107. 319

That is a staggering statistic. It's the equivalent of 10% of the current number of volunteers the organisation has. Achman is very appreciative of the support the White Helmets have received from international donors and others and he wanted me specifically to point out that he forgot to mention one of his donors when he lists them in the conversation. So just to be clear, the full list of donors that have supported the White Helmets over the years are Canada, Denmark, France, the German foreign federal office (GFFO) and the FCDO from the UK, Qatar and USAID. I hope you find this conversation helpful in navigating this difficult moment in time and that you will contribute towards the ongoing conversation of what the future of humanitarian action looks like. Let us know on LinkedIn or BlueSky what you think about the episode. Send us an email on info@trumanitarian.org and let us know what you think. Tru humanitarian is produced by volunteers but we still have costs related to producing and hosting the show. We would love for you to support us in covering those costs and if you're so inclined, you can do that On our website there's a support the pot button you can press and you can give us a one-off or a monthly contribution. We greatly value every single donation we get from our ERs, but as always for us the most important thing is that you enjoy the conversation.

Ahmed Akzayes, welcome to Trumanitarian.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

It's great. We were able to manage this. We met in Doha doing the Centre for Humanitarian Leadership Conference a couple of days ago and you just happen to be travelling onwards to Geneva so we found a Saturday morning where we could sit down and hear about the amazing work that you're doing with the White Helmets.

Thank you very much for the invitation, although I make you woke up early for this podcast, but really appreciate it.

It is a bit early and I may not be my sharpest right now, but I'll try my best.

Thank You.

Just describe for us what is the White Helmets. I think a lot of us who work with humanitarian action have heard about you are impressed with the work you're doing, but from your perspective, if you had to describe the White Helmets, where does it come from? What's the origin story if you want and what are you today, how would you say that

So firefighting ambulance services.

Exactly.

Search and rescue.

And I'm sure that exactly because the day-to-day experience of the work that you're doing, you retain the trust of the communities you were serving. If you sit in Geneva or in London or anywhere else far away, it can be very hard to see what is right and what is wrong. How did you deal with the misinformation and disinformation outside Syria? Did you somehow try to counter it?

Absolutely. I mean here there are two points. Number one, we are always proud by saying our board of trustees and our senior management sitting inside Syria. So they are very close to the community. This kind of the close distance between you and the community give you a perfect trust because you are hearing what the committee they need and you try to address this need. This is from one perspective. However, also what we have decided that we need also to counter this information from different angles from different outside Syria. We opened our office in Canada and recently also opened our office in DC and we have our office in Netherland of course one of these, there is some programmatic financial aspect transferring money and all this kind difficulties in Syria. But one objective of having these offices is in order to speak with the outside communities, with the foreign communities, with the communities outside Syria by saying look, we are doing this amazing job on the ground what our volunteers is doing and all this information is trying just to get from those volunteers and make our effort is to spend, not to focus on our work rather than to spend more effort on countering this information.

So we have our great advocacy team sitting in Canada and DC discussing with the decision makers trying to address generalists, trying to speak the reality. What was very important is just to transfer the reality from the ground to the international community because the disinformation tried to change the reality, change the facts, but what we're trying always to start to provide evidence, the international community also they are clever and smart when they see this is the fact on the ground what Al Asad and Russia are saying is not correct because we are providing evidence. So evidence-based aspect is very important in order to counter this information and in order to do so you need to have a senior management on the ground and also you need to have a staff outside to complete the cycle between you and international community.

And do you feel like you were by and large successful in encountering the campaign against you?

In fact, we got a lot of disinformation. We feel sometimes. I remember we were attending some meeting with really fed up with a lot of this information, this information about, but again we have to admit and acknowledge support also from the international communities, from our donors, from the country that they believe of us and they know how much we are put on the communities, how much we are sacrifice our time for the community. So our international donors such kind usaid, FCDO, Canada, Denmark, France, Qatar, all those, they spend also a lot of effort to support us in order to counter this aspect. So it's a kind of also support from donors from international communities. Again, it's not to change the fact rather than to transfer the fact exactly as it is on the ground. So it's a sort of mutual support from our side but also thanks to the international communities from different countries, even journalists from different countries, they believe they visited us and they know us and they know what we are doing. They start to counter. So yes, we reach sometimes a lot of this information and we feel oh my god this is too much. But with all the support from different countries, different friends, colleagues, we were able to counter all of them

And I would say successfully. So because quite a large organisation today, how many people work with you? What's your annual turnover?

