Sarah Kesler (left) and Eric James, founders of the humanitarian crisis simulation, answer questions from participants on Sept. 12 during a simulation at a Boy Scout campy afternoon near Cannon Falls. The camp was used by the University of Minnesota Global Health Department for its fourth annual simulation. MURPHY NEWS SERVICE PHOTO BY ELIZABETH BRUMLEY.
U-sponsored project brought together volunteers from many backgrounds to practice facing actual catastrophes
By ELIZABETH BRUMLEY/Murphy News Service
A collection of groggy doctors, refugees, students, professors and aid workers sipped coffee under a tarp earlier this month, while some discussed how their sleeping quarters had been raided by militia forces the night before. A mock non-governmental organization (NGO) worker in a yellow pinny vest checked his watch and gathered teammates to cultivate their plan for the day’s work ahead.
This was day No. 2 at a Boy Scout camp near Cannon Falls, Minnesota, for a humanitarian crisis simulation, one the few in the nation, coordinated by the Global Health Department at the University of Minnesota.
Sarah Kesler, U Department of Medicine assistant professor and co-coordinator of the course, created the simulation with a desire to give a taste of the world of an aid worker that is often romanticized. To “give people who are interested in the career a bit more of a realistic expectation of what they would encounter in the field,” Kesler said.
Julia Ekeberg, a program associate for the American Refugee Committee based in St. Paul, said the first evening was stressful. The simulation started after a day of training and went into the night, while the Minnesota National Guard continued in its role of keeping participants on their toes, even during bathroom breaks.
“The militia roamed around and we went to the bathroom at night and the militia surprised us with guns,” Ekeberg said.
About 40 students from an array of U departments signed up to take part in the simulation. Participants split into six different mock NGOs to assess the crisis in “hyper” time with the requirement of presenting their action plans to a board of donors at the end of the 48-hour experience. Plans could focus on a variety of strategies, such as creating camp infrastructures, providing sanitation, population management, malnutrition assessment, reconnection of lost families. Funding priorities were also recommended.
There were about 160 people involved including role players to help bring the simulation to life.
Eric Kasowksi, from the Center of Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, was role playing as a country director for an emergency relief team. “This is better than I anticipated, the chaos replicates that of a real crisis,” he said.
Other role players were past students who have taken the course and active doctors in regions around the world experiencing crisis.
Minnesota National Guard members role-play as soldiers at a mock country checkpoint, going through a participant’s vehicle at a Boy Scout Camp near Cannon Falls. MURPHY NEWS SERVICE PHOTO BY ELIZABETH BRUMLEY.
In the woods of the Boy Scout camp there were countless “refugee camps” set up along with a medical facility. Each place had a handful of role players getting assessed for diseases and even giving birth, using Vaseline under their patients’ eyes to make their tears of discomfort even more believable.
At the camps, women cried out with heavy accents and sincere sounding pleas for help for their sick children and lost family members, while soldiers would come in and out with their with their mock M16s to disrupt the scene.
“I hoped to get out of this simulation an idea of whether if this is something I want to do, to be dispensed out of the field and do these rapid assessments for when there is a disaster or when people are moving across country borders,” Ekeberg said. “I learned how to take the information and write a proposal to get money from a donor, so we basically went from the beginning to the end.”
Ekeberg said after experiencing the simulation she would like for the American Refugee Committee to send her out into the field to do rapid assessments.
In marking its fourth year the simulation represented the most interdisciplinary group yet, including journalists, geographic information system specialists, the National Guard, Doctors Without Borders and Red Cross.
PJ Doyle, a long-term Red Cross volunteer, said for the upcoming year, the Red Cross hopes to have an even stronger presence to continue developing participants skills to restore families in real crises.
Reporter Elizabeth Brumley is studying journalism at the University of Minnesota.