Parklife

I’ve been exploring the area around the new hotel - it’s rather nice. Our team is on the older side, apart from Magnus our young Danish Team Leader, we are all in our 50s and one in her 60s. Quite unusual for this kind of situation. Magnus got a suite here so we could use the living room part as an office - doing meetings in cafes is okay for a first week but you need an office space to do interviews and have more private planning meetings.

Laurence looked at the water system today and discovered there is a single pipeline supplying the city and surrounding areas. If that gets damaged or cut off then 1.5 million people will lose potable water. She’s spent the day talking through the limits of water trucking and strategic locations for bladders with local authorities.

I had a useful day completed the recruitment of two people, met with a group of mental health specialists to look at non-clinical mental health support systems especially for those people who have been under prolonged bombardment or witnessed atrocities, and made arrangements to go with a local organisation tomorrow to receive and support people being evacuated from frontline villages.

I even went out to buy ice creams for the team. The sun was shining. It’s 9.30pm and no siren (fingers crossed) and I think we can a good response plan forming already with some strong partners.