I mean now currently the number of volunteers, about 3,400 of course we have a permanent staff, we have a volunteers. It's a kind of mutual system. But yes, we are considered one of the largest Syrian organisation on the ground. But frankly speaking, if you ask me do you like a work to be the largest, I can say no. Our aim is to address the needs on the ground. It's not to be named as the largest Syrian organisation and to do with the wide range of programmes. But since we are on the ground and when we were approached by the communities to address a certain need on the ground, we found ourself it's accountable and responsible to do so. Therefore we start to liaise with some donors, with some communities, can we do this? Can we do these activities? Can we serve this committee with this aspect? Therefore now we are the largest but this was not our goal, our goal to serve the needs. So the needs are great and therefore we need this large number of staff.

And of course what has also happened is that your ability to operate in Syria was fundamentally transformed after eight December when the SAT regime fell and you have a new government in place and you're now able to operate throughout Syria. If I understand the correctly,

Absolutely what happened the 8th of December? Maybe you heard a lot of Syria and they are really, really happy with what happened because I think what happened means a lot for a lot of Syrians, we have been waiting this moment since ages in order to find right moment to build your country in a perfect manner in the way we are thinking how to have a freedom dignified system and inclusivity Syria for all Syrians. So when we as a white helmet, we found this what happened in a December, we found this kind of responsibilities on our shoulders to address the needs as much as we can. I can tell you that since 8th of December, like till now or the end of March, we have some volunteers. They were never seeing their families. There was no vacation for them in emergency mood. They just try our best to address the needs as much as possible despite the fact little resources, no funding, no human resources because before in northwest Syria we were working in almost in hundred communities cover and part of Eppo.

Now you expanded almost for all of Syria you are responsible for 4,000, almost 600 communities. You can imagine the level, the magnitude of the work. So this something now but with the same human resources, the same number of volunteers with the same number of equipment and tools. This created a lot of difficulties. But I can assure you that all those volunteers, they were super happy by working. You know why? Because they feel this is their responsibilities. This is not about a duty to come at nine and finish at five. This is our country and when you are thinking here you have to build your country, times is useless. You should not count the time that I'm starting at nine, I'm finishing at five. No this is our country. Whenever country need us we have to deliver, we have to put our effort on that. Therefore to be honest, it's a very difficult task. Very difficult until now with the limited resources, with the shortage of funding, with unfortunately a shortage of resources. But from our side we are somehow satisfied with what we have been doing because this is a maximum. We are not very much satisfied with addressing the level of addressing the needs because we know we are not able to address all the needs as what we have been doing in northwest area. Again, the issue with the resources, with even the human resources and the physical resources.

Yeah, I must admit when I heard you speak in Doha and I heard you talking not just about expanding the operations to the whole country but also thinking about issues like climate change, like more long-term development, a number of, I think you even mentioned education, there's a number of activities that are far away from the traditional civil protection point of departure that you have and I remember thinking to myself, man, I really admire this but I worry about these guys. They're going to blow their organisations to little pieces by trying to expand to be national level and venture into other domains that they haven't done so far that is super ambitious and super difficult.

Yes and no at the same time, yes we are really proud to be as a national and to keep ourself as a national. I mean we don't have any plan to be as international committee. We are super, super happy by serving our countries and to keep our work inside Syria because the fact that there is a huge work in Syria need to be done. However, we are ready to exchange our skills and knowledge with other countries because again we are responsible also to support the humanity everywhere. This is obvious and clear but as an organisation we are keeping a national signature as it is. However, in terms of the expansion, you are right. We started with the surge and queue and now we are, we have a three type of umbrella programmes. We have emergency where we have a surge and queue ambulance protection and also we have a resilience programme activities.

It's very important for a organisation to have a vision how to move from emergency to development through the resilience building activities. We have been suffering from this crisis since 14 years and we should always think that we are in an acute emergency mood and everything we need to rely in a kind of shelter or food basket. We should have put a plan how to move towards a more kind of longer term development through the resilience building. Therefore we have our rehabilitation and reconstruction programme. We have a climate change, we have one of very important programme about localization. Localization. We feel ourself as a national organisation we achieved a good successful reaching different donors, having communicating with different donors. We need also to transfer this knowledge and some kind of recommendation to the other local actors either in Syria or different locations in order to say, look, this is more or less the recipe for dealing with such kind of circumstances or such kind of fragile aspect.

So we started fill in this gap because there is no one working there. The main formula for us is to complement rather than to compete. I mean white helmet when we saw other Syria organisation, international doing great job in certain aspects, believe me, we don't want to intervene with that. We are fine. The need has been addressed. We are super fine with that, satisfied. However, when there is a need we found ourself we have to jump in, we have to be there. We have to address things because the community, as I told you, community approach us and ask us why you are not doing X and Y. We have to do it and we start to communicate with the donor. So we created this kind of mutual trust between US communities and donors in order to address the actual need on the ground. So it's not a risk, I can assure you Again, it's not a risk, it's as a sort of managing that in a way to compliment what the others are doing.

