Expect the Unexpected:
Emergencies and Short-Term Trips

These are all true stories experienced by CULTURELink-trained teams:

• A team member ministering in Eastern Europe falls two floors from scaffolding at their work site, breaking an ankle.
• Several members of a team in Southeast Asia experience severe food poisoning the night before the team is to commence in-country service to more than one hundred nationals.
• A salmonella infection manifests in a team member while serving in Central America, which triggers a seizure. During the subsequent four-day hospitalization and testing, a diagnosis of epilepsy is confirmed. The team member is also a minor who is traveling without a parent.
• The last plane of the day leaving a Caribbean nation for the United States departs without the short-term team that was scheduled to be on the flight. The team is still sitting in the airport, tired, frustrated, and hungry—they haven’t eaten all day. The van carrying the team’s luggage had broken down on the way to the airport, causing the team to miss their flight. One woman lost her passport but didn’t share this fact with her team leader until they arrived at the airport. Four team members have diarrhea, but there are no bathroom facilities available where the team is waiting.
• A team leader’s backpack is stolen in a train station in Western Europe. Everyone’s passports and train tickets were in the bag.
• In Asia, a devastating earthquake strikes the region where a team was staying. Each of the team members are scattered across the same city in host homes. The devastation was catastrophic, both in terms of infrastructure and human life. Communication was limited and it took over twenty-four hours for the team to rendezvous. They eventually are evacuated four days later.

Perhaps you would call these short-term missions crises. Are they? Or are they examples of emergencies? Many team leaders will face crises, but few will face true emergencies. What is the difference?

• A crisis is a turning point when a difficult decision must be made.
• An emergency is a serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring prompt action.

As a team leader, you may face a few crises on your trip. Hopefully, you will never face a true emergency. Nevertheless, it is still prudent to prepare.

As the team leader, you need to approach your job with adequate preparation and, more importantly, with total dependence on God. You are responsible for managing any crisis or emergency that may arise while your team is on the field. If you have thought through possible scenarios prior to leaving home and have made decisions and established action steps accordingly, you will be better equipped to respond effectively and make wise decisions during any unforeseen crisis. Here are a few practical tips to prepare in advance:

• Collect personal insurance information during the application process, as well as pertinent medical background for your team members.
• Assemble a Team Leader File with physical copies of all necessary documentation: passports and visas (including any letters of invitation), tickets and travel arrangement details, emergency contact information, medical insurance information, embassy information, etc. While it is easier to rely on digital files and electronic sharing, it is important to have access to physical copies of this information in case of blackouts, dead batteries, damaged infrastructure, etc.
• Identify someone back home (preferably a staff member at your sending church or organization—the trip’s “sponsor”) to keep a copy of the Team Leader File as well. This person should also serve as the primary point of contact in the event of an emergency to help coordinate communication and logistics with all necessary parties.
• Purchase emergency insurance designed specifically for short-term teams (more below).
• For US-based teams, register each team member with STEP through the Department of State before departure. Teams originating from other countries can register with their government or notify their country’s embassy in the country of destination.
• Ensure each member of your team members input into their phone, as well as create a physical copy of, important contact information including: address(es) and phone number(s) of the location where they are staying, in-country emergency contact information (including that of your field site leadership), etc.
• Identify protocols for communication and/or rendezvous in case the team is unexpectedly separated at any point (including during transit).

Hopefully, you will only ever prepare for situations that will never be faced. However, in the event you do experience an emergency, being well-prepared (and adequately insured) will allow you to quickly and confidently navigate the situation and get the help you need.

If you merely gather everyone’s personal medical insurance information, you will be asking for some serious headaches along with the possibility of them having no coverage at all. Many primary medical policies will not cover health-related issues incurred while traveling internationally. Consider this: Would you want to call a major insurance company back home while facing a true medical emergency in your host country? Hearing a recorded voice tell you to “press #1 for this” and “press #2 for that” is not going to be helpful. Once you connect to a real person on the other end, do you think he or she will know how to help you there in your host country? If you had an accident involving the whole team, would you really want to deal with ten different insurance companies while trying to get some assistance?

We highly recommend that you purchase a short-term insurance policy for each of your team members. In fact, all organizations that mobilize teams should have some type of coverage due to Duty of Care obligations. Many short-term insurance policies are very inexpensive; you can simply add the per-person cost to your team budget. All good short-term policies will have coverage in three major areas:

• Medical and Hospitalization
• Medical Evacuation
• Accidental Death and Dismemberment

Some plans even provide coverage for liability, kidnap and ransom, travel delays or disruption, and even cancellation coverage. Depending on your destination and activities, you might need to consider expanded coverage.

CULTURELink has partnered with FaithVentures & Brotherhood Mutual to provide insurance coverage for your short-term trips. We’ve highlighted three options they offer, varying in length and coverages, that meet the majority of teams’ needs.