Ms Caoimhe de Barra:

I can give the broad brush and the figures. This is a very collaborative, collective effort. It exists solely to fundraise jointly, reduce costs and make fundraising more efficient during an emergency period. We would have an appeal open for two or maybe three weeks, solely for that emergency. Often this will entail a sudden onset emergency like the earthquakes last year, or the awfully complex Gaza emergency. Before that appeal period and after, each agency will continue to do its own normal fundraising, private fundraising to its own supporters but also, if it so wishes, public fundraising. The two things dovetail together, our colleagues and staff in the fundraising departments across all of the agencies come together to jointly run a collective appeal on this one single area where we all pool our efforts. Then we go back and we do our individual work based on the priorities of each organisation. It is a really effective model as we have seen in 14 other countries, because it saves money and time. It also expands the pool of donors in the country and over time expands the volume of money given to humanitarian appeals and the number of people who are willing to pay into them.