When you’re sitting in your UK office on a rainy day, working on a report or spreadsheet, it can be difficult to appreciate the crucial role that you are playing in helping the world’s poorest. How do you help all your staff – from finance to fundraising; IT to HR; programmes to policy – to understand and feel part of your overseas work?

That’s just what Aid Works helped Care International UK to do in our interactive, fast-paced and fun simulation for over 120 staff in central London.

CARE International UK works around the globe to save lives, defeat poverty and achieve social justice. Their programmes and policy work tackle the underlying causes of poverty so that people can become self-sufficient. They place special focus on empowering women and girls because, equipped with the proper resources, women have the power to lift whole families and communities out of poverty.

Aid Works designed and ran a simulation set within a fictional humanitarian crisis. CARE staff took on the roles of field workers, the local government, IDPs, local partners and donors, and completed tasks such as meetings, focus group discussions and media interviews. Actors brought an element of realism – and chaos! – to the situation. But beneath the chaos and the fun, learning was taking place around key issues identified by CARE during the simulation planning process. As with all of our training, the simulation was completed with a debrief and evaluation, and finished off with some inspiring stories about CARE’s achievements.

Tom Newby, head of CARE’s humanitarian team, said:

“It’s important for CARE International UK that all of our staff, whether programme staff, finance, HR, comms or other departments, have a good understanding of the work we do and support in crises around the world. To help achieve this, we set Aid Works the very challenging task of running a humanitarian scenario for over 120 people, focussing on getting everyone to understand the realities of delivering aid in emergencies to different groups and individuals. Aid Works delivered exactly what we asked for and transported our staff into a scenario they quickly forgot wasn’t real. Because Aid Works is run by highly experienced humanitarians they understood exactly what we needed and how to meet our somewhat unusual request. It was a pleasure working with them, and an eye-opening experience for many of our staff.”

If you need help running a bespoke simulation, then please contact us.