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Remote-facilitated training supports earthquake recovery efforts in Syria

The HLA Middle East and North Africa Regional Centre has been actively engaging with staff from Syrian organisations through remote-facilitated training sessions including safeguarding and wellbeing.

As part of the HLA’s regional response work following the devastating earthquakes, the Middle East and North Africa Regional Centre has been actively engaging with staff from Syrian organisations through remote-facilitated training sessions.

So far, the training sessions, which have run throughout May 2023, have already reached 69 participants based in the city of Gaziantep.

The participants – among them 29 women and 40 men – are staff from Syrian local organisations from a range of departments and roles including programme managers and officers, safeguarding focal people, and human resources personnel.

Identifying training priorities

The training was planned and established with the support of the Save the Children’s Syria Response Office Partnerships Manager. After consulting with local organisations in Syria, three major topics were identified as top priorities for training: staff wellbeing, mentoring and coaching, and child safeguarding.

Staff wellbeing has been given special attention to provide support to those working hard on the earthquake response efforts. Given the urgency and time-sensitive nature of the crisis response work, mentoring and coaching were identified as crucial training needs to enhance the skills of the staff involved.

Staff wellbeing is a very important training topic to tackle, especially for us who are working in conditions that rarely allow us to declare the stresses we go through. As an HR specialist, I find that this training has raised awareness for decision makers in organisations, which is extremely important in an emergency context.
Remote-facilitated training participant from Gaziantep – staff wellbeing in emergencies

Safeguarding is of paramount importance, and this training component helps to assist organisations in effectively integrating new volunteers with limited experience in the humanitarian sector.

By utilising remote training methods, the subject-matter experts from the Regional Centre have been able to establish direct connections with individuals and organisations in Syria. This approach enables them to deliver focused and expert training in an agile and responsive manner.

Remote facilitated sessions provide fantastic flexibility to address a quick on-the-go need for improving the staff capacity, especially in case of an emergency where everything is moving quickly. Our participants from local Syrian organisations were highly engaged in these on-demand initiatives.
Bdour Ghousheh, MENA Regional Lead

Building on the success of these training sessions, the HLA MENA Regional Centre plans to organise follow-up sessions that delve deeper into the identified topics. These sessions will further enhance the capacity and knowledge of participants to contribute to the ongoing recovery efforts.

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We are currently supporting humanitarian responses in multiple locations - Find out more

A platform to raise platforms – making multi-dimensional impact

Programmes like Tadamon help organisations like Sakeena in their journey towards becoming fully equipped to make lasting change.

Sakeena is one of 24 civil society organisations (CSO) selected for the Tadamon Interactive Crowdfunding Program  an online training program, hosted on Kaya.

In Jordan, lack of ethnic affiliation and clear family lineages can mean isolation from society and living life on the margins, especially for youth and women who have recently graduated from foster homes. When we helped create Tadamon’s learning resource by request of the Islamic Development Bank, we knew that creating resources specifically for the Middle East would deliver localised learning and directly impact lives.

Sakeena is one of 24 civil society organisations (CSO) selected for the Tadamon Interactive Crowdfunding Program – an online training program, hosted on Kaya, aimed to enable civil society organizations to raise funds through crowdfunding.

The resource made of twelve mandatory online modules and one additional module with five instructional videos; will help the selected 24 organisations gain a shared understanding of campaigning for social good within the local ecosystem. The program is not only empowering users with new knowledge but is also driving collaboration and awareness between all 24 organisations who are doing remarkable work in Jordan.

Through Tadamon, we are hoping to expand our impact and influence on a regional level. We want to educate others about the cause of youth and women at risk after foster home graduation, and end the stigma attached to people who were abandoned by their families upon birth, and change the stereotypes and name-calling associated with this human condition. We want to be a youth-led agent of change”
Adham Khader, the Co-founder of Sakeena

Few of Tadamon’s CSO selection are new to Kaya, the Humanitarian Leadership Academy (HLA)’s platform which hosts the course; however Diana Ishaqat, Communications and Fundraising Manager at Sakeena, has used Kaya before. She reflects, “I have previously used Kaya when I was studying for my Project Management for Development (PMD Pro) so I told my colleagues that if the platform is involved, it will be a user-friendly, easy-to-learn process, since many platforms presented in such opportunities tend to be slow, have unnecessary features, and offer a weak experience for users.”

Using the skills, mentorship and guidance obtained from Tadamon’s program, Sakeena’s goal after completing the Tadamon Learning Program is to raise funds for securing a safe accommodation for recent foster home graduates who find themselves in the streets after graduation, and vulnerable youth and children born to women as a result of sexual violence.

Sakeena is a Jordanian youth-centered, non-profit and non-partisan organization registered formally in Jordan since 2010. The organisation works to ensure that every orphan leaving care homes is an equal member of society who has access to continued care, community, and advocacy for human and civil rights.

Sakeena works to provide basic aid, psychosocial support, skills development, and education focusing on ostracization, homelessness, and proneness to exploitation and abuse towards foster home graduates with severed family ties, generally due to being born outside traditional marriage, and especially to women who have experienced sexual violence and exploitation themselves.

Orphans who leave care homes after graduation and do not find a place to go due to lack of previous real-life preparation, fear, or inability to find a safe location. During this time and afterwards, Sakeena offers them empowerment services and programs.

Diana said, “At Sakeena, we believe that everyone should live free from shaming, and enjoy civil and human rights.”  The team’s efforts to help make this belief a reality in Jordan is well underway, thanks to HLA.

The Humanitarian Leadership Academy through Kaya and HPass supports organisations involved in humanitarian preparedness and response or located in crisis-affected countries with a wide range of platforms, products and services.

In addition to free wide-ranging training content available on Kaya, HLA can also support organisations to curate, create and share high quality learning opportunities that meet the organisation’s or country’s specific requirements.

“I have previously used Kaya when I was studying for my Project Management for Development (PMD Pro) so I told my colleagues that if the platform is involved, it will be a user-friendly, easy-to-learn process, since many platforms presented in such opportunities tend to be slow, have unnecessary features, and offer a weak experience for users.”
Diana Ishaqat, Communications and Fundraising Manager Sakeena

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