• Simulations
• Building Trust in Diverse Teams
• National Staff Development
  • ENHAnce
  • The Consortium of British Humanitarian Agencies (CBHA)
    • Core Humanitarian Competency Framework
    • The Humanitarian Staff Development Project: Piloting Collaborative Learning
  • National Staff Development Program
• Staff Retention and Turnover
• Surge Capacity Research
• Other initiatives

Share and Bookmark

E-mail page Add to favourites

The Consortium of British Humanitarian Agencies (CBHA) is a consortium of fifteen UK-based NGOs established in 2010.  The CBHA partners share a vision to reduce suffering, mortality and morbidity in conflicts and natural disasters by strengthening the ability and capacity of the “third pillar” – the NGO sector – to deliver higher quality, more effective and more timely humanitarian responses.

The ECB Project is working in close partnership with CBHA to support the implementation of a staff development program that aims to develop capacity within both the agencies, consortia and the wider sector.  Together we are working to increase the numbers and competencies of potential leaders, and increase the overall humanitarian skills and knowledge base of existing national staff working in emergencies. The CBHA capacity building project consists of three components that are complimentary to the ECB Project goals:

1. Establishing Common Competencies and Leadership Frameworks - The Capacity Building Report outlines the frameworks that will continue to frame CBHA capacity building activities this year.
2. Building Regional and National Staff Capacity - The frameworks and curriculum developed under component 1 were used to develop two training programs  for regional and national staff capacity building.  The ECB Project consortia are supporting the implementation and review of both training programs in a pilot scheme in four of our ECB consortia countries: Horn of Africa, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Bolivia.These programs are being implemented during 2011. The results will be shared with the wider humanitarian sector by Oxfam, the lead agency for this component, and the ECB Project.
3. Bringing New Leadership into the Humanitarian Sector - While the first two components focus on building capacity within the sector and existing staff, the third component focuses on bringing new talent into the sector.

Latest News

The refinement of the two existing training programs and the development of new training modules completed in 2011-2012, thanks to funding from the European Commission (DG ECHO). The new modules will include adapted training materials for humanitarian staff working on different technical or speclialized programmatic areas, including for example Water, Sanitation and Health programs (WASH). The modules will be available in a user-friendly e-learning format and field-tested in the ECB consortia country programs.

CBHA staff from Oxfam and Save the Children presented on two of the CBHA capacity building programs being piloted, at the People in Aid Humanitarian HR conference held in Madrid in May 2011.  Find a copy of their presentation here, and for more information, visit People in Aid's website. A learning conference in each ECB pilot country, and in London, captured some of the key lessons that need to be considered for ENHAnce the phase II training programs starting from April 2012.