Dan Neely on community development, design thinking, and Vanilla Ice

Disrupting Disasters

Elizabeth speaks with Dan Neely, Manager of Community Resilience and Group Recovery Manager at the Wellington Region Emergency Management Office–aka WREMO. Dan began his career in the Peace Corps in Honduras during the recovery from Hurricane Mitch, contributed to post-tsunami efforts in Sri Lanka with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and since 2012 has led teams based in New Zealand reshaping Emergency Management through human-centered community development practices, with their resources being adopted across the globe.

In this episode, Elizabeth and Dan discuss the powerful role communities play in emergency response, and how WREMO’s Community Emergency Hub model enables local communities to support each other immediately after a disaster better, faster, and safer. They cover Design Thinking, the sector’s responsibility to ask better questions, and why building on existing community capacities and capabilities (a ‘strengths-based’ approach to Community Development) is imperative. They draw inspiration from Vanilla Ice and The Big Lebowski, agree that everyone in society is an emergency manager and why we should all ‘Provoke with love.’ Ultimately, they land on why they’re hopeful for the future.

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