This manual complements the Caring for Volunteers toolkit. It seeks to train and prepare volunteers to better help beneficiaries, each other, and themselves.
IASC Rules for Sexual Behavior of Humanitarian Workers
Preventing sexual exploitation and abuse in the humanitarian sector starts with ensuring everyone understands the basic principles. That means making the information available in simple terms and in local languages.
The Minimum Economic Recovery Standards, developed through the joint efforts of more than 90 agencies and over 175 practitioners, represent an industry consensus on economic recovery for the humanitarian and development sector.
Strengthening NGO Capacity and Engagement in the International Humanitarian Coordination System
This on-line course aims to strengthen the capacity of national and international NGO personnel, as well as other humanitarian actors, to engage with the international humanitarian coordination system in a manner that improves overall coordination and response to the needs of affected populations.
Humanitarian Inclusion Standards for Older People and People with Disabilities
This document brings together nine key inclusion standards, from learning and resource management, to identification and resilience, alongside seven sector-specific standards, which include nutrition, shelter and education.
Guide to Writing a Vision and Mission Statement (Arabic)
Resource courtesy of Catholic Relief Services, Lebanon. This short, informal guide takes the reader through the steps to write a vision and mission statement.
This paper examines why informal actors are overlooked in crisis response, why they are important, and how humanitarian agencies can understand and engage them.
A Toolkit for Integrating Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) into Humanitarian Response
This 94-page toolkit aims to provide streamlined guidance to support organizations and agencies seeking to rapidly integrate menstrual hygiene management (MHM) into existing programming across sectors and phases. It was designed to support a range of humanitarian actors involved in the planning and delivery of emergency responses. It includes key assessment questions, case studies from around the world, design considerations, resources for gathering monitoring and feedback, and links to additional resources.
Humanitarian Aid on the Move No.19 – January 2018: Localisation of Aid
One might think that there was a consensus about giving a central role to local actors in crisis response… Experience has shown how essential the role of local actors is in the initial hours and days after a disaster, or to gain access to difficult or contested areas in numerous conflicts, where international operators are not welcome. And yet, the debates about how to put localisation into practice have been more complex than expected. This special issue of Humanitarian Aid aims to shed light on these debates, presenting a number of points of view based on examples from a variety of contexts.
This document outlines the principles and practices that promote resilience of humanitarian and development personnel. Implementing the principles and practices will help an organization offer a comprehensive staff care program.
This handbook provides guidance for designing and implementing a monitoring and evaluation system. The standards in the handbook provide practical quality-control considerations for individual components of an M&E system.
PROPACK I: Project Design and Proposal Guidance for CRS Project and Program Managers
This manual provides information on how to conduct project design, including practical steps and tools. It integrates gender considerations and includes specific guidance on budgeting and on planning for project management structures and staffing.
Institutional Strengthening: Building Strong Management Processes
Institutional Strengthening is a reference for organizations that wish to develop or improve existing institutional strengthening systems and processes. It presents principles, minimum standards, best practices, business processes, references and tools for effective, efficient and sustainable organizations.
Security Risk Management: a basic guide for smaller NGOs
This guide aims to be a simple, easy-to-use security resource to help smaller NGOs demystify security risk management. By setting out the elements of a basic security risk management framework, this guide aims to support NGOs in translating their duty of care obligations into key processes and actions that will not only enhance their national and international staff security but also improve their organisation’s reputation and credibility. Although the guide is intended to be applicable to both national and international NGOs, some elements may be more relevant to one or the other.
Capacity Building for Local NGOS – a guidance manual for good practice
The aim of this manual is to help local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) achieve the greatest possible programme impact through the best organisational practice. It can be used training and development or by local NGOs as a self-help manual.
WHO Guideline: updates on the management of severe acute malnutrition in infants and children.
This guideline provides global, evidence-informed recommendations on a number of specific issues related to the management of severe acute malnutrition in infants and children, including in the context of HIV.
What’s the magic word? Humanitarian access and local organisations in Syria
This research looks at how different local organisations address access challenges in Syria, what strategies they use and how they deal with ethical and operational dilemmas.
The purpose of this catalogue is to present applied examples of shelter designs in a harmonised way to allow quick reference, comparative analysis and contextual assessment. By recording and presenting a diverse range of shelter design and development practice in a single document, shelter practitioners and other stakeholders may more easily access information on shelter types to inform their work.
Time to Let Go: Remaking Humanitarian Action for the Modern Era
It is time for the humanitarian sector to let go of some of the fundamental – but outdated – assumptions, structures and behaviours that prevent it from adapting to meet the needs of people in crises. This is a proposal for radical change to create a humanitarian system that is fit to respond to the challenges of both today and tomorrow. It calls for: letting go of power and control; letting go of perverse incentives; and letting go of divisions to embrace differences.
This 23-minute video shows how aid workers in the field use the Good Enough Guide to improve their accountability to the communities with which they work. The video is available in Arabic, Bangla, Burmese, English, French and Spanish and can be streamed even in places with low bandwidth.
The new e-learning course Sphere for Managers - How to Champion the Sphere Approach in your Organisation provides a snapshot of the benefits of applying the Sphere standards and guidance on how to integrate the Sphere approach within humanitarian organisations. The one-hour course works through real-life scenarios in various contexts and highlights some of the key features of the Sphere standards. It allows users to explore the versatility of the standards and how they can use them in different ways and different situations.
DG ECHO Thematic Policy Document – Shelter and Settlements
These guidelines build on best practice in the sector, applying the criteria for European Commission humanitarian S&S funding for the most efficient and effective humanitarian responses.
Safety and security for national humanitarian workers
This report highlights the issue of operational security for national humanitarian aid workers and partner organisations, drawing from and expanding on a recent study commissioned by OCHA: To Stay and Deliver: Good Practice for Humanitarians in Complex Security Environments (Egeland, Harmer and Stoddard 2011).
E-transfers in emergencies: implementation support guidelines
These guidelines are for field practitioners (as well as their extended teams in management and programme support functions) of aid agencies engaged in humanitarian responses that incorporate cash transfers programmes delivered through digital payment systems.
IASC Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings
The IASC Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings enable humanitarian actors to plan, establish and co-ordinate a set of minimum multi-sectoral responses to protect and improve people’s mental health and psychosocial well-being in the midst of an emergency. The Guidelines offer essential advice on how to facilitate an integrated approach to address the most urgent mental health and psychosocial issues in emergency situations.
Education Cannot Wait: a fund for education in emergencies
Built on extensive consultation and dialogue among a range of stakeholders, Education Cannot Wait is an education crisis fund designed to transform the global education sector, including both humanitarian and development responses. Launching at the World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016, the platform aims to deliver a more collaborative, agile and rapid response to education in emergencies in order to fulfil the right to education for children and young people affected by crises. It is about both restoring hope to millions of children and demonstrating that the governments who signed the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal pledge intend to keep their promise.
The Sphere Handbook: Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response
The Sphere Handbook is one of the most widely known and internationally recognized sets of common principles and universal minimum standards for the delivery of quality humanitarian response. Because it is not owned by any one organization, the Sphere Handbook enjoys broad acceptance by the humanitarian sector as a whole.
