Emergency Capacity Building Project - National Staff Development Program (NSDP) Pilot Project - External Strategic Review

The Emergency Capacity Building Project (ECB) is a cooperative undertaking of the Inter- Agency Working Group on Emergency Capacity (IWG)1, a consultative membership of seven large humanitarian agencies. The goal of the ECB Project is to improve the speed, quality, and effectiveness of the humanitarian community in saving lives, improving the welfare, and protecting the rights of people in emergency situations. One component of the staff capacity building initiative of the ECB Project that ended in December 2007 was to develop a comprehensive National Staff Development Program (NSDP) pilot project.

The National Staff Development Program (NSDP) recognizes that the single most important resource for humanitarian agencies in an emergency environment is experienced and capable staff able to provide the expertise and leadership essential for an effective response. Deploying the right people in the right place and at the right time tends to be a considerable challenge. ECB research concluded that the pool of qualified and experienced international personnel is always smaller than the level of demand from humanitarian organizations, especially at the time of an emergency response. The design of the NSDP pilot project further drew upon the wider, ongoing debates within the humanitarian sector relating to the improvement of organizational performance by taking into consideration humanitarian competencies, the learning needs of staff, systematic on-the-job learning and training and certification and accreditation, and aiming to develop a sustainable and replicable program to increase the number of agency staff at the national level capable of leading and managing emergency programs.