Co-developing solutions to common CBS challenges

[Story originally shared in the CBS newsletter. Sign up to the newsletter here!]

The CBS Technical meeting took place from the 19 to the 21st of March in the beautiful city of Budapest. Twenty-nine participants from 20 countries, representing National Societies and the IFRC, joined the meeting. Additionally, several participants joined remotely for all or some of the sessions.

The meeting aimed to facilitate shared learning and brainstorming of solutions to common problems faced when implementing CBS. The participants joined enthusiastically in group discussions, Q&A panels and plenary exercises to co-create these solutions.

Here are some of the results of their work:

• Useful strategies and tips for advocating for CBS to the ministries of health (MoH).
• Best practices for working with volunteers, including recruitment strategies, keeping volunteers motivated, and ensuring strong supervision.
• Solutions for communication and integration of CBS with the MoH led surveillance activities in the country, and how to best address MoH concerns of accountability, scale up and data security.
• Answers to common reporting and implementation headaches, such as the flow of data, integrating with the national surveillance system, choice of platforms for reporting and developing branch and volunteer capacity.
• Insights into challenges presented by using CBS in emergencies as opposed to epidemic preparedness, and how the tools can be adapted to different emergency settings (epidemic outbreaks, emergencies such as typhoons or floods, conflict and displacement).
• Agreement on some basic terms used in CBS and what they mean, as well as agreement on which terms to stop using (this one turned into a very lively discussion with lots of colorful post-its!

This meeting wouldn’t have happened without the amazing support from our colleagues in the Budapest IFRC office, so a big thanks to them, together with all live and virtual participants, our speakers, facilitators and technical support!

It takes a village… to create an inclusive meeting!

The meeting aimed to provide as much value as possible by bringing in people with different experiences in CBS. It thus was ran in two languages (French and English), with participants joining in person or remotely, when they could not come to Budapest.

For language inclusiveness, we had professional interpreters in the room. For remote participation, Heather Leson, Data Literacy Lead at the IFRC, joined us to support digital inclusiveness and help us run the meeting on virtual participation platforms. Colleagues joined us remotely from Uganda, Guinea and elsewhere!

The double logistics of translations and virtual participation presented some challenges, that were readily taken on by facilitators, participants and support staff alike to ensure the best experience for everyone. When breaking up into small groups, or moving from one discussion group to the next, participants in the room helped improve the experience for those joining remotely, by carrying around with them the computer or phone from which they were connected via skype, and helping them share their opinions and questions. Also, the translators on site were very flexible and moved along with participants from one group discussion to the next, and seemed happy to be supporting our participants in a more direct way!