PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Asia is a region that is prone to a multitude of disasters. The recent big disasters within the last years indicate that natural and man-made disasters are on the rise. The risk of having new disasters affecting the region in the coming years is very high. Climate change, political instabilities, rapid urbanisation, and human ecology are some of the main contributing factors that may trigger Humanitarian Crisis situations in the coming years. It is in this context that the Caritas organisations in Asia have underscored the need for a local region-based emergency strategy to address the issues in the future and to adequately respond to the needs of disaster victims. Even though the majority of the activities take place in Asia the project builds on mutual learnings between partners and the exchange between Asian and European partners especially on questions of volunteer management in Humanitarian action.
The project will be divided into four phases: During the initial planning phase the project will start with a kick-off meeting of all partners in Bangkok. This is to ensure that roles and responsibilities between partners are clarified, reporting and financial management issues are agreed on and national implementation plans are finalised.
The second phase will be the implementation phase at international / regional level. Here, the European partners will contribute by taking the lead in planning and organising the training courses to be held at regional level. These training of trainers’ courses cover different topics around humanitarian aid and volunteering and address different levels of staff, both strategic and operational. Also, the European partners will take the lead in organising a study on existing volunteer management standards within the consortium, benchmarking these with international standards and proposing a uniform set of standards described in a handbook. At the same time, an online platform for exchange of information and distance learning will be conceptualised and put online.
The third phase is the implementation at national level. The Asian partner organisations will re-echo the trainings at national level, test the set standards for volunteer management with their local volunteers, use and improve the online platform for distance learning as well as exchange amongst each other on good practice and lessons learnt.
In the fourth and last final review phase an external evaluation will focus on the effectiveness, efficiency and coverage of the project, sharing lessons learnt. A final workshop will conclude the project and ways forward will be discussed with regard to the certification of partners and deployment of volunteers under the EU Aid Volunteers initiative
