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Self Report 2017

The self-report on WHS Commitments below is organized according to the 24 transformations of the Agenda for Humanity. It is based on commitments pledged at the time of report submission. Click on the 'Expand' symbol to expand each section and read the reporting inputs by transformation.

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4A
Reinforce, do not replace, national and local systems

Joint Commitment

  • Commitment
  • Commitment Type
  • Core Responsibility

  • 375 individuals across the sector commit to collaborate across boundaries to recognise, enable and sustain local and national humanitarian capabilities and leadership. The Humanitarian Leadership Academy has endorsed this commitment. Further details can be found at https://bit.ly./WHSCommit


  • Operational
  • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need
Partners: 375 individuals

Individual Commitment

  • Commitment
  • Commitment Type
  • Core Responsibility
  • The Humanitarian Leadership Academy commits to invest in the capacity and ability of frontline responders to play a leading role in crisis anticipation, response and recovery by creating incentives through the development of evidence for international actors to work in strategic partnerships with local and national civil society organisations that build the long-term organisational and responsive capacity; and, supporting the development of national and regional networks of front-line responders and other related capacity-strengthening initiatives including national and regional research and training centres.
  • Capacity
  • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need
  • The Humanitarian Leadership Academy commits to investing in local and national capacity building initiatives, in order to provide access to relevant contextualised learning opportunities and contribute to their sustainability.
  • Capacity
  • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need
  • The Humanitarian Leadership Academy commits to undertake capacity mapping in ten of the most vulnerable locations to disasters and crises around the world, to inform capacity development and gap-filling by international and regional partners.
  • Capacity
  • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need

Core Commitment

  • Commitment
  • Core Responsibility
  • Commit to a new way of working that meets people's immediate humanitarian needs, while at the same time reducing risk and vulnerability over multiple years through the achievement of collective outcomes. To achieve this, commit to the following: a) Anticipate, Do Not Wait: to invest in risk analysis and to incentivize early action in order to minimize the impact and frequency of known risks and hazards on people. b) Reinforce, Do Not Replace: to support and invest in local, national and regional leadership, capacity strengthening and response systems, avoiding duplicative international mechanisms wherever possible. c) Preserve and retain emergency capacity: to deliver predictable and flexible urgent and life-saving assistance and protection in accordance with humanitarian principles. d) Transcend Humanitarian-Development Divides: work together, toward collective outcomes that ensure humanitarian needs are met, while at the same time reducing risk and vulnerability over multiple years and based on the comparative advantage of a diverse range of actors. The primacy of humanitarian principles will continue to underpin humanitarian action.
  • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need
  • Commit to reinforce national and local leadership and capacities in managing disaster and climate-related risks through strengthened preparedness and predictable response and recovery arrangements.
  • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need
  • Commit to empower national and local humanitarian action by increasing the share of financing accessible to local and national humanitarian actors and supporting the enhancement of their national delivery systems, capacities and preparedness planning.
  • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need Invest in Humanity

  • What led your organization to make the commitment?

    The Academy made three organisational commitments under this transformation: to incentivise investment in, and collaboration with frontline responders, to provide access to relevant and contextualised learning opportunities and to undertake capacity mapping in ten vulnerable locations. Through this we aim to ensure that the importance and relevance of local and national responders are recognised, their needs understood and capacity strengthened through translated, contextualised and accessible learning. The Academy also represented over 375 individuals who committed to collaborate across boundaries to enable local leadership. The purpose of this shared commitment was to put individual action at the heart of making change.

  • Achievements at a glance

    * The Academy has established a Collaboration and Networking (CAN) Fund to strengthen local learning networks. We are currently funding two projects through MANEPO in Malawi and ACTED in Pakistan.

    * The Academy is collaborating with partners in Kenya and the Philippines to deliver capacity-strengthening initiatives tailored to the needs of local communities.

    * A needs assessment has been carried out in the Middle East and one in Bangladesh is currently underway. * A survey was sent to the signatories of the personal commitment; of the few that responded:
    o Over 80% said that the commitment had inspired them to collaborate across boundaries to recognise, enable and sustain local and national humanitarian capabilities and leadership, and over 75% have already taken action to achieve this.
    o 70% said that the commitment been included or referenced in their work objectives for 2017.

  • How is your organization assessing progress

    The Academy tracks progress against targets, including these commitments, on an annual basis.

    With regards to the personal commitment, the Academy reached out to all signatories to invite their feedback on what action has been taken during the reporting period.

  • Challenges faced in implementation

    There are multiple humanitarian response systems, managed by various stakeholders who do not necessarily speak the same business language. The lack of comprehensive data on the effectiveness, efficiencies and interdependencies of these, and the absence of a unified and structured approach to reinforcing systems doesn’t allow for proper tracking of how such scattered investments are contributing to the overall strengthening of the structure.

    Crisis-affected communities should be at the centre of humanitarian response, including businesses, governments, academia, national and regional institutions and NGOs; it can be difficult to bring together a broad range of stakeholders for meaningful and focussed discussion.

