Asia region is prone to various hazards. In fact, the disaster trend in this region is raising on the last years, either because of natural or man made hazards. The risk in this region is getting higher due to some factors, such as climate change, political instabilities, rapid urbanisation and other ecological events. In this context, Caritas Asia and Caritas Austria developed the PEACH 1 and 2 Projects to answer the needs of Caritas Member Organizations (MOs) in Asia in order to address issues on disaster and to respond the disaster victims on the present time and in the future.
For about for years, these projects had been able to provide the MOs opportunity to develop their staffs and volunteers’ capacities through some trainings and workshops and also opportunity to exchange knowledge and experience on the humanitarian aid and volunteer management. Those capacity buildings were intended to fulfil the MOs’ needs both on the operational and strategic levels. Then, MOs will be able to strengthen themselves on the volunteer management and humanitarian aid according to the EU Standards.
Besides the capacity building activities, PEACH Project also provide an online platform which manage the knowledge and experience of MOs in the volunteer management and humanitarian aid fields. During the project, MOs could access and contributed to the database in order to get the training materials, best practices, success story, etc.
The PEACH 1 Project was implemented from April 2016 to March 2018 by six participating members, namely Caritas Bangladesh, Caritas India, Karuna Myanmar Social Service (KMSS – Caritas Myanmar), Caritas Nepal, Caritas Pakistan and National Secretariate for Social Action (NASSA – Caritas Philippines). Meanwhile the second PEACH Project was implemented from April 2018 to March 2020. Instead of participated by original project members,
The PEACH 2 Project was also participated by new members, namely Caritas Indonesia and Caritas Mongolia. These projects was facilitated by Charita Ceska Republika (Caritas Czech Republic) and Confederatia Caritas Romana as the supporting partners and Caritas Austria and Caritas Asia as the program partners. SHAPE, as the new project as well as the continuation of the previous projects, is designed to strengthen capacities and enable MOs to build capacities on the humanitarian aid and to respond the disaster timely, effectively and professional. Caritas Asia and Caritas Austria’s expectation is that the continuation of the past project will make MOs to be able to respond disasters and to fulfil the disaster affected population’s needs based on contexts of different countries. The online platform which was developed under the PEACH Project, is then maximised for use in this new project.
The SHAPE Project is expected to benefit the 25 MOs in the region and become the platform to strengthen humanitarian aid’s network in Asia. This project not only focus on the capacity building program but also on the regional support mechanism to strengthen the emergency response in the region. In addition, this project also provide an online platform to share knowledge and experience and endorse the community of practice to strengthen the organizations’ capacity in humanitarian aid and volunteer management. This project is started on December 1, 2020 and will end on December 31, 2023.
