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Quality and Accountability
Quality and Accountability Hub

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The Sphere Focal Points group in Asia has started following a regular quarterly model of virtual meeting to adjust to post-pandemic realities and make information sharing more timely and consistent. These meetings ensure to engage all focal points and sets ground for better communication and learning while highlighting and discussing contextualised challenges in different countries, and how to overcome them.

Held in June, this year’s second virtual meeting focused on sharing information about the Core Humanitarian Standard, which is one of the foundation chapters of Sphere. The CHS Alliance Strategy 2022-2025 and its Revision process was also discussed in this session. Shama Mall, Deputy Regional Director at CWSA, shared an overview of how Sphere Strategy and the newly launched CHS Alliance Strategy complement each other.

“The Core Humanitarian Standard was based on a large consultation which lasted 12 months with communities and people affected by crisis, NGOs and networks, governments, UN agencies, academics, and funding partners and overseen by a Technical Advisory Group. As a measurable and verifiable standard, CHS verification which is valid for two years and is managed by the CHS Alliance is ‘a structured’, systematic process to assess the degree to which an organisation’s work complies with the CHS,” shared Bonaventure Sokpoh from CHS Alliance who also participated in this virtual session.

While discussing the recently launched CHS revision process and consultations, Aninia Nadig, CHS Revision Manager, presented a detailed purpose and plan “The CHS is one of the foundations for technical standards and other initiatives. It serves as a framework for monitoring and continuous improvement while influencing the system-wide policy and operational challenges as well as transforming relationships with people and communities, making aid more effective and accountable. The CHS Revision process has been officially launched in May this year in light of global and local changes and it aims to look into the aspects of CHS working well, those need to be changed and how its potential can be maximised to make sure that the CHS is more accessible and relevant to all stakeholders. The revision scope focuses on three levels: structure, content and use.”

“For CHS Revision to be effective, a global consultative process grounded in local realities is required. A successful CHS revision would result in the standard being more accessible and inclusive, relevant for today and future challenges, better known and used by many more stakeholders, driving continuous, measurable improvements, and increasing accountability at all levels,” said Aninia.

To take the CHS Revision Consultations to scale, it is necessary to explore the role that organisations and networks in member countries can take to ensure participation of all relevant stakeholders in the consultations. Guidance for the consultations, including tools, have been launched and available to all members and the humanitarian community at large. Aninia Nadig emphasised that since CHS is a part of the Sphere handbook, Focal Points promoting Sphere can support the revision process by conducting consultations in their respective countries as well.

CWSA’s consultation plan for this year was shared with all focal points to share a reference regarding implementation. The diverse voices from affected communities and organisations will help make the revised version more effective and relevant.

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Where: Zoom (register here)
Date: 9th September 2022
Time: 10.00 am to 11.30 am (Pakistan Standard Time)

Background

The catastrophic flooding in Pakistan’s southern and northern regions has killed thousands of people and carried away cattle, houses, and treasures worth billions of rupees, for which long-term assistance is anticipated by the humanitarian sector. Several local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are engaged in emergency flood relief. Experiences and lessons from emergencies such as earthquakes and floods in Pakistan, Myanmar, Haiti and Kenya have shown that effective coordination and mutual learning among agencies enhances the quality and accountability of humanitarian action to people affected by crisis.

Community World Service Asia is the regional partner and country focal point of Sphere and member of CHS Alliance for promoting quality and accountability (Q&A) standards, tool and principles. Community World Service Asia is launching a Q&A learning series for NGOs currently engaged in flood response in the country to ensure that quality and accountability aspect is covered through humanitarian relief activities. This forum will also provide a platform for sharing experiences, best practices and challenges for ensuring quality and accountability in the flood response. Participating organizations and their staff will be able to learn from each other and improve humanitarian coordination to effectively respond to the people affected by the crisis and align the support to their needs.