Now this is going to be a very hard question to answer I think, but because you're in such a fluid situation in Syria still, but where do you hope to be in five years with the white helmet?

And so what you're saying is that part of you may spin off into independent civil society organisations and part of you may integrate into the government and become part of for example the emergency services.

Absolutely. I mean this is what we found ourselves to be in the right position monitor and also support the government where we have existing, we have capacities and resources but at the same time we need to keep independent organisations civil society again, civil society has a great role to play in the building countries where they monitor all of us and provide recommendation, constructive feedback to the government in order to correct some actions. So having this balance I think is very, very important in order to build Syria as we know as a freedom democratic inclusive, again all always, I'm speaking on my behalf this kind of as a Syrian really I want Syria to be for or Syrian I need everyone to be part of the communities from all religions, all groups. There is no any exclusivity in this government or in these countries. So when you have a positive recommendations or feedback, please put it on the table.

There is someone will hear to that and someone will take it over. This is something we need to address as all Syrian now we have a golden opportunities to build our country to make it a peace country. Again, 14 years our countrys believe you. I face like all the governor rate almost in Syria. Our communities is just super, super, super tired. They need to live in peace. They need at the end of the month some kind to live in bees with a school, with educations, with the health surfaces. So what we need is just to come together to agree about the way forward and how to have a dignified life for those communities. We have been tired a lot and now we have a golden opportunity to come together. Let's forget everything about discriminations, about all this kind of negative energies and put more work now more work to build our country in more inclusive way by discussion, by dialogue. Everything could be solved, everything could be happen. It might take some time but no go for a kind of thinking in a negative way. Now we are time to build our country.

It's such a special moment in time we're in for your country, the golden opportunity as you say. And if I look at the international humanitarian sector, a moment where paradoxically I think because of the changes in US policy, which has deprived the sector of almost half of the funding, which was expected, a willingness I think to listen to different voices that I haven't really seen for a long, long time. And so with everything you've just said about Syria with everything, your ambitions on behalf of that and with some bigger ears than normally from the international community I think I hope. What's your thinking around how you from Syria can, what does that mean globally? What's the message and what's the project to help that experience that you've had? Travel,

I mean let me address the issue first by saying definitely what happened from the USAID fund. It's really impacted us a lot and we hope us keep their role as a leader for the humanitarian sector. And to be honest, this kind of cut of fund came at a critical time. The Syria current situations unfortunately. So we are suffering from, we are now witnessing a very difficult situation in terms of funding and humanitarian atmosphere in general at the ecosystem.

Can I ask how many percent of your funding did you lose?

I think it's almost, I think 30% of the fund and 30% just for the northwest Syria. We designed a plan to expand for whole of Syria and we were able with a huge support from USAID to support our vision like this expansion but unfortunately did not come through anyway in terms of how to address this aspect. Again, we found ourself responsible to do more kind of efficient partnership and equitable partnership between national NGOs and I, NGOs, UN agencies and donors. Therefore always we know that we spoke a lot about localization but I think now with this kind of shortage of funding, we need again to look at this terminology at this objective in a more kind of practical way. How to bring local actors to take the driving seat and where the international actors is just supporting us with our priorities, with our needs.

How do we do that? I mean this is something needs kind of more discussion with I NGOs and UN agencies. We need to admit the fact this localization. It doesn't mean that we are only as a local, we are working on the ground. I think it's very important to disseminate this phrase that localization is locally led and internationally connected. We need our experience, we need joint effort from everyone. It's not only one actors to do everything. We need the experience from different INGO. They have been operating in Africa and Asia and different locations. We need to build the lessons learned, the experience that they have but also we need to address our needs on the ground in a perfect way. We are as a local actors, we know our priorities and we know the needs. So to do so in that we need to have a discussion at the outset of designing the programme and the project between INGO and NG international communities and the local actors and the question will be a very simple and very straight word.

What are the priorities? That's all. It's not about I'm planning to do this proposal and fill the number and that will be your overhead cost and this will be your budget. It should not like this. It should be what are the priorities for the countries and let's build our proposal, let's build our partnership based on that. I think I found this kind of localization and locally led approach. It might be a very good opportunities is not only to address the shortage of funding, but again we should not only looking at this, we should look about the efficiency of our work on the ground, the impact on the ground to what extent we are making impact on the life of those community that we are serving them. We should not count the number of projects that we are doing rather than we should count the number of community that we are serving.

