Day 1 of the Shelter Cluster Coordination Workshop focused on Greening the Response. Some key takeaways of the session included: 

• The Global Shelter Cluster Coordinators’ Workshop and the Global Shelter Cluster Meeting will be held through a series of mini sessions this year due to the Pandemic of COVID19.
• Shelter Cluster Coordinators play a key role in greening the shelter response by thinking through the life cycle of the response and the shift in materials used from emergency to transitional shelter and through fostering collaboration between partners on how best to recycle materials.
• Many agencies in the Shelter Cluster have organisational policies that can support your work in encouraging a greener response. Use this as leverage for encouraging compliance with Shelter Cluster partners.
• The Global Shelter Cluster has a policy statement on reducing single use plastics but no statement on greening the response. Country-Cluster Coordinators and the GSC SAG to consider whether such a statement may be helpful or whether agencies should adapt their own individual greening the response policies.
• Consider mainstreaming of greening the response in your country-level Shelter Cluster Strategies. Some best practices have already begun in some countries and can serve as an example to other countries on how these tools may be adapted to your country.
• Environmental Community of Practice can be consulted early in the response and needs information from the field to better support you on greening your response. Get in contact with them through: havedisastercallkelly@gmail.com

For more information on the session, please see the meeting report, power point presentation and other relevant links mentioned during the presentation.