academy for humanitarian action (aha)

academy for humanitarian action (aha) issues first Certificate of Advanced Studies

The academy for humanitarian action (aha) has recently issued the first Certificate of Advanced Studies. The certificate was awarded to Björn Klüver, who successfully completed the CAS program in the area of “Anticipatory Humanitarian Action”. The CAS program is designed for professionals in the humanitarian field, offering them the opportunity to deepen their competencies in various key areas.

IFHV News - 26 October 2020

IFHV News - 3 November 2020

Opportunity for change? How the pandemic has changed our everyday working life

On July 2nd, the IFHV is hosting the online workshop "Opportunity for change? How the pandemic has changed our everyday working life" for practitioners in humanitarian action. The workshop is part of a joint project of the IFHV and VENRO to strengthen the capacities of German humanitarian NGO staff, funded by the German Federal Foreign Office (GFFO) and was promoted under the umbrella of the academy for humanitarian action (aha). Monika Boutros-Fischer, an experienced trainer and coach for change management, is leading the training with participants working in the humanitarian sector.

How can we use Design Thinking in Humanitarian Action?

How can we use Design Thinking in Humanitarian Action? By using the creative method as an approach to think in innovative ways, practitioners from the humanitarian sector are generating ideas and building prototypes for innovation. For one week, from 07. to 11. June, the IFHV hosted the online training „Design Thinking“ that is part of a joint project of the IFHV and VENRO to strengthen the capacities of German humanitarian NGO staff, funded by the German Federal Foreign Office (GFFO) and promoted under the umbrella of the academy for humanitarian action (aha). Celia Schmidt from cewas, an experienced trainer for innovative processes and participatory action, is leading the training with 19 professionals working on humanitarian action.

IFHV News - 28 April 2021

On 20, 22, and 27 April, the IFHV hosted the online-training "Basics of the Humanitarian System", the second and final event of a starter package for newcomers to humanitarian action. The workshop was part of a joint project of the IFHV and VENRO to strengthen the capacities of German humanitarian NGO staff and was promoted under the umbrella of the academy for humanitarian action (aha). Recent graduates, new staff of humanitarian NGOs as well as career path changers attended the three-days training led by the experienced humanitarian practitioner Peter Zihlmann from the Swiss NGO ebaix. Due to the positive feedback of the participants and the high number of registration requests, both workshops of the starter package will be repeated in late 2021 and early 2022. Further information will be communicated in due time via the aha website and newsletter.

IFHV News - 26 February 2021

The IFHV organized an online training from the 24th to the 26th of February under a consortia project with VENRO, sponsored by the GFFO and offered via the AHA platform. The training was on the "Legal Basics on Protection in Humanitarian Action" and included trainers from HERE-Geneva.

Training on International Donor Landscape in Humanitarian Action

The IFHV will host an online-training on “The International Donor Landscape in Humanitarian Action” over the course of the next two weeks. Starting this Friday, the 20 participants will be equipped with solid knowledge on humanitarian financing, trends and challenges in the humanitarian (funding) system as well as acquire the basic skills to write a concept note or communicate with donors. In their journey through the international donor landscape, the participants will be guided by Irène Sesmaisons, an associate trainer of the French NGO Bioforce with extensive experience in humanitarian action and training. The three-days training is part of a joint project of IFHV and VENRO and conducted under the umbrella of the academy for humanitarian action (aha). It is part of the aha’s certification program in “Foundations of Humanitarian Action”.

Anticipatory Humanitarian Action in Conflict Settings

The IFHV will host an online-training on “Anticipatory Humanitarian Action in Conflict Settings” over the course of the next two weeks. So far, anticipatory humanitarian action, that is initiating humanitarian measures prior to the onset of predictable hazards, has mainly been implemented in non-conflict context and mostly focused on climate and extreme weather events. Starting next Monday, the participants of this 30 hours online training will discuss how approaches of anticipatory humanitarian action can be applied in and to situations of conflict as well. The training is facilitated by the German Red Cross, the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre and the Global Public Policy Institute. It includes diverse inputs from all across the humanitarian spectrum, including representatives of ACAPS, FAO, UNHCR and many more. The three-days training is part of a joint project of IFHV and VENRO and conducted under the umbrella of the academy for humanitarian action (aha). It is part of the aha’s certification program in “Anticipatory Humanitarian Action”.

