CvH Blog

Clemens has been working in the field of humanitarian relief and development since 1986 – he volunteered with grass root organizations in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the mid 80´s, and got more involved as Coordinator and Program Officer in different organisations during the 90’s. While serving the Red Cross Movement from 2000 onwards, he was deeply involved in disaster response during emergencies like Hurricane Mitch, the Salvador earthquake, Volcano Nyiragongo in DRC, the Southern African Drought, the Darfur operation in Sudan, Earthquake in Pakistan, in the Cyclone Nargis Operation at the Ayeyawaddy delta in Myanmar, Africa´s biggest cholera outbreak in the past 20 years at Zimbabwe followed by the devastating floods in Pakistan in 2010, where he was awarded with an Aga Khan award for outstanding services in Gilgit Baltistan.  Till today he has been still continuing to observe and support emergency operations in South Sudan, Central African Republic, Sudan, Ethiopia and the constant drought in Southern Africa, interrupted by cyclones in Madagascar and Mozambique and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The  weakness and gap of local resilience to cyclone disasters in Madagascar has inspired Clemens  to design with his colleagues a volunteer program with involvement of an important local church, which today counts over 20 000 trained Disaster Response volunteers, the future will show when the planned 50 000 are reached.

Beside the disaster response in various countries he also signed responsible for sustainable development programs in the Central Americas, Africa and Asia. While active in the field of disaster response, the development of Disaster Preparedness and Disaster Risk Reduction became one of his central involvements since the past 15 years – same as the increased coordination mechansims of humanitarian actors such as the cluster approach and recently to the development of the humanitarian reform program.

Further he has successfully completed his duties during the last 18 years in the senior management as humanitarian country director in Sudan and Pakistan, as Deputy in Myanmar and again as country director in Zimbabwe. He continued his career in Switzerland, responsible for the rehabilitation activities of Caritas after the floods 2010 in Pakistan and spent 50% in the field. He started 2013 with Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe as their Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa, where he stayed responsible for 11 countries of the region for almost 6 years.

Today he runs a small consulting company and is advising small and medium sized organizations (mainly faith based) in organizational development, resource mobilisation and quality management. He also signs responsible for the design of Green Climate Funding and is boosting ecological tourism in Madagascar, as a consequent answer to resilience building  of poor coastal communities – led by the strong opinion that only the economic development will reduce the extreme poverty of these communities and stop the exploitation of their surrounding environment.

Beside he continiously researches new approaches to reduce peoples suffering and promotes economic development to vulnerable groups as part of better coping mechanisms and reduction of future vulnerability especially during disasters.  A part of ongoing discussions and actual published documents you will find in this blog.

You can contact Clemens under clemens@vonheimendahl.de