Forest Hosts Aid Exercise

This weekend, the Harold Parker State Forest of North Andover, Mass. will be turned into a Darfur refugee camp.

The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) and the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University are jointly hosting an educational exercise to simulate the issues surrounding emergency refugee areas in the war-torn state.

Participants in the event will create a service plan for the simulation that addresses sanitation, medical care, and transportation routes, according to a press release.

Project Manager Sarah Appleby said participants are required to undergo a “two-week-long intensive, didactic training process” to prepare for the experience.

The participants themselves have a wide range of prior experience in dealing with the issues associated with refugee camps, according to Appleby—coming from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), the Harvard Kennedy School, and Tufts University, among other places.

The simulation is intended to provide students with the closest possible recreation of the issues confronting non-governmental organization workers in Darfur.

Volunteers will role-play as refugees, while military checkpoints, mock Janjaweed attacks, and security evacuations are incorporated into the experience.

The program directors intend to create an environment that closely resembles the tension and turmoil currently present along the Chad-Sudan border, according to Appleby.

HHI’s Humanitarian Studies Initiative is a seven-year old program that attempts to provide students with hands-on experience that emphasizes the policies that HSPH has developed, according to a press release.

“Our program is one of four or five in the nation that trains people in service delivery,” said HHI Director of External Affairs Erin E. Lyons.

The program places a “unique emphasis on population and international health.”

Interest in the Humanitarian Studies Initiative has already expanded significantly. Last year, Appleby said, there were 30 participants; this year there are 55.

Recent program alumni hold a number of top positions in the field of public health, including the program manager and coordinator positions at the World Health Organization, Oxfam America, Save the Children, and the International Rescue Committee, according to a statement released by HHI.

Lyons and Appleby, who expressed their excitement at the inclusion of students from other graduate schools, said the program hopes to incorporate undergraduates in the near future.