We are really proud when we are saying as a white helmet we were able to rescue 128,000 lives during this 10 years. This is something we found. This is the impact that the right also information unfortunately we lost 319 of our staff sacrifice their life for 128,000. You see this is the impact that we are aiming to achieve eventually to what extent we are making difference on the life of those people. So it's not about how many hectares we are blending of wheat at eventually how many families. They are not food insecure. It's not about how many schools we are built. It's eventually how many students graduated from the school. So I mean impact localizations outset, the kind of discussion between INGO and NGO. I mean this is the recipe I think in order to move forward with our more kind efficient, effective work and also to address different kind of the community needs.

And I hear you striking a very good balance between on one side really recognising the importance of the support you've gotten from the outside and appreciation for some of the international governments and civil society access you worked with, but also saying it's not always great, you need to listen to us, you need to somehow work in true partnership. If you had to give three pieces of advice to somebody coming from the outside wanting to play a positive role in today's Syria and support your country in the situation you're in, what are those three pieces of advice?

Very good question. Let me acknowledge again the support we got from international communities, like even countries and INGO because also we have a good partnership with some NGOs like Christian aid, code aid that they are supporting us in an equitable partnership really. So in terms of this three pieces of advice, number one, when you are thinking about the project directly, approach a local actors and ask them, as I mentioned, very straightforward, simple question, what is the priorities? And if there is no priorities, go and make assessments and ask the local communities what they need and build your projects based on the needs of the communities. This is number one. Number two, the reality on the ground require the multis programme. It's not standalone. We cannot build a lot of schools and they say, oh we are now since we have a like hundred schools, we are reducing the level or the number of students out of school.

We need to look at the road courses of those students while they are out of schools because their family, they don't have a livelihood to support and they're asking them. So we need to get a more multi-sectoral programme rather than a standalone programme. Unfortunately we have been suffering from this standalone programme since the outset of the crisis. Multi-sectoral and the priorities, this is something is very important. Number three, it's a long-term vision built on the programmatic approach, not a project approach. The committee, they don't know that this project for instance is being supported from EU for like or any donors. I'm not using this any donors. Donors like for 18 months or two years, the beneficiaries want this service to sustain for long-term when they are visiting any psychosocial support or visiting any hospitals. He wants to get the services for long-term period, but to support hospital schools for one year or two years and then oh we don't have fund, we need to close but the needs still on the ground. So we need to build our programme in a more long-term approach. This is something is very important. You asked me for three but also I will add one. I mean sorry for this, but

That's allowed,

I think this kind of again the partnership with the between foundations, INGOs private and also this is something that's very important and specifically this might because to the national NGOs we should always look at diversifying our resources. We should not only rely on one, we need sometimes to look at our local resources, our like donations, private sectors. Everyone should come also together to support the whole pictures and in order to address the needs from different angles. This is something of comprehensive something also one element is very important and therefore you find recently a lot of organisations interested to have training capacity building in fundraising and how we can so diversifying with this kind of unfortunately uncertain moment with the fundings is very important to look at different directions.

I think that's an incredibly smart answer. What I hear you saying is listen to us, don't come with your vision. Listen to us, it's our country. Secondly, don't chop us into little pieces. We are not food beneficiaries or education beneficiaries or we are people and you have to work with us holistically and you have to understand our context and reality in order to be able to help us appropriately. Number three is don't run away. We are here. Don't just come for a visit. If you want to come in solidarity, please stay with us and help us because we are not going away.

Exactly.

And number four is like it's a patchwork. Build a coalition of actors with what is there, which it's not just coming from the outside, it comes from inside the community, it comes from individuals, from institutions, from the government. It's a broad coalition that we need to weave together and make work in a specific context. That's what I hear you saying.

Absolutely. I mean you summarised it in a perfect way.

I think that's a great place to stop our conversation. I so appreciate the work you're doing. Thank you for your time coming on the podcast. I have all of the best wishes for your future as a country, as an organisation, as individuals. I am really impressed and happy to see how Syria, the White Helmets are moving forward. So a big, big thank you.

Thank you very much for you, and thank you for the invitation. Really, very, very much appreciate it. It has been my pleasure and honour to be part of this podcast. My final message to all the one who will be listening to this podcast, please keeping your mind to support Syria. I mean this s now our countries need everyone support, at least. If you are not able to donate, if you're not able to advise, just pray for us. We are in a very critical time. We need Syria for all Syrians. I think we are now. God again, as I mentioned, we have a golden opportunity to build Syria, a peace countries, to build a great countries, as I think a lot of international committees and the national they want to do.