Objectives

By the end of the session participants will be able to:

  • Introduce the CHS guidance in response to floods
  • Revisit fundamental principles of CHS which are crucial to a successful, holistic intervention
  • Explore the relevant commitments & guidance in CHS
  • Elicit examples and challenges from participants to promote further learning

Moderator

Tooba Siddiqi is an experienced Engagement Manager with over 10 years of experience in partnership management, advocacy, youth mobilization and community-led campaigning. In her time at Community World Service Asia, she has played a significant role in pushing the Quality and Accountability standards with local NGOs as well as regional organisations. She is a trainer on Core Humanitarian Standard practices that has been developed by an expert team at Community World Service Asia. She also leads workshops to train other national and regional staff on this valuable knowledge.

Resources

  1. The Sphere Handbook- English
  2. The Sphere Handbook- Urdu
  3. CHS Booklet- English
  4. CHS Booklet- Urdu

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The Asian Disaster Risk Reduction Network (ADRRN), Community World Service Asia (CWSA), International Council of Voluntary Agencies ( ICVA), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), are collectively planning a Regional Humanitarian Partnership Week (RHPW) 2022, which will primarily be face-to-face, with some hybrid sessions, in Bangkok this December.

Please find here a ‘Save the Date’ announcement for you to plan your participation in this exciting and meaningful week.

Looking forward to welcoming you in Bangkok.

Save-the-Date-FinalDownload

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Community World Service Asia invites you to a 5-Day Workshop full of interactive learning experiences focused on Quality, Accountability and Safeguarding in Humanitarian Action from 4th – 8th of December 2022, in Bangkok, Thailand.

Kindly see the document below for more details and registration.

The application deadline for the Regional event is September 15th, 2022.

For more information, contact our Focal Point for this event Zainab Mir @ regional.program@communityworldservice.asia

Regional Training_Quality_Accountability-Safeguarding_Bkk_4-8 Dec2022Download

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As a continuation of the Quality & Accountability (Q&A) Week 2021, the sixth virtual session, jointly hosted and organised by ADRRN’s Quality and Accountability (Q&A) Hub, Sphere, CHS Alliance, ACT Alliance, ALNAP and Community World Service Asia (CWSA), focused on exploring ways to ensure inclusion for efficient child safeguarding into programs, safeguarding efforts, communications and complaints handling.

“Defining who is a child in the humanitarian aid sector is critical. Any person under the age of 18 is classified as a child. Most organisations, regardless of local or cultural traditions, accept the international definition,” Ester Dross stated during the ‘Child Safeguarding’ webinar on May 24th, 2022.

What is child abuse?
What are the symptoms?
What are the consequences?

While raising these questions in the virtual event, Ester Dross said, “Child abuse includes physical, emotional/psychological and sexual abuse, neglect and negligent treatment, exploitation and violence in all forms. It is essential to have a clear definition in our policies and guidelines when addressing child safeguarding.” Ahmad Alaghawani, Safeguarding Officer at Islamic Relief in Jordan, joined the webinar as the guest speaker. More than ninety humanitarian and development practitioners, from Asia and Europe, participated in this 90-minute webinar bringing together a wide array of diverse expertise and knowledge on safeguarding to learn from.

Child Safeguarding vs Child Protection

“Organisational commitment to preventing and responding to abuse of children, by its own staff is referred to as child safeguarding. On the other hand, the mechanism by which an organisation seeks to fulfil children rights in their communities is referred to as child protection,” shared Ester.

All organisations that engage with or come into contact with children should have safeguarding policies and procedures in place. “Knowing the principles of child safeguarding guarantees that every child, regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, colour, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation, has an equal right to be safe. Establishing and adhering to safeguarding principles ensures that children are safe and protected from any kind of harm.” Key principles highlighted in the webinar included:

  • Children having equal rights to protection from abuse and exploitation
  • Organisation obligated to taking reasonable measures to prevent harm
  • Appropriately using photos of children
  • Acquiring skills and specialised knowledge to adhere to safeguarding policies
  • Working for the best interest of children
  • Treating reports with confidentiality and seriousness
  • Ensuring partners’ responsibility to meet minimum standards

Safeguarding as a Key Responsibility

“At Islamic Relief, we ensure that its staff, operations and programmes do not harm children, young people and people at risk and do not cause them to be at greater risk of harm from others” said Ahmad Alaghawani, “We have policies and guidelines on Child Safeguarding, People at Risk, PSEAH[1], Code of Conduct and Dignity at Work.”

