Voices from ALNAP's first 25 years | Ben Ramalingam: “In a sector often seen as painfully devoid of the collaborative impulse, ALNAP shines out”

Ben Ramalingam, Executive Director, United Kingdom Humanitarian Innovation Hub, on his involvement with ALNAP and the impact the network has had during his career. Read more testimonials from our 'Voices from ALNAP's first 25 years' blog series.

My first experience of the unique convening power of the ALNAP network was during the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. Many of us were involved in different ways in responding to and dealing with that devastating crisis. It was really apparent to me how many of the people who were connected through ALNAP made a conscious effort to come together to put learning front and centre of the response - whether it was sharing experiences and lessons across the most-affected countries, getting insights into then-new emerging approaches such as cash transfers, and of course the remarkable cross-sector evaluation that ALNAP managed and hosted that argued in no uncertain terms the need for locally-led responses.

ALNAP network members collectively took on the idea of regular system-wide performance assessments […] and turned it into a cornerstone of the humanitarian research and policy landscape.

Other efforts in which I was personally involved include how the ALNAP network members collectively took on the idea of regular system-wide performance assessments – at the time an idea that was met with much scepticism and even derision – and turned it into a cornerstone of the humanitarian research and policy landscape. The embryonic humanitarian innovation movement was also supported through the ALNAP secretariat as an incubator and the membership as a distributed coalition of the willing.

My fervent hope is that the mentality and approach of ALNAP will start to infuse and shape how the wider sector thinks and operates. 

Of course, all of these are formal change efforts, but perhaps my lasting sense of ALNAP is a personal one. At various points over the past 20 years, under the auspices of the network, I have been able to engage with a diverse and thoughtful mix of people who have been willing to be open about the challenges we face in the humanitarian sector, be constructive about the solutions, and be collective about future directions. In a sector often seen as painfully devoid of the collaborative impulse, ALNAP shines out. My fervent hope is that this will long continue, but also that the mentality and approach of the network will start to infuse and shape how the wider sector thinks and operates.