  • Next step to advance implementation in 2017

    •The Academy will focus on contextualisation and translation of content on our online learning portal, Kaya (www.kayaconnect.org).
    •The needs assessments for Bangladesh and Indonesia will be completed in 2017
    •The Academy is working with the IFRC and Wilton Park to convene a conference focused on the localisation workstream of the Grand Bargain; we are committed to ensuring that local voices are represented in this forum
    •The Academy is committed to convening an online community of practice for all signatories to the personal commitment, if it is established that there is significant appetite to demonstrate it would be utilised.

  • If you had one message for the annual report on what is most needed to advance the transformation 'Reinforce, do not replace, national and local systems', what would it be

    ‘Donors can play a key role by demanding INGOs and UN agencies allocate funding for sustainable capacity building beyond training of strict relevance to a specific project. There is also scope for them to drive an initiative to mainstream approaches to reinforcement, and centralised reporting.’ Saba Al Mubaslat - CEO

  • Cross cutting issues

    ☑Disaster Risk Reduction ☑ People-centred approach

  • Specific initiatives

    ☑Grand Bargain

4B
Anticipate, do not wait, for crises

Individual Commitment

  • Commitment
  • Commitment Type
  • Core Responsibility
  • The Humanitarian Leadership Academy commits to collaborate with others to enhance countries preparedness, and accelerate this initially in forty of the most at-risk countries, so they reach a minimum level of readiness by 2020.
  • Partnership
  • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need

Core Commitment

  • Commitment
  • Core Responsibility
  • Commit to a new way of working that meets people's immediate humanitarian needs, while at the same time reducing risk and vulnerability over multiple years through the achievement of collective outcomes. To achieve this, commit to the following: a) Anticipate, Do Not Wait: to invest in risk analysis and to incentivize early action in order to minimize the impact and frequency of known risks and hazards on people. b) Reinforce, Do Not Replace: to support and invest in local, national and regional leadership, capacity strengthening and response systems, avoiding duplicative international mechanisms wherever possible. c) Preserve and retain emergency capacity: to deliver predictable and flexible urgent and life-saving assistance and protection in accordance with humanitarian principles. d) Transcend Humanitarian-Development Divides: work together, toward collective outcomes that ensure humanitarian needs are met, while at the same time reducing risk and vulnerability over multiple years and based on the comparative advantage of a diverse range of actors. The primacy of humanitarian principles will continue to underpin humanitarian action.
  • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need

  • What led your organization to make the commitment?

    The Academy's mission is 'to enable people to prepare for and respond to crises in their own countries'. We believe that to reduce the impact of crises and therefore the need for international emergency response, we need to increase the resilience and preparedness of communities vulnerable to crises. The Academy will support this by increasing the accessibility, quality, scale and sustainability of humanitarian learning and knowledge. We believe this will increase the likelihood of people having the right skills to prepare for crises.

  • Achievements at a glance

    •The Academy has operational Academy Centres in Kenya and the Philippines.
    •The Academy has created collaborative partnerships in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, the Philippines, Somalia, Malawi and Pakistan. We have also initiated conversations with potential partners in Bangladesh, Indonesia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Jordan.
    •The Academy has launched Collaboration Centres to contribute to the objectives of the Academy and wider sector, in France, Switzerland and the UK.

  • How is your organization assessing progress

    The Academy has taken a number of steps to develop its monitoring and evaluation systems during the period since the WHS. These include development of a MEAL framework with KPIs; the collection of baseline data against which we will track impact; we have initiated a learning impact evaluation with Humanitarian U; commissioned several case studies of key learning initiatives; and continually captured internal learning and incorporated this in future actions and decision making, as well as course correction for learning initiatives.

  • Challenges faced in implementation

    Investing in preparedness is questionable in countries that are already experiencing conflict and crisis. In addition to this, it is difficult to operate in this environment. However, through our online learning portal, Kaya, we are reaching crisis-afflicted communities; Yemen regularly features in the top 10 countries with the most Kaya users, demonstrating that we are able to remotely meet the needs of those that are hard to reach.

    In addition, very few donors investing in DRRM and preparedness, due to the increased demand on funding for rapid response – this includes national governments and local NGOS.

  • Next step to advance implementation in 2017

    •We will launch Academy Centres in the Middle East, Bangladesh and Indonesia.
    •Scoping studies for Academy Centres in West Africa and Central America will be completed to determine if the opening of an Academy Centre would be relevant there, and if so what the key gaps it could fill are.
    •We will continue to build collaborative partnerships across the world in order to achieve our mission.
    •We will promote the DRRM Pathway as a tool by which we can increase national and local capacity to anticipate, prepare and where possible mitigate the impact of humanitarian situations.

