30 September, 2010: While the entire nation was waiting to hear the Ayodhya verdict and the atmosphere was that of tension and apprehension, the Sankalp volunteers received an SMS announcing CodeRed*. Within next few minutes the organisation was on it's toes.
Goal
In case some major problem happened in Bangalore, participate in whatever capacity to help ease the situation.
Objective
Ensure that there is no shortage of blood in the city
Ensure that we were in a position to help in any other way which becomes obvious in the time to come.
Action Plan
We broadly had the following working groups:
The emergency team: To organise blood donations and work upon the back-end of ensuring proper blood supply
The information collection people who ensure that we know what is happening
The travelers who can go place to place if required
Within a span of 30 minutes the various volunteers were working in their respective areas. the handling was being done such that in case there is any news of trouble, within seconds we can get our relief program initiated.
As far as the situation is concerned the following things were done:
A constant watch was kept on media for any reports and the inputs were shared between the working teams
We estimated the blood stocks across the town and prepared to get donation done in two widely separated blood banks
Due care was taken to ensure that we could get the donations done without any threat to donor's safety.
Thankfully the situation was good and no work was required.
As far as the organisational preparedness is concerned the following actions were undertaken.
There was good testing of the protocols that we have set for logicaly worganising the work, CodeRed, communication during disaster scenarios etc.
We made use of our information exchange backbone to see how it can be best used in extreme situation
We made an assessment of the training needs for volunteers in order to further strengthen the disaster response
In an overall sense, this exercise was instrumental not only in keeping a good standby for any situation that could have come up, it also served the need for mock drill for the organisation. The feedback that was collected at the end of the exercise reaffirmed our faith in the protocols and procedures that we have laid our for disaster response.
(*)CodeRed: CodeRed is an announcement of an emergency situation in Sankalp. Once code red is announced, the volunteers go into a '0' tolerance more where they are available to do anything that is required to make the emergency situation better. Typically the code red is announced when there is (possibility of) a disaster.