Meeting
ICRC Director + Congolese Red Cross Secretary General + AFD Director
Preparing a Director for a Three-Way Institutional Meeting
A two-page meeting briefing prepared in 90 minutes from the ICRC Institutional Strategy 2019–2024. The task was to turn a broad institutional ambition into concise, usable points for a senior-level discussion with the Congolese Red Cross and Agence Française de développement.
01 · Assignment
The Brief
Prepare a short briefing for the ICRC Director of Mobilization, Movement and Partnerships ahead of a meeting on sustainable humanitarian impact.
Source
ICRC Institutional Strategy 2019–2024
Output
A short, decision-useful meeting briefing completed within 90 minutes.
What had to fit
Strategy summary, humanitarian-development distinction, partner roles, a practical example and questions the Director could use in the room.
02 · Briefing Anatomy
What Went Into the Two Pages
The briefing was structured around the decisions and questions most useful for the meeting.
Distil Sustainable Humanitarian Impact
Reduce a broad strategic orientation to the practical idea the Director needed for the meeting.
Emergency needs remain the humanitarian entry point.
Protracted crises create longer-term, systemic and less visible vulnerabilities.
Humanitarian action should support people's ability to preserve dignity, livelihoods and autonomy over time.
Clarify the scope of SHI
The briefing needed to distinguish SHI from both short-term emergency response and traditional development cooperation.
Humanitarian Response
- Immediate needs
- Emergency mindset
- Shorter-term relief
Sustainable Humanitarian Impact
- Humanitarian mandate
- Longer-term vulnerabilities
- Local capacity and coping mechanisms
- Partnerships that sustain results
Development Cooperation
- Institutions and systems
- Longer time horizons
- Economic and social development
Turn institutional ambition into a division of labour
Define what each organisation could contribute without blurring mandates.
ICRC: humanitarian and protection analysis, operational access, needs identification and humanitarian safeguards.
Congolese Red Cross: local knowledge, community trust, volunteers and sustained local engagement.
AFD: development expertise, longer-term financing, infrastructure and connections to public and private actors.
Give the Director somewhere to take the meeting
Move beyond summary and prepare questions, examples and a practical next step.
Identify one area where immediate humanitarian need and longer-term service sustainability overlap.
Explore financing that preserves the flexibility required in conflict settings.
Build local Red Cross knowledge into design, delivery and monitoring from the start.
Nominate focal points and develop a first pilot concept with a clear division of responsibilities.
03 · Partnership Logic
Three Organisations, Different Roles
The partnership proposition depended on complementarity rather than three organisations doing the same thing.
ICRC
Humanitarian mandate, protection analysis, conflict access and operational expertise.
Congolese Red Cross
Community trust, local knowledge, volunteers and long-term presence.
AFD
Development expertise, financing and longer-term systems thinking.
ICRC contribution
Lead humanitarian and protection analysis, identify needs with affected communities, provide access and operational expertise, and protect the neutral, impartial and independent character of the cooperation.
04 · Meeting Card
Questions for the Room
The final briefing included prompts the Director could use to move the conversation from principle to action.
Use this to identify one concrete area where the three organisations could test the partnership model.
Keep the conversation anchored in conflict-setting realities rather than importing a standard development model.
Bring local networks and community knowledge into the project from the beginning rather than waiting until the implementation stage.
Nominate focal points, define responsibilities and return with a short pilot concept and financing options.
05 · Practical Example
From Strategy to Something Concrete
The briefing used a partnership example to show what a humanitarian-development collaboration could look like in practice.
Goma West Resilient Water Project
The example combined humanitarian and development funding, private-sector participation, infrastructure investment, emergency works and measures intended to support longer-term system sustainability.
Proposed close
Agree the outcome, safeguards and division of labour, then ask the teams to return with a short pilot concept and financing options.
06 · Briefing Excerpts
Inside the Two-Page Document
Three exact crops from the original briefing show how it moved from institutional strategy to a practical senior-level conversation. Select an image to enlarge it.
Excerpt 01 · Strategic frame
Sustainable Humanitarian Impact
Distilling the concept and drawing the humanitarian-development distinction.
Excerpt 02 · Partnership logic
Complementary Roles
Turning institutional strengths into a clear division of labour.
Excerpt 03 · Meeting preparation
Questions and Proposed Close
Giving the Director practical prompts and a concrete next step.
07 · What This Demonstrates
What the Exercise Tested
The exercise moved beyond summarising a strategy document by turning it into material a senior leader could use in a live meeting.
Policy Synthesis
Extract the decision-relevant points from a long institutional strategy.
Executive Briefing
Reduce complex material into concise, meeting-ready information.
Partnership Preparation
Translate broad institutional ambitions into complementary roles and concrete questions.
Working Under Constraint
Complete the analysis and briefing within a 90-minute recruitment exercise.