People & Partners
When Remote Collaboration Becomes a Real Conversation: Sphere Meets the Offshorly Team
First impressions last, but they're better and greater when done face to face. Another first for Offshorly: meeting our long-term client Sphere.
Overview
Introducing Sphere. They do amazing work in humanitarian aid, caring for and looking after people, helping out in times of need. Founded in 1997, Sphere is one of the earliest initiatives aiming to improve the quality and accountability of the humanitarian sector. Today, the Sphere standards are the most widely recognized humanitarian standards across the globe.
Sometimes the most valuable part of a project is what happens after the work is done.
We were so excited to meet Raquel Weintraub this month! She is a Sphere Network Manager based in Mexico, who came to the Philippines as part of an emergency response effort following the magnitude 7.8 earthquake off southern Mindanao on June 8, the one that hit General Santos City hard.
Juls and Pat represented Offshorly over lunch, and we’re grateful the meet finally happened. These are the kinds of conversations that don’t happen in a Zoom call. You get to know a client on a deeper level, and you see what they really care about.
Tech helps. People matter.
Here’s what stayed with us. Humanitarian organisations and LGUs are often working with fragmented data, under pressure, and without the technical capacity to keep up. Raquel’s team helps close that gap, building infrastructure into disaster response so that accurate, real-time information reaches the people making the hardest decisions. Prompt, accessible, easy to use. That’s the difference good tech makes.
And that part we didn’t have to be told. We saw it. The way Sphere shows up for the people they serve, and for the team they work with, carries something we know deeply as Filipinos: malasakit. The instinct to look after one another, to take someone else’s burden as your own. It’s not in a handbook or a dashboard. It’s in how you treat people. That was our biggest takeaway from the table.
Why this matters to us
We’re proud to be part of this work. The tools matter, but the heart behind them matters more, and that’s the part we’ll always show up for.
