Caritas Australia needed a presence at ACFID’s Parliamentary Showcase at Australian Parliament House, alongside ten of the country’s best known aid and development organisations. The default is a table, two chairs and a pull-up banner, and in a room like that nobody remembers it an hour later. Caritas had something harder to communicate than a logo, that its church network is already in place across the Indo Pacific long before a disaster happens, which is exactly what lets it move when one does.

Damsel and Sprout designed Build Your Response in house. Three freestanding map panels covering South Asia, East Asia and the Pacific, three real emergency scenarios, and a set of custom magnets produced with our printer. Guests were not handed a brochure. They were handed a role, a situation and a map, and asked to run the response themselves.

Client: Caritas Australia
Year: 2026
Venue: Dame Enid Lyons Alcove, Australian Parliament House
Format: Interactive activation at ACFID’s Parliamentary Showcase
Audience: Parliamentarians and ACFID conference attendees

What we delivered

• Concept development and creative direction
• In house design of the activation, the regional and city map artwork and every printed element
• Design and layout of the three A4 emergency response briefs, from scenario content supplied by Caritas
• Custom set build, sustainably designed, produced with our printer
• Custom magnets and magnetic panel sections
• Storage clipboards holding the scenario briefs and magnets at each panel
• Event management and pre production
• Build, on site support and pack down

You are the Emergency Response Coordinator

Every guest picked up a brief and a job. An earthquake on the Sagaing Fault just north of Mandalay. A category five super typhoon over Metro Manila. Landslides cutting the Highlands Highway in Papua New Guinea. Each brief set out the situation, the local partner and three missions: identify the relief supplies, activate the coordination hub, support the frontline churches. You did not read about the response network. You built it, with magnets, on the map in front of you.

Down to the street

A vague map would have undercut the whole argument, so each panel carries a magnified city map with the real buildings on it. In Mandalay the hub is the KMSS office at the Archbishop’s House, with Sacred Heart Cathedral, St Anthony’s and St Francis Xavier’s as the frontlines. In Manila it is the Caritas Philippines secretariat at Intramuros, with San Agustin, Binondo and the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene. In the Highlands it is the Oscar Romero warehouse at the Holy Trinity Rabiamul compound in Mount Hagen. Not generic pins. The actual buildings a real response would run through.

A network that is already there

The Papua New Guinea panel makes the point most clearly. Its partner network, CAN DO, spans Catholic, Baptist, Seventh-day Adventist, Lutheran, Anglican and United Church agencies, which is why a landslide in the Highlands can be reached at all. The line at the foot of every brief is the thing the whole build exists to say, in a real emergency, local churches are often among the first institutions able to respond, and they remain present long after the headlines fade.

The photograph, and then the repost

Caritas went in with one picture in mind, a minister wearing a Caritas hard hat, actually running a scenario rather than standing politely beside a banner. They got the Foreign Minister, Senator Penny Wong, with Minister Anne Aly alongside her. Then Senator Wong posted the photograph to her own LinkedIn, tagging Caritas among the organisations showcasing that day. A pull up banner doesn’t get reposted by the Foreign Minister. The photo exists because there was something worth doing in the frame.

This is one of many events we’ve produced at Parliament House.
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