  • If you had one message for the annual report on what is most needed to advance the transformation 'Anticipate, do not wait, for crises', what would it be

    ‘Whilst most organisations understand the importance of this, it takes more than training and a collaborative national effort to ensure preparedness is up to standard. Governments and donors need to see the advantage of investing in DRRM to lessen impact and ensure rapid life/business continuity.’ Saba Al Mubaslat - CEO

  • Cross cutting issues

    ☑Disaster Risk Reduction ☑ People-centred approach

4C
Deliver collective outcomes: transcend humanitarian-development divides

Individual Commitment

  • Commitment
  • Commitment Type
  • Core Responsibility

  • The Humanitarian Leadership Academy commits to develop a mechanism to document and share evidence on impactful learning interventions and best practice for humanitarian action.


  • Operational
  • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need

  • The Humanitarian Leadership Academy commits to investing over 50% of its total budget to identify and incubate new and existing, innovative solutions in humanitarian learning, in order to provide local and national access to contextualised learning and knowledge, and connect civil society with global and regional resources as appropriate.


  • Financial
  • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need

  • The Humanitarian Leadership Academy commits to launch a global digital learning platform and 10 contextualised regional platforms to increase and democratise access to learning opportunities and connect learners and service providers at the national and regional level exchange experience and evidence between such platforms and global service providers.


  • Operational
  • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need

Core Commitment

  • Commitment
  • Core Responsibility
  • Commit to a new way of working that meets people's immediate humanitarian needs, while at the same time reducing risk and vulnerability over multiple years through the achievement of collective outcomes. To achieve this, commit to the following: a) Anticipate, Do Not Wait: to invest in risk analysis and to incentivize early action in order to minimize the impact and frequency of known risks and hazards on people. b) Reinforce, Do Not Replace: to support and invest in local, national and regional leadership, capacity strengthening and response systems, avoiding duplicative international mechanisms wherever possible. c) Preserve and retain emergency capacity: to deliver predictable and flexible urgent and life-saving assistance and protection in accordance with humanitarian principles. d) Transcend Humanitarian-Development Divides: work together, toward collective outcomes that ensure humanitarian needs are met, while at the same time reducing risk and vulnerability over multiple years and based on the comparative advantage of a diverse range of actors. The primacy of humanitarian principles will continue to underpin humanitarian action.
  • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need

  • What led your organization to make the commitment?

    The remit of the Academy transcends the humanitarian-development divide as we build capacity in the long-term through enabling people to prepare for and respond to humanitarian crises in their own countries. This is achieved through democratising access to learning opportunities – an innovative approach in the sector.

    As an organisation that seeks to remove barriers to learning we are committed to reflecting and learning from our own collaborations, and sharing lessons learnt. In order to justify our innovative approaches in the sector we must learn as we go and ensure appropriate and relevant documentation to utilise in future work.

  • Achievements at a glance

    •We have partnered with Humanitarian U to assess the impact of our Humanitarian Essentials learning package.
    •A knowledge scoping report and strategy have been drafted.
    •Eleven case studies have been created examining a range of topics including the impact of e-learning and gamification.
    •We have launched a Collaboration Centre for Learning in Humanitarian Action which will generate research, document best practice and produce learning content.
    •The Academy is innovative in its approach; our Innovation Strategy has been finalised in partnership with Nesta.
    •Aspects of the Innovation Strategy have been operationalised through pilot activities including a learning offering focusing on innovation for DRR.
    •Our online learning platform attracted 6360 new learners from 162 new countries, 1775 courses were completed and 63 new courses were added in English, Arabic, French and Spanish.

  • How is your organization assessing progress

    The Academy tracks progress against targets, including these commitments, on an annual basis.
    Kaya statistics were either auto generated through the reporting function, or found via SQL (Structured Query Language) database searches.

  • Challenges faced in implementation

    Trying to do something differently in an established sector requires partners to collaborate in creative and innovative ways. The Academy would like to take this opportunity to thank those who have come on this journey with us, and have trusted in our innovative approach to professionalising and localising humanitarian response.

  • Next step to advance implementation in 2017

    •The Academy will finalise and begin to implement it's Knowledge Strategy.
    •An Innovation Workshop will be held in the Philippines (March 2017).
    •The Academy is currently working with partners to look at how we might support the Start Network’s innovation hub initiative to ensure the greatest impact of both organisations work and also to minimise any duplication of efforts.
    •The Collaboration Centre for Learning in Humanitarian Action strategy will be developed and delivery will commence.
    •Regional Kaya portals will be developed for our Academy Centres in the Philippines, Kenya, the Middle East, Bangladesh and Indonesia.

  • If you had one message for the annual report on what is most needed to advance the transformation 'Deliver collective outcomes: transcend humanitarian-development divides', what would it be

    ‘When development is focused on increasing national resilience, we are investing in strengthening national capacity to respond to and recover from humanitarian situations. Donors need to coordinate and offer a holistic system of support, allowing structured investments in national capacity building.’ Saba Al Mubaslat - CEO

  • Cross cutting issues

    ☑Innovation ☑ People-centred approach