AHA: Anti-bias and Anti-discrimination in Humanitarian Action

The IFHV successfully hosted an online-training on “Anti-bias and Anti-discrimination in Humanitarian Action” from October 1st until October 7th. During three highly interactive online sessions, the participants reflected upon their own often hidden and underlying biases and perceptions. Besides engaging concepts relating to exclusion and bias, the course explored how to practically apply new practices and concepts in humanitarian action to counter the many forms of discrimination in the humanitarian sector.

Training:Basics of Humanitarian Action

The IFHV will host an online training on “Basics of Humanitarian Action” starting on Tuesday, 23 November. The aim of the course is to provide the participants with a comprehensive overview of important basic concepts, essential quality standards and international legal frameworks of humanitarian action. Case studies offer a practical insight into the role of principles and standards in humanitarian action. The three-days course will be led by the experienced humanitarian practitioner Peter Zihlmann from the Swiss NGO ebaix, who already facilitated an earlier round of the same training in November 2020 and February 2021. The course “Basics of Humanitarian Action” constitutes the first part of a starter package to humanitarian action for recent graduates, new staff of humanitarian NGOs as well as career path changers and will be followed by a second seminar on the “Basics of the Humanitarian System” in February 2022. The training is part of a joint project of the IFHV and VENRO to strengthen the capacities of German humanitarian NGO staff that is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office. It is conducted and promoted under the umbrella of the academy for humanitarian action (aha), where it is eligible for a Certificate of Advanced Studies in the area of “Foundations of Humanitarian Action”. The modular certification programs of the academy for humanitarian action offer humanitarian practitioners and those aspiring to be the opportunity to obtain a certified degree of further education by acquiring new and amplifying existing knowledge in different core areas of humanitarian action.

IFHV Hosted Successful Humanitarian Training Course on "The Use of Geoinformation in Humanitarian Action”

A humanitarian training course titled “The Use of Geoinformation in Humanitarian Action” ended last Friday, 28 January 2022. The course was hosted by the IFHV as part of a joint humanitarian training program of the IFHV and VENRO, supported by the German Federal Foreign Office. During the two-weeks online training course, around 20 participants from all over the world acquired basic knowledge on the most important features, sources and fields of application for georeferenced data in humanitarian action. Guided by Karen Dall from the German Red Cross as well as Alec Schulze-Eckel and Melanie Eckle-Elze from the Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology (HeiGIT), the participants were also enabled to put their new theoretical knowledge into practice through hands-on exercises from humanitarian contexts with the analysis software QGIS – from risk-mapping for floods in Uganda to the coverage of healthcare facilities in Perú. In the final evaluation round, participants valued the training as a chance to get a better understanding of humanitarian (risk) mapping and geodata more broadly. Participants and trainers alike stressed that this kind of “geodata literacy” holds great potential to improve the translation of the huge amount of (geo)data that many organizations have collected for example through their monitoring and evaluation practices into useful analyses for humanitarian programming. The course was advertised under the umbrella of the academy for humanitarian action (aha) and part of a broader certification program on “Anticipatory Humanitarian Action”. In March, a follow-up course on “Current Approaches and GIS Methods to Support Anticipatory Humanitarian Action” will amplify and complement the content of the recent training. It is open to everyone with basic knowledge on geodata and/or QGIS. Further details and information on the registration procedure will be communicated shortly via the aha newsletter.

IFHV hosts Survivor and Community-Led Response in Crisis Seminar

On May 9th, the IFHV hosted a two-hour online introductory seminar on "Survivor and Community-Led Response in Crisis". This short overview developed and conducted by the Local2Global Protection Initiative (L2GP) will introduce you to the survivor and community-led crisis responses (sclr) approach, so that you may see the potential for supporting and resourcing efforts already made by citizens and communities during times of crisis. This taster session briefly presented the approach, shared examples from crises contexts, and key lessons from over 10 years’ experience. A fuller hands-on training on the approach, eligible for a Certificate of Advanced Studies in "Locally-led Humanitarian Action", is planned over 6 half-days in September 2022. You can find further information about that course here. To be informed about any upcoming workshops at the "academy for humanitarian action", please feel free to subscribe to our newsletter here.

