Mock disaster tests limits of Deakin Aid students

On Monday, dozens of the brightest humanitarian aid students awoke in Indonesia to find themselves in the midst of a mammoth mock natural disaster.

The confronting emergency simulation forms the final component of the innovative, Australian-led Humanitarian Leadership Program designed jointly by Deakin University and Save the Children.

"The HLP is the single most important course of its type in the humanitarian sector," veteran Save the Children aid worker and course director Stephen McDonald said. 

"We can tinker all we like with systems and technology, but if we don't build better leaders we will never improve."

Fifty-seven humanitarian students from 26 countries are participating in the intensive eight-day course, which comprises the final unit of Deakin's Graduate Certificate of Humanitarian Leadership course and the culmination of eight months of study.

Dr Phil Connors, Senior Lecturer in International and Community Development at Deakin and course coordinator said the simulation component was about testing how students react and respond to the constantly-changing situation around them.

"We work with Indonesian Red Cross workers who act as local emergency services groups while faculty members play the roles of police who harass the students, agitators within the community, or government officials seeking bribes," he said.

The simulation takes place in Semarang in central Java, where students from 15 different aid agencies will confront the simulated devastation of a natural disaster in Lolesia, a fictional, poverty-stricken and politically-unstable country in south-east Asia that students were introduced to in a previous unit.

Students work in teams to provide immediate support to locals while developing a strategic, co-ordinated long-term plan to present to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Dr Connors said that as well as improving leadership, preparedness and response capabilities, the course also builds relationships that can help bring aid agencies closer together. 

"With Australia on the edge of one of the most disaster-prone region in the world, in-depth training exercises such as this one are vital – not only do they stretch our students' skills to the limit, they also build bridges between aid agencies and create a real sense of community in the sector," he said.