The safeguarding, protection and wellbeing of those we serve have been a core area of Islamic Relief’s work over the past 34 years. In working with vulnerable children of all ages and abilities around the world, Islamic Relief takes seriously its responsibility to protect and safeguard children from all types of abuses.

The organisation has developed a complaint mechanism for children after conducting focal group discussions (FDG) with the staff who directly works with children to address the challenges they encountered while dealing with children. “Some key recommendations that came out from the FDGs included training of teachers on child behaviour and special care of Syrian children refugees, establishing a complaints and feedback mechanism specifically for children and sensitising children on what is right and wrong to create a safe space,” shared Ahmed.

The complaint mechanism for children focuses on raising awareness among teachers, families and children on child safeguarding and protection. Ahmed further added, “The staff at Islamic Relief has to attend a mandatory training on Safeguarding. We also have extensive IEC material which consists of information of different kinds of abuse and exploitation and steps that need to be taken by the communities and children at risk to address the vulnerable situations. Moreover, we conduct awareness sessions to sensitise communities and right holders on our complaint mechanism and ways to report SEAH.” Organisations of all types and sizes to implement rigorous policies, processes and tests to protect children from abuse. “That could mean training staff to understand appropriate language and behaviour. Encouraging teams to run background checks on new recruits. And helping families and communities to understand what they can do to support young people at risk. All organisations have a responsibility to protect children from harm and it is imperative we exercise our responsibility seriously and accountably,” concluded Ester.

[1] Prevention of sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment

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When: 5th-7th July 2022 (arrival at the venue on 4th July 2022)
Where: Murree, Punjab
Language: Urdu and English
Interested Applicants: Click here to register
Last Date to Apply: 10th June 2022 (incomplete applications will not be entertained)

Training Objectives: Through this training, you will be able to:

  • Identify the key Q&A initiatives and their tools to support Project Cycle Management
  • Select and adapt existing Q&A tools and resources to overcome challenges throughout the Project Cycle
  • Outline the opportunities and challenges faced by humanitarian workers in implementing Q&A approaches and tools throughout the project cycle
  • Identify means by which you and your colleagues can collaborate and coordinate with other agencies to improve the quality and accountability of a humanitarian response

Training Purpose

The impact of humanitarian work on communities depends greatly upon the quality of services and accountability of actions both during emergency and non-emergency times. With millions of people affected by disasters and conflicts, the importance of Quality & Accountability (Q&A) is undeniable. Community World Service Asia (CWSA) aims to ensure that all relevant agencies including NGOs, INGOs, UN, donors, universities and government agencies, playing an active role in the disaster response & rehabilitation are given the opportunity to implement Quality and Accountability approaches and tools in their work. As part of CWSA’s response to the demand for increased support on awareness raising and capacity enhancement, CWSA is delighted to announce the upcoming course on Q&A for PCM. This course is a unique opportunity for all agencies, as it is focusing comprehensively on Standards that can support you during the project cycle.

Number of Participants

  • 18-20 participants will be selected for the training. Women and staff belonging to ethnic/religious minorities are encouraged to apply. Preference will be given to participants representing organizations working in remote and under-served areas.

Selection Criteria

  • You have experience in managing projects or programmes
  • You have some basic knowledge about the Q&A initiatives and are implementing Q&A approaches and tools at a minimum level
  • You are a leader in promoting Q&A
  • You have a ‘good enough’ command of English.

