Two members of CCOUC attended the R2HC workshop in Bangkok on 15 May 2014 in anticipation of the R2HC 2nd Call for Proposal open on 26 May 2014.
The event was held in a conference room in the Swissotel Nai Lert Park hotel in Bangkok. Around 40 participants from different academic institutions and humanitarian agencies had attended the workshop. Representatives were mainly from Asia, including Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand. There were also a few participants from Australia.
The R2HC programme is funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) and the Wellcome Trust and managed by the Enhancing Learning and Research for Humanitarian Assistance (ELRHA) of Save the Children, UK. The organiser held this workshop to help explain the programme to those institutes that have interests in applying for the R2HC programme research grant. This workshop also helped build future partnership among participants.
The workshop was a whole day event. The organisers first introduced the background of R2HC and calls for the 2nd round of proposals. Participants representing their own institution or organisation were then invited to present their current research or work to others during the interactive session. CCOUC presented our research and education activities to the others in this session. Summary of previous proposals from the first call were then discussed to reveal the standard and requirements for the 2nd round application. The organiser then emphasised the importance of research partnerships between academic institutions and humanitarian work agencies and provided chances for research partners seeking and matching. The participants were then divided into groups, each focusing on one specific humanitarian research topic (eg. communicable diseases, nutrition, WASH etc) and discuss how to establish partnerships for synthesising research proposals. The workshop ended by sharing the profiles of two successful applications in the first round call for proposals.