Building Safe Teams at International Alert

NGO extends Hostile Environment Training to staff with Resilience Academy

International Alert is overcoming challenges around training by extending access to Resilience Academy, a hostile environment awareness training course using interactive video scenarios to deliver realistic HEAT training.

International Alert is one of the world’s leading peace-building organisations, with 30 years of experience laying the foundations for peace. They operate in over 25 countries and territories around the world including Africa, Asia and Europe.

Searching for an effective way to keep all staff safe, International Alert secured over 150 HEAT licenses to provide accessible online training for the organisation.

Having obtained the licenses in both English and French, International Alert will be using these courses in London and international French-speaking offices.

Although, much of their staff are experienced humanitarian aid workers, they will now be able to use this training to refresh their knowledge before embarking on field work. Also, those not at immediate risk, will also participate in the online training course.

Traditional location-based HEAT training is often expensive and can mean up to five days away from the office.

According to Hostile Environment Training Ltd (HETL):

“This is a requirement, under ‘Duty of Care and Security’ for the Department for International Development, Foreign and Commonwealth Office and all other international grant and funding providers.”

Key Challenges

• Assigning an effective way to keep all staff safe, informed and up to speed with security measures
• Ensuring that the entire body is familiar with the context-specific circumstances associated with peace-building
• Supporting and building training capacity on relevant peace-building topics.

The Solution

Resilience Academy’s full HEAT course supports International Alert’s core mission:

“We help national and international partners, donors, governments and institutions to better understand and respond to the challenges and opportunities that arise in countries affected by conflict, exploring the critical issues which impact on peace and how these can be integrated into their policies and actions.”

– International Alert

In addition, Near-Life™ is re-versioning the course content to meet the the needs of Francophone employees situated in Central and West Africa.

By combining Near-Life™ interactive video with elearning technology, Resilience Academy provides a digital solution that allows NGOs, civilian workers and journalists to practice in a safe space under realistic time-pressure – building resilience and improving awareness for those who may not have been able to access conventional training.

“We chose Resilience Academy as we found it to be the most innovative and engaging online course in this space.”

– International Alert

Resilience Academy HEAT is the first time International Alert has acquired scenario-based video training for its staff.