YouSaid · the spoken record

Arnaud Quemin

lines on the record: 23
first: 2023-10-26
most recent: 2023-10-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“we care for them and that we will act and operate very soon on the ground. Purely philosophical level. I think what is at stake is some form of humanity. I cannot fathom the consequences of this escalating further because if it was the case, we would look into a crisis that would be Than anybody has seen in our age.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the obvious one is to contribute to our core fund. This is extremely precious money, this response in Egypt, or the first distribution.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The decisions that are related to staff. So, any word that you might say that might endanger them, or if we have a critical incident with a family member, what can we do? The first week our team was receiving horrible messages of people who are trapped in basements and they were asking to send people to take them out. And we were looking for ways to make that happen and we could not. So those are the tough things. They're not decisions in themselves, but they are like quandaries where you're like, okay, how can we still be useful and functional in spite of our own capacity?”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The normal time, I would say yes to exercise meditation, but these first three weeks have been a non-stop tunnel of work. So there is no spare time from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed. And I know that it's the case for dozens, if not hundreds of people around this team. I'm blessed with a group of people I'm interacting with every hour that I have deep respect for and I can bounce off ideas and opinions and thoughts and emotions and they do the same and we managed to basically have some form of support. The team dynamic is probably what keeps me going.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“because people want to speak up to take a very strong stand and i totally respect that it's just that if we start engaging with this we might be tagged with one side of the story and we cannot afford that's that's just as simple as that”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One that is driven by an imperative to deliver. So we have to discipline ourselves to preserve this ability to deliver whatever we think about it. And I can tell you, emotions are running very high in our team in Palestine and across the region. And I have to reassure them that this is all for a good reason. It's because eventually at the end we will be able to mount a proper response.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Studied history, so I have a very fascination for the complexity of human situations. And I tried to stick to that approach like a scientific one, like there is their empathy and the emotional part about the humanitarian response, but I know that it's extremely dangerous to fall into any of the logics that are at play there. It requires a lot of discipline because people keep asking you to take side and absolutely have no I have no other desire than to take side for the team I have on the ground that we need to support and the people who are in need of aid. And I guess that leads sometimes to very short conversations because I cannot continue them. And that's just the nature of this job. You have different types of organizations. Some are advocacy organizations whose job is to be vocal and to bring a very strong point of view. I'm working for an operational organization.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People had a hard time understanding what's the posture of a humanitarian in this kind of context. The neutrality and partiality that you're talking about, we are born out of this impossible situations to create a space for something else than violence. And thank God for that because today there are people that are concerned with humanity and with helping. They're not concerned with who is at fault, who is violent, who is legitimate. No, our question is, who is humane and who needs help? And that should be respected by everybody.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Will not be enough support for several years to come to go back to a level of normal. I mean, we are, of course, starting with the immediate needs that are very urgent and very critical, but behind that there will be an absolute need for reconstruction that will be large scale.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's start with Lebanon. We have last count with like 20,000 people displaced from the south because of the shedding across the border. So our team, when last week they are going back tomorrow if the security allows to see how we can start distributing goods in Lebanon at the bottom of a terrible economical crisis, this month is the harvest season for olives. If this lasts too long, they will miss a major source of income for many of these families. So we will also need to look for ways to supplement that. Yes, we have programs across the region and it's taken a huge chunk of my time as well.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we suspended the first two days. We have a large program for youth which is currently moving online because we have some centers for youth and these centers are not safe anymore. There are some military operations taking place and detention is extremely high. So some of our staff are really afraid of going out of their home in some neighborhoods. We are trying to reprogram the things we cannot do in Gaza to do it to some extent in the West Bank but we are working at a lower capacity.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Describing exactly what I was hearing today. Some are completely focused on taking care of their families, and so they will not be available to contribute to the response. Others are like, okay, what can I do today? Find me something to be useful, please. The first days we were really concerned would have a complete blackout out of power, out of internet or telephone. We were topping up their credit on their phone with the telecom company, but the quality of the connection with Gaza has actually decreased. And I'm very afraid that if this trend continues, it would have to increasingly trust them to function by themselves because we won't be able to interact as much.