I received an email yesterday asking about contingency planning.
In this world of terrorist activity, bird flu worries, and political instability, a good contingency plan can be essential for those going on overseas short-term mission trips.
Contingency plans are often a function of scale – that is, the size of the organization planning the trip. A smaller agency or a single church is often going to need to partner w/ a bigger organization that has a basket of alternatives and connections to draw upon (AIM took 8000 or so people on trips this year and we’ve got contingency plans for all of them). For example, if you go to Haiti, you better have a back-up project ready to go in neighboring Dominican Republic. Haiti seems to have a political mess every other year.
There is no one-size-fits-all plan. Most contingency plans have to be tailored to the trip in question to take into account the unique circumstances. Last week we made the call not to go into Israel with one of our teams and re-directed the team to Croatia. We were able to do that because of the connections we had there.
The most important factor in implementing a contingency plan is the presence of empowered leaders who know how to pray thru a complicated situation and make tough decisions in a wise and timely way. If you’re responsible for a team that needs a contingency plan, this is the first thing to assess.
If you need specific help, feel free to email me and I can give you some quick, specific advice.
I am leading a trip to Bolivia shortly. We will be working on a river outside of Trinidad. Our organization (BMA – http://www.bmaamissions.org) is small and we have never done contiegency planning before. We want to do it for all our short term trip. Any help you could give would be great.
Thanks,
JMP
Hi Johnmichael,
I think Seth has hit it right on in terms of leadership that can drive plan B [or C or D] as the need arises. That’s going to be crucial.
A few other ideas about contingency from my perspective:
– teams i have led travel with lots of backup documentation [passports, shot records, notarized parental permission form.] each leader gets a packet with a copy every person’s vital docs and these docs are also stored electronically like as attachments sent to an email account. this not only helps in case something is lost, it helps if you have to move fast as plans change, which they certainly will once you hit the field.
– if possible, match your contingency plan with your teams’ talents and strengths and passions too. if you had to execute plan b, what other valuable experiences would this provide for your team?
– try to come at plan B with a partnership perspective – my team can provide this and can serve a real purpose for this host and this host can complement us in this way.
All, of course, probably easier said than done. But processing the possibility is a great first start. Hope that helps!