Fee Details

  • Training fee for each participant is PKR 15,000. Fee concessions and scholarships are available for participants belonging marginalised groups and NGOs with limited funding.
  • No TA/DA will be given to participants and travel expenses will be incurred by participants themselves.

Facilitation Team

Mr. Khurram Saeed is working with Community World Service Asia and leading the Quality and Accountability program. He has over 10 years of experience in capacity enhancement support, project management, coordination & networking. He holds hands on experience in promoting Quality and Accountability and applying project cycle including assessing, designing, implementing, reviewing and evaluating projects in humanitarian and development context. He remained extensively involved in the designing and carrying out humanitarian/development capacity enhancement interventions in participatory manner including development of strategies, training manuals and training events.

Ms. Tooba Siddiqi is an experienced Engagement Manager with over 10 years of experience in partnership management, advocacy, youth mobilization, community-led campaigning, fundraising, and resource development. A tech-savvy, human resource manager with a demonstrated history of remotely managing large teams from diverse geographical and ethnic backgrounds. She is a strong community and development professional trained in Management Sciences and Human Resources Management from the University of the Punjab, Lahore. In the past year with Community World Service Asia, she has played a significant role in pushing the Quality and Accountability standards with local NGOs as well as regional NGOs.

Co-Facilitator

Mr. Rizwan Iqbal, has over twelve years of professional experience while working with non-government organizations and businesses in Asia & Europe. He specializes in Organizational Development (OD); Coordination and Support in development of Monitoring and Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) mechanisms at agency-wide level. He remained directly involved in capacity building of partners and humanitarian organizations across the globe for assuring the elements of quality programming. He is a certified trainer by the secretariats of humanitarian quality standards like Sphere, Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) & MERS and has been providing technical assistance/services to organizations on monitoring and evaluating operational quality by using the quality frameworks, standards, guidelines and tools. He worked with a variety of cultures in more than 25 countries around the world. In the past he completed his mission to Nepal (Aug-Sep 2015) after earthquake and a six-month deployment (Nov 2013 – May 2014) in the Philippines as Quality & Accountability Advisor – after Typhoon Haiyaan (Category-1 emergency responses), where he provided support to design, train, monitor and complete (with an exit plan) a Quality and Accountability (Q&A) mission. He had been leading the Quality and Accountability Program team at Community World Service Asia and performing the role of Q&A promotion within Asia-Pacific region. Currently he’s serving as Global Quality & Accountability officer at ACT Alliance based in Thailand.

REGISTER NOW

Community World Service Asia (CWSA) is a humanitarian and development organization, registered in Pakistan, head-quartered in Karachi and implementing initiatives throughout Asia. CWSA is member of the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) Alliance, a member of Sphere and their regional partner in Asia and also manages the ADRRN Quality & Accountability Hub in Asia.

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When: 24th May 2022
What time: 2.00 PM-3:00 PM (Pakistan Standard Time)
Where: Zoom – Link to be shared with registered participants.
For registration click here
Language: English
How long: 60 minutes
For: Safeguarding focal points, senior managers of national, international and regional NGOs and aid/development networks
Moderator and Trainer: Ester Dross

Background:

CWSA is a humanitarian and development organisation registered in Pakistan, addressing factors that divide people by promoting inclusiveness, shared values, diversity, and interdependence. CWSA is highly committed towards Accountability to Affected People and people centered aid. Over the last two years, we have offered different webinars, covering various aspects of safeguarding and aiming to raise more awareness on key aspects of accountability such as establishing efficient and transparent complaints systems and protection from and prevention of sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment. Safeguarding is a key pillar to any accountability measures that organisations must integrate into their programmes and working cycle.

When people we work with or for, feel unsafe within their workspace or global environment, it leads to critical negative impacts on the quality of our work and the objectives we intend to reach. It is therefore important that we are more aware and increase our efforts for a better understanding of the issues at hand.