IFHV Hosted Exchange Workshop on Diaspora Cooperation in Humanitarian Action

The IFHV hosted an online exchange workshop for humanitarian practitioners titled “Delivering Better Together – Partnering with Diaspora Organizations” on April 7. The workshop was part of a joint humanitarian training program of the IFHV and VENRO, funded by the German Federal Foreign Office. During the morning sessions, participants received an overview the framework, actors, motivations and networks that play a role in the cooperation with diaspora organizations within the field of humanitarian action. After the lunch break, participants were split up into smaller groups to engage in a vivid discussion around diaspora cooperation and humanitarian principles. In their endeavor to explore the potentials, challenges and roles of diaspora actors in humanitarian action, the participants were guided by representatives from the Diaspora Emergency Action & Coordination Initiative (DEMAC) as well as representatives from different diaspora organizations who shared their first-hand experience. At the end of the full-day workshop, facilitators and participants agreed that a more systematic approach to cooperation with diaspora actors and coordination of diaspora engagement in humanitarian crises would contribute significantly to more effective, locally-led and comprehensive humanitarian responses. To achieve this goal, advocacy within the humanitarian ecosystem and within the participants’ own organization were identified as a key step. The workshop complemented previous trainings on localization in humanitarian action that have been conducted within IFHV’s and VENRO’s capacity strengthening project. These events are usually advertised under the umbrella of the academy for humanitarian action (aha), which offers a comprehensive and certified training program on “Locally-led Humanitarian Action”.

IFHV Hosts Workshop on Anticipatory Humanitarian Action

The IFHV hosted an exchange workshop on Anticipatory Humanitarian Action on October 11th and 12th. The workshop was moderated by the IFHV’s research associates Dr. Katrin Radtke and Sören Schneider as part of the academy for humanitarian action’s curriculum on anticipatory humanitarian action. During the two-days workshop, the participants discussed how anticipatory humanitarian action can be mainstreamed further into humanitarian practice and what is necessary to make the approach more accessible, especially for smaller and medium-sized NGOs. The covered topics ranged from broad topics like entry points for funding and leveraging existing structures to specific discussions around partnerships and localization as well as the inclusion of vulnerable groups. In thematic working groups, the participants developed ideas and strategic steps to advance on these topics. All in all, the workshop united 16 practitioners from different humanitarian NGOs in Bochum. The workshop complemented previous trainings on anticipatory humanitarian action that have been conducted within IFHV’s and VENRO’s capacity strengthening project and advertised under the umbrella of the academy for humanitarian action (aha). The aha offers a comprehensive and certified training program on “Anticipatory Humanitarian Action”. More on the course, here. For questions, please contact: soeren.schneider@ruhr-uni-bochum.de.

IFHV’s successful consortium project to strengthen the capacities of humanitarian NGOs is extended

The German Federal Foreign Office has approved the proposal to extend the capacity strengthening project for humanitarian NGOs, that the IFHV has been conducting together with the umbrella organization of German humanitarian and development NGOs, VENRO, since 2020. The second project phase will run until mid-2024 and focuses on the topics of localization, anticipatory humanitarian action and green humanitarian action. It seeks to support German humanitarian NGOs and their local partners in their efforts to implement future-oriented approaches and reforms, to drive innovation as well as to enhance sustainability and efficiency. In the first project phase (October 2020-December 2022), IFHV and VENRO jointly organized over 55 training courses, workshops and webinars on diverse topics that attracted more than 800 participants. Beside continuing to offer high-quality training events in the three focus areas, the new project phase also includes a research component: Through complementary research activities and in-depth consultation of NGOs, the aim of the research component is to underpin the capacity strengthening process with practice-oriented insights on common challenges that NGOs are facing in each of the three focus areas. These concern, amongst others, data literacy and effective data management in the context of anticipatory humanitarian action or the standardization and harmonization of tracking tools to measure greenhouse gas emissions of humanitarian actors and projects. IFHV and VENRO plan to publish an overview of all envisaged training courses in due time. In addition, the IFHV also announces and promotes its training workshops under the umbrella of the academy for humanitarian action (aha), a platform for humanitarian training courses that the IFHV co-founded in 2020.

IFHV hosts Training Course on “Concepts and Mechanisms of Anticipatory Humanitarian Action” in Bochum

The IFHV hosted a training course for humanitarian practitioners on “Concepts and Mechanisms of Anticipatory Humanitarian Action” from 6 to 8 November in Bochum. The workshop took place at the facilities of the Academy of the Ruhr-University Bochum and was jointly facilitated by experts from the German Red Cross, Welthungerhilfe and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.

IFHV Organizes Humanitarian Training Course on “MEAL in Anticipatory Humanitarian Action” in Bochum

The IFHV organized a training course for humanitarian practitioners on “MEAL in Anticipatory Humanitarian Action” that took place on 5 and 6 June in Bochum. The workshop was hosted by the Academy of the Ruhr-University Bochum and facilitated by Karen Dall and Anita Auerbach from the German Red Cross as well as Clemens Gros from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.