Humanitarian Action Training in South Africa

Save the Children South Africa (SCSA)’s humanitarian response is focused on emergency relief, child protection, education, health, and nutrition. Over the years, SCSA has played a crucial role in both emergency response efforts and long-term development projects, working to ensure that children’s rights and needs are prioritised in policy and practice across the nation.

In August, SCSA collaborated with the Humanitarian Leadership Academy in East and Southern Africa to provide Humanitarian Action Training (HAT) to their staff and staff of local organisations SCSA partners with.

A prior needs assessment informed the 5-day intensive face-to-face training to identify areas of interest and the participant base; the training was delivered to thirty-one participants.

Humanitarian Action Training covers a vast range of specified topics to prepare humanitarians in calm or conflict contexts for response.

The topics range from leadership, coordination and equitable partnership, anticipatory action, and core humanitarian principles, to risk analysis, conflict sensitivity, wellbeing in emergencies plus a simulation of a response.

A participant at the HAT training in South Africa said:

“I understood the humanitarian principles and the differences between them. I can now respond and plan towards a disaster.”

The sessions and simulation revealed an opportunity for better coordination across the humanitarian ecosystem in South Africa; espeacially around engaging humanitarian provincial focal points

Thank you it was worth my time, and I learnt so much. My perspective is completely changed’