This webinar is part of a series of 6 one-hour webinars, covering safeguarding, key policies and minimum requirements, complaints systems, complaints handling and managing investigations and communication. The last webinar will explore questions related to child safeguarding.

We have so far spoken generally about safeguarding and how three organisations set up their safeguarding framework, followed by an interactive session where participants explored the key policies and guidelines they need to have in place in terms of safeguarding. During our third session, we tried to understand what we need to ensure in order to set up robust complaints systems and allow all stakeholders to have a voice and report any concern they have when benefitting from activities of or working with our organisations. During our latest sessions, we spoke about understanding fair and independent investigation processes and how to ensure inclusive and thorough communication with regards to safeguarding, complaints handling and investigations.

Objectives:

The last webinar of this series will explore questions related to child safeguarding including:

  • What is important to ensure inclusion for efficient child safeguarding into programs, safeguarding efforts, communications and complaints handling?
  • How can we contextualize our communication with regards to safeguarding to include children as our audiences?
  • What do we need to communicate to whom around complaints handling and outcomes of an investigation?

Moderator & Presenter:

Ester Dross—Independent Consultant

Ms. Dross is an indépendant consultant with over 25 years of expérience, specializing in accountability, prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse, gender and child protection.
Ms. Dross has had an extensive exposure to humanitarian certification systems and accountability to affected populations while working with HAP International as their Complaints Handling and Investigation Advisor, later as their Certification Manager. She has been closely involved in the Building Safer Organisations Project since 2005, dealing with sexual exploitation and abuse of beneficiaries, particularly focusing on gender and child protection. Over the last 6 years and since working as an independent consultant, Ester has been leading a pilot project for FAO on accountability and gender mainstreaming in emergencies and working with numerous NGOs including ACT Alliance members, supporting and training their staff on gender issues, child

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Tuesday 10 May 2022

9:00 – 10:30 UTC / 11:00 – 12:30 CEST

Humanitarian Networks and Partnerships Week (HNPW)

The diverse needs of individuals and communities must be fully understood, recognised and addressed in order for the humanitarian community to provide meaningful protection and equitable access to dignified humanitarian aid to all vulnerable individuals and communities in need. Addressing the challenge of inclusion by holistically incorporating diverse individuals and communities, regardless of gender or age, people with particular protection needs, persons living with disabilities and/or people who are subject to exclusion and marginalisation in complex operational environments – is absolutely essential.

Humanity & Inclusion, INTERSOS, UNHCR and Women’s Refugee Commission invite you to a round-table discussion on the importance of inclusion in protection work.

The session will explore opportunities and challenges, as well as ways of strengthening inclusion in humanitarian action, drawing from experience from humanitarian programmes around the world, including protection monitoring and other protection activities. Furthermore, the round-table discussion will launch the new INTERSOS report – Protection Monitoring Lessons Learned report, a fulfilment of INTERSOS pledge made at the Global Refugee Forum (GRF). The report can be accessed here.

Moderator

Ms. Manisha Thomas, Geneva Representative, Women’s Refugee Commission

Panelists

Mr. Gregory Garras, Senior Protection Coordinator, Division of International Protection, UNHCR
Ms. Eleonora Sceusa, Global Senior Protection Advisor, INTERSOS
Ms. Ulrike Last, Global Inclusive Humanitarian Action Specialist

The meeting will be in the hybrid format:

Participation in person:

Plénière C meeting room, Centre International de Conférences (CICG), Rue de Varembé 17, 1202 Geneva

For participants planning to connect remotely, the connection details will be provided a few days before the meeting.

Kindly RSVP your participation to miro.modrusan@intersos.org by 8 May 2022, indicating whether attending in person or remotely.

Download PDF

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CHS Revision Launch: What should the future Commitments to people affected by crisis be?

The Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability (CHS) was launched in December 2014 after an extensive consultation period involving hundreds of humanitarian actors from across the globe. It sets out Nine Commitments that organisations have made to people affected by crisis, and helps organisations improve the quality and effectiveness of the assistance they provide.
Since its launch the CHS has been applied by a large number of organisations, which has led to considerable learning of the strengths and weaknesses of the current version. Also, during these six years, the world has changed, and the aid sector has continued to grapple with its colonial history and inequal power dynamics. It is now time to make sure we have a core standard that continue to push the agency of people affected by crises and ensures every person is treated safely, respectfully and with dignity.

These launch sessions will gather representatives from a wide range of actors in the humanitarian sector (including CHS Steering Committee members, CHS copyright holders, CHS application supporters, donors, national and international actors) and from people affected by crisis, to take stock of the experience with the application of the CHS so far and learn about it future.

Join us to launch the CHS revision process by contributing to the CHS application experience gathering and learn about the revision process (governance, objectives, timeline, process, and opportunities to contribute).

We look forward to seeing you at the session and contribute to setting up the future commitments to people affected by crisis.

Background

This launch event will be held as blended event combining an in-personand online participation. We will first provide a short explanation of thedevelopment of the CHS and the rationale for launching the revision process.This will be followed by a moderated “coffee table” discussion betweendifferent users and supporters of the CHS, focusing on the powerfulcontribution of standards to meaningful people-centered humanitarian work.

Agenda

11:00Welcome
11:05Opening remarks
11:15Brief introduction to the CHS revision (why, who, how)
11: 30Coffee table chat:
– The role of the CHS for Inclusion at community and country level:
– The donor perspective: tbd
– A regional perspective: CWS Asia
12:10Q&A, discussion
12:25Wrap up the discussion. Short consultation survey for those who are interested
12: 30Close

Speakers

The CHS Revision Launch event will feature an engaging discussion with two representatives from National NGOs who work with the CHS on a daily basis.

Ayesha Hassan is Associate Regional Director at Community World Service Asia (CWSA)

She focuses on campaigning and project implementation on Gender, Human Rights, Quality and Accountability, Livelihood(including food security with focus on DRR), Education, and Democratization. She is trained on Quality and Accountability standards such as the CHS, Do NoHarm Approach, Sphere etc. She has been working in the development sector since1997 and has a keen interest in youth-led projects. Ayesha has a good understanding of socio political and economic issues in the region. Gender, women empowerment and working with youth is her passion and forte.

Rehema Kajungu

Session facilitators: The session is being facilitated by the Co-Managers of the CHS Revision Process.

Aninia Nadig

Aninia’sbackground is in protection and forced migration issues, but she has a long involvement with quality and accountability standards in the sector. She was with Sphere for over 10 years in different roles and was part of the process the development of the CHS. She also played a lead role in two Sphere Handbookrevision processes and coordinated the Humanitarian Standards Partnership(HSP). working hard to ensure the CHS was included as one of the foundation texts for the revised Sphere standards and the HSP. More recently, she has worked as a senior HQAI auditor and a Sphere and CHS trainer, giving her insights on how to train and verify how organisations apply the CHS. SeeAninia’s LinkedIn profile for more on her background and experience. Aninia can be reached at anadig@chsalliance.org

Philip Tamminga

Philip has been involved in standards, quality assurance and accountability issues in the humanitarian and development sectors for over 25 years. He spent 10 years with the Red Cross Red Crescent movement, including senior positions in the IFRC. He also directed the annual Humanitarian Response Index (HRI) report for five years, assessing the role of donor governments in supporting effective and accountable humanitarian action. In 2012 he led the SCHR-sponsored consultation process to review standards and certification in the sector. The outcomes directly contributed to the development of the CHS and the establishment of the CHS Alliance and Humanitarian Quality Assurance Initiative(HQAI). For the past 7 years, he has been working as an independent consultant on quality and accountability issues for the Red Cross Red CrescentMovement, UNICEF, IRC, CDAC Network and the CHS Alliance amongst others. Philip can be reached at ptamminga@chsalliance.org

Click here to register

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How do we convey our policies to the communities?
How do we give details about our investigation and complaint systems?
Who is informed on the decisions?

Ester Dross raised these questions while facilitating a webinar, titled ‘Communication & Safeguarding’, on March 1st, 2022. “Communication needs to be focused around our policies, what they say about the communities we serve, what protection measures it has and what we mean by PSEA and safeguarding. Moreover, it is not only important to have complaint systems but it is equally important for the systems to be known and transparent for communities using those systems. They need to know how it works, who receives the complaints and how they are responded to. It is through effective and clear communication that we create trust with the communities we serve,” said Ester.

As a continuation of the Quality & Accountability (Q&A) Week 2021, the fifth virtual session, jointly hosted and organised by ADRRN’s Quality and Accountability (Q&A) Hub, Sphere, CHS Alliance, ACT Alliance, ALNAP and Community World Service Asia (CWSA), was more focused on exploring ways to ensure inclusive and efficient communication around safeguarding, complaints handling and investigations.

Ester Dross was joined by Mandy Jones, Head of Safeguarding, OXFAM, Great Britain as a speaker in the session. Fifty humanitarian and development practitioners, from Asia and Europe, participated in this 90-minute webinar bringing together a wide array of diverse expertise and knowledge on safeguarding to learn from.

“We are focused on a survivor-centred approach and it underpins our safeguarding investigations. Safeguarding in Oxfam is a set of procedures, measure and practices, to ensure that Oxfam upholds its commitments, to prevent, respond to and protect individuals from harm, committed by Oxfam and/or any related personnel,” said Mandy.

Oxfam adopts a non-discriminatory approach for the survivor to have the full right to confidentiality, instead of exposure. “It is absolutely important for us to treat all the survivors in the same way. We also acknowledge their right to have comprehensive information for them to make their own informed decision and not be told what to do. The idea of dignity and self-determination, acknowledging that harm is being done to the survivor already, and attempting to restore power back in the hands of the survivor is crucial for the survivor-centred approach.”

“We need to be able to respond to concerns with kindness, patience, honesty and compassion. It is crucial to know what survivor-centred services are available within your area, field offices and communities before dealing and engaging with survivors. Every one of us has an essential role on knowing what our responsibility is to uphold and contribute to the safeguarding culture. This will include raising awareness on safeguarding and how concerns are reported and who they are reported to. Safeguarding has to be an active agenda in your organisations,” reminded Mandy. 

While addressing a question on ways to communicate with youth under 18 years and children, Mandy responded, “We have to be aware, and must be clear on the messages we give out to the children. We should have an open discourse with them, providing them a forum to express their concerns in their own words. At Oxfam, we are very clear about child abuse and its elements such as child marriages, child labour and sexual harassment. We have to consider the access children have to be informed about the work we do, provide their feedback and what other opportunities are there for their voices to be heard.”

Participants inquired about how to avoid having misleading or fabricated claims through anonymous complaints, as well as how to determine their authenticity. “This brings us to focusing on the information we gain though investigation and witnesses after a complaint has been registered. There is an element of probability where we have to think about the likelihood of a concern happening based on the evidence gathered. Therefore, a comprehensive investigation is required to determine if the allegations are accurate or misleading. We have a significant duty when dealing with complaints, and we must preserve safeguarding by carrying out this responsibility to the best of our abilities,” Mandy explained.

While sharing her views around communicating safeguarding to the communities we serve, Samina Sardar, a participant, said, “The people involved in exercising the safeguarding policies and agenda have to comfortable talking about PSEA. If a person is uncomfortable talking about it, he or she will be unable to effectively disseminate the messages and systems of complaint processes, and communities will be reluctant to share their concerns. Furthermore, in order to promote safeguarding and PSEA, the organisation and those working in it must have the same values.”

In conclusion of the virtual learning event, Ester remarked, “It is key that communities know the channels of communication. It is our responsibility to communicate all the channels of reporting transparently and through clear messages so that communities are aware about it and can use them effectively.”

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