Professional
I E.A.D.N. Chamara have more than ten years of experience in humanitarian relief and development programs in management roles. I started my career in humanitarian relief as a volunteer leader and a trainer at St John Ambulance Sri Lanka in 1999. On January 2002 I joined DEIHERM (Development Education Institute for Human and Environmental Resource Management), a local non-government organization at Galle, Sri Lanka as the trust management and assistant program officer. On August 2002, I worked with board of directors at DEIHERM to start a vocational training center for school children at Galle District and used my leisure time to serve as an Instructor for Information Technology Certificate program. After serving with volunteer groups at Sri Lanka during Tsunami in 2004, St John Ambulance Sri Lanka recruited me on July 2005 as a Trainer and Tutor to expand their trainings in disaster preparedness and basic life support skills throughout the country. My passion towards working the field of Humanitarian relief and professional interest in program development, emergency medical services and disaster management drove me to join Medical Teams International. I joined Medical Teams International as the deputy program manager for their emergency medical service program on November 2007. After completing a four year contract with Medical Teams International in 2011, I joined So Others May See incorporation as the program officer and project consultant. So Others May See was expanding their programs in Sri Lanka in 2011 and I worked with them for five months helping them to develop, expand and establish their programs throughout the country. In 2012 I was awarded with the Fulbright Professional Scholarship to conduct a research on program and management functions on 9-1-1 system in USA and end of February 2013 I returned to Sri Lanka after completing my research.
While working in humanitarian missions my trilingual ability, fluency in Sinhala, English and conversational ability in Tamil allowed me to serve as a trainer and also to create training resources for relevant trainings. I worked as a resource person to United Nations Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) Sri Lanka office through St John Ambulance to train United Nations national and international staffs in trauma bag and emergency response trainings. As the deputy program manager of medical teams international I was responsible for coordinating and delivering emergency medical services trainings for pre hospital care providers and hospital staffs including doctors and nurses. I worked with Ministry of Health, Ministry of Local Government and Ministry of Disaster Management at Sri Lanka to develop 11 emergency medical service systems in Sri Lanka. I also had to coordinate project work with other funding partners including World Health Organization, USAID, AMERICARES, UNDP, Red Cross and other local nongovernment organizations in Sri Lanka. I also served in Medical Teams International’s Cambodian EMS project as trainer.
During past ten years I served in the two worst disaster situations Sri Lanka have ever faced. During tsunami I organized a volunteer response team of 25 responders within twenty minutes from initial impact at Galle, Sri Lanka on 26th December 2004 and continued services till definitive care was established on 09th January 2005. When we were completing our initial response after 360 hours of service our volunteer group had grown up to 100 responders. In 2009 I led and organized the Emergency Medical Service response to post war Internally Displaced Population situation in Sri Lanka. I also managed two field hospitals which served 400,000 temporary populations at Menik Farm Internally Displaced Population Camp. I led above efforts as the deputy program manager of Medical Teams International. I coordinated above efforts closely with various government and nongovernment organizations including Disaster Management Center at Ministry of Health Sri Lanka, Ministry of Defense Sri Lanka and funding partners. During above operations I was responsible for safety and security of 100 Emergency Medical Service Workers including Fire Fighters, 70 health care workers served in two temporary hospitals and 500 community health volunteers which grown up to 4000 within initial six months.
I organized and coordinated the Medical Teams International’s Sri Lanka office response to Internally Displaced Population’s situation from ground level. In 2010 I was send again to north and eastern provinces of Sri Lanka by Medical Teams International to organize flood response efforts from base. During my humanitarian career and while leading response efforts to emergency situations we followed SPEHRE standards and World Health Organizations health response standards.
In 2011, end of Emergency Medical Service project with Medical Teams International I conducted a research to review the pre hospital care development during 2005 to 2011 and present the completed report to Ministry of Health Sri Lanka, World Health Organization and other partners.
With all positions I held during my career I was responsible for logistic and finance management activities in projects and was admired by higher managements for using funds more effectively and efficiently. My ability to work with teams and lead teams helped me during my professional and volunteer service activities. I am personally interested in learning about different cultures and languages; this made it easy for me to work with different age, cultural and ethnic groups closely. Being a person with good sense of humor and friendly personality always supported me to make friends and work as a unity in my working environments.
Before changing my career as a professional in the fields of Humanitarian relief and program development I worked as an instructor in the fields of informational technology. I have professional knowledge in Microsoft Office packages. I also have practical knowledge in desktop publishing, video editing, animation creation, data base creation and visual basic.
At present, I am serving as an individual consultant in few non-governmental and private sector organizations. I am also working on my next publication “An agenda for future – Emergency Medical Services in Sri Lanka”, which discuss where we were, where we are, where we should be and how to get their under the 15 components of EMS.