London — Standing in a room full of rain-soaked volunteers just back from delivering food to people hit by Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar in 2008, Erik Johnson remembers trying to train them in the various standards that apply to aid work, "and just watching their eyes glaze over as we threw one acronym at them after another".
This was a moment of realisation for the board chair of the Sphere Project, which produces and promotes a popular humanitarian handbook. Five years and a considerable amount of consultation later, Sphere and two other key international organisations concerned with the quality of emergency response are beginning work on a new common core standard that aims to unify and simplify the maze of existing guidelines.
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