Adam Grant explains in Give and Take that burn-out when giving is prevented when you can see the impact of what you were doing. Here, we were able to see the impact immediately. The smiles on people’s faces when they got the ticket to board the train back home. The relief when people got food, essential groceries, medicines, clothes, and school kits for their kids. The joy of working with like-minded people makes a big difference. This type of work attracts people who have very similar principles and ethics. For me personally, this was the biggest positive of the whole experience so far. I met so many amazing people through this journey and enjoyed working with them on each of the campaigns. The novelty of the work is also very interesting. As every day was a new challenge, and each initiative involved overcoming different obstacles, it really pushed all of us outside our comfort zones. But we knew that each of us had the other’s back. And this gave us the confidence to say, yeah let’s do this.

Having said that, I look back at this entire experience and am reminded of the Parable of Babies in the River. There is so much more that needs to be done at a policy and framework level to address these problems systemically.