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think this crisis actually are an exercise in what agency you have, even in natural disaster, you have often an amount of needs that you cannot cover. And so you need to bring what you can and do your best. At this level, we are in a critical case where we cannot even start responding. There is clearly a lot of energy invested in making it possible, and hopefully this will come in the coming days.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The small trucks that like convoys that came through, it's just a drop in an ocean of needs. They could not organize proper distributions. There were massive people showing up and had become completely unsafe. I was talking with colleagues with his team on the ground. They were like, don't say that as a good news because this is a band the last two nights. There were a lot of airstrikes. So people were like, can we at least have this stop the food will reappear at some point, of course. But for people, their first concern is physically stop in these strikes. Now what can come in at this moment? Nothing or very little. We have sent staff in Egypt to establish connections with the local authorities and other NGOs to prepare for steady pipeline of aid as soon as there is a mechanism put in place. NGOs are often not very consulted in the first stage of this negotiation, but we are pushing for”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From perfect, but there was a sense of building things. This whole momentum is obviously gone. The team on the ground, we will probably organize them into a new response team as soon as we can get aid to come from the border. That's not their skill set, but I understand that they are eager to just get going. But we are starting from a level of destruction that is absolutely unprecedented, even in Gaza.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So before that, we had a very fragile society which has developed ways to be semi-functional in the context of these long-standing blockade, for instance the telecom infrastructure had not been upgraded, so I think it was still 2G or 3G. We were helping farmers to develop agriculture and setting up irrigations in the south, especially. We also had a great program called Gaza SkyGense, very tech savvy young people. So we were training them, helping them understand how what platform existed. I was impressed by how eager and professional they were, like looking for jobs in Australia on the goal, doing some form of content production or coding. So those were the days before, basically.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's actually someone I know. So we connected with him remotely providing psychological support and different forms of messages and acknowledgement, which is pretty much the extent of what we can do right now. We are currently have a core team of a few people who are trying to supply food, finding water and mattress.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Safe is a very questionable notion these days in Gaza, but we have about 70 staff plus their families. All of them had to relocate over the past three weeks. We had to look for accommodation for them at a time where it's very difficult. People were basically waiting for us to secure a location for them in the south because they were stuck in the northern part, which has become increasingly dangerous. We had some tragedies in the families of our staff. One lost his wife, another one was wounded with a child, other had relatives wounded.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All I know is from the daily like trickle of information we managed to get from the team on the ground. The first week we are trying to have a daily head count that I did not get at the end of every day and I ended up asking why am I not getting this? Because I need to know every day I start the status of our team. And it's because we are trying to get a lot of information about their whereabouts, how they are feeling, etc. it's too much and basically they don't respond. So we decided to have two tiers of check-in every day, one where we just ask them if they are fine and where they are and WhatsApp questionnaires and then for the more complex interaction we have a different channel that we can use at will.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“20 years ago in a job in Liberia, I had to evacuate twice in the first week and second time was in the middle of a pitch battle. So I'm not seeking this kind of situation, but unfortunately it happens and you'd rather do it in an ordered fashion rather than too late.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first idea is to put people who are not needed in a safer place, right? But the other part is once you've done it, you're free to go about your job with the team that is on the ground. So if you know you're going to have to probably evacuate at some point, you'd rather do it earlier rather than later. At the end of the first week of this crisis, I went to talk with our country director in Beirut for our weekly checkup. And then we saw that there was a distinct possibility for things to spill over in Lebanon that would have an impact on our ability to communicate and to manage our team. So we thought, okay, let's do it. And by the end of the afternoon, I was gone, actually.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was maybe a form of pattern around Gaza over the past 10 years, but what we are looking at today is completely out of that pattern and it's of a magnitude in terms of the geopolitical rippling effects and consequences that I have never seen before. So it's a very defining time for the region and I think for a big part of the world.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Safe is a very questionable notion these days in Gaza. The first week our team was receiving horrible messages of people who were trapped in basements. They were asking to send people to take them out. We were looking for ways to make that happen and we could not. Had some tragedies in the families of our staff. One lost his wife, another one was wounded without child. Emotions are running very high in our team in Palestine and across the region.”
2023-10-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Gaza in crisis, w/Mercy Corps’ Arnaud Quemin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT