Quality & Accountability Hub

When: May 27, 2020
What time: 2:00 PM (Pakistan Standard Time)
Where: ZOOM – Link to be shared
Language: English
How long: 90 minutes
Who is it for: Humanitarian and development practitioners working in or with hard-to-reach areas, NGOs, and INGOs involved in COVID19 response all over the world
Format: Presentation and sharing of Best Practices
Moderator & Facilitator: Ester Dross

Purpose
A key aspect of our shared commitment towards Accountability to Affected People is an organisation’s ability to develop or review organisational policy relating to sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) and managing internal investigations.

The webinar will help explore;

• Key principles of protection from sexual exploitation and abuse
• The importance of information and participation from communities and innovative ways to develop key messages on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse-related risks
• Increased challenges during Covid-19 crisis and potential solutions

Background
Community World Service Asia and Act Church of Sweden are jointly conducting a webinar on good practice for the protection from sexual exploitation and abuse and potential misconduct committed by humanitarian workers. Since in many places we have to operate remotely, the threats of Sexual and Gender Based Violence, sexual exploitation and abuse, as well as fraud and corruption are more likely to rise than decrease. We need to be vigilant and be prepared.

The webinar will help in managing staff misconduct, with a particular focus on sexual exploitation and abuse of project participants by staff. Additionally, it explores safeguarding strategies that managers can implement in their organisations to reduce the risk of exploitation and abuse and improve their organisation’s capacity to receive and respond to allegations of staff misconduct.

This 90-minute webinar will also be an opportunity for sharing best practice from participants and how they have taken into account the current crisis, including best practices for inclusion, information sharing, recruitments and trainings on prevention and protection from sexual exploitation and abuse.

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 a 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.

Act Church of Sweden is a faith-based organisation that works for positive, long-term and sustainable change. Collaborating and cooperating with other organisations is at the core of Church of Sweden’s international mission. By working with local organisations, Act Church of Sweden contributes to long-term sustainable development in the contexts in which their partner organisations operate.

If you wish to participate, kindly register here: Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse.

Applicants will be informed latest by the 22^nd of May about their confirmation status. Up to 200 participants will be accommodated on a first come first serve basis. In addition, we would appreciate anyone willing to share some best practices on the webinar topic and we will select 5 – 7 participants to share them during the webinar. Additional best practices will be compiled into guidance for wider circulation.

Presenter:

Ester Dross – Independent Consultant

Ms. Dross is an independent consultant with over 25 years of experience, specializing in accountability, prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse, gender and child protection.

Ms. Dross had 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 Organizations 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 protection, accountability, complaints handling and investigations. She is an experienced investigator herself and has conducted investigations in Asia, South America, Africa and Europe.

Facilitated by Smruti Patel, Naomi Tulay-Solanke & Dr. Marie-Noëlle AbiYaghi

When: June 2, 2020
What time: 2:00 PM (Pakistan Standard Time)
Where: ZOOM – Link to be shared
Language: English
How long: 90 minutes
Who is it for: Humanitarian and development practitioners working in or with hard-to-reach areas, NGOs, and INGOs involved in COVID19 response all over the world
Format: Presentation & Discussion
Speakers: Smruti Patel, Global Mentoring Initiatives & Alliance for Empowering Partnership Naomi Tulay-Solanke, Community Health Initiative (CHI) & Liberian Women Humanitarian Network Dr. Marie-Noëlle AbiYaghi, Lebanon Support

Purpose 

The webinar will help explore:

• The support that local and national actors are receiving from the international community as per Grand Bargain (GB)commitments during the Covid-19 response
• The importance of tracking progress against the GB commitments using the 7 dimensions framework
• Increased challenges faced during the Covid-19 crisis and potential solutions
• Experience Sharing of local and national organisations from different regions

Background

The coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic is the defining global health crisis of our time. In addition to the loss of lives and the disruption to millions of lives, the economic damage is already significant and far-reaching.

However, the COVID-19 crisis response and the Global Humanitarian Response Plan (GHRP) presents opportunities to accelerate progress on the Grand Bargain commitments and reverse the existing inequities. Local and national civil society organisations have a critical role to play and have been at the forefront of the response to COVID-19. They have been supporting efforts of their governments and providing information, providing food and physio social assistance and more. Their support has been critical also because drastically reduced international travel and supply lines had made large scale international mobilization impossible. Many international actors are also dealing with their own operational disruptions and domestic COVID-19 crisis.

The webinar will provide a framework for localisation and exchange experiences from different regions and discuss how localisation is progressing, the challenges it encountered and the way forward. These discussions will help to capture the views of local and national NGOs and the recommendations from the discussions will contribute to the GHRP revision progress which is taking place after every 6 weeks.

Community World Service Asia is hosting a series of learning and experience sharing events in Asia, particularly focusing on the steps taken by organisations to blunt the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. This webinar is a part of this learning program and jointly hosted by CWSA and the Alliance for Empowering Partnerships (A4EP).

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 a member of the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) Alliance and a Sphere regional partner.

The Alliance for Empowering Partnerships (A4EP) is a network of organisations committed to rebalancing the humanitarian architecture and practices to enable locally-led responses. Their vision is a world where sustainable, independent and accountable local organisations promote a society based on democratic principles, equality and social justice, and particularly in aid-recipient countries, are leading voices and play a leading role in relief and humanitarian assistance.

This 90-minute webinar will also be an opportunity for sharing best practices from participants and how they have taken into account the current crisis, including best practices in partnering and advocating for localisation in country, regionally and internationally.

Register here: Localisation during COVID-19

Smruti Patel

Smruti is the founder and Co-Director of the Global Mentoring Initiatives based in Switzerland. She has been working in the humanitarian sector since 1995. Smurti Patel was a member of the Tsunami Evaluation team for Multi-Agency Thematic Evaluation: Impact of the tsunami response on local and national capacities, and since then has been an active advocate for locally led responses. She lead the development of Network of Empowered Aid Response (NEAR) from idea on paper to the launch of the network at the World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016 and has been involved in the research to develop localisation framework for the Start Network, to assess and measure their progress towards localisation. The “Seven Dimensions Localisation Framework” has been used and adapted by many organisations and regions. Smruti is now actively involved in advocating for the change in the humanitarian system to more locally led responses. She is a member of the Charter4Change coordination group and a member of the International Convening Committee of Alliance for Empowering Partnership.

Naomi Tulay-Solanke

Naomi Tulay-Solanke is a Liberian Feminist, a human rights activist, a humanitarian and the Founder Executive Director of Community Health Initiative (CHI), a national non-governmental organization that is providing healthcare and social services to women and children in underserved and hard to reach communities in Liberia since 2014. Naomi is a founding member of the Liberian Women Humanitarian Network also a founding member of NEAR and the Feminist Humanitarian Network. She is passionate about the role and recognition of local actors in humanitarian work.

Dr. Marie-Noëlle AbiYaghi

Dr. AbiYaghi is a political scientist. She is a founding member and the current director of Lebanon Support, an interdisciplinary action-oriented research center. She specializes in contentious politics, the sociology of public action, and the political economy of knowledge production in the MENA. AbiYaghi has held positions in academia as well as international organisations. She strives to create spaces for synergy between the scientific community and the practitioner field.