Humanitarian Assistance Capacity Building (local partners)

Counterpart International combines capacity building of its partner organizations with the provision of humanitarian assistance in order to prepare its local partner organizations to be able to independently provide humanitarian and emergency relief as well as other social services to the communities and regions where they operate.

The handling and distribution of humanitarian assistance provides many opportunities for capacity building. Empty containers in which the commodities arrive provide infrastructure support to the partner organization as these sea containers can be used as a warehouse, office or training space. Some of the commodities delivered include office equipment and furniture so that the partner organizations have the necessary office infrastructure to implement projects and have the means to deliver humanitarian services to their communities independently. Counterpart has successfully collaborated with host governments to negotiate provision of office space to partner organizations.

For many distribution partners, the handling and distribution of humanitarian assistance provides a jump-start opportunity to expand their activities and better serve their communities. Counterpart implements its humanitarian projects in collaboration with the distribution partners to achieve improved transparency and accountability. In addition to sharing best practices with the distribution partners, hands-on training is utilized to teach partner organizations to import humanitarian assistance, properly account for it and perform customs clearance, inventorying, warehousing, distribution and reporting to the government agencies and donor organizations. Counterpart has vast experience working with USAID on the provision of institutional capacity building trainings for organizations, including design of training modules to address specific gaps and needs, such as organizational and financial management, fundraising, social enterprising and monitoring and evaluation.