Save the Children - Emergency Capacity Building Project 'Case study of good practice' - Building Capacity for Emergency Response

Save the Children (SCF) responds to emergencies that put at risk the survival, protection and well-being of significant numbers of children, where addressing the needs and well- being of those children is beyond the indigenous coping capacity, and where SCF is able to mobilise the financial and human resources to take urgent action on their behalf. SCF operates in over 100 countries. Save the Children US (SC-US) operates in 45 of those countries, in 4 regions, and has 4,800 employees of whom 97% are national staff.

A Global Emergency Team provides rapid response to large-scale, high profile emergencies. However, factors such as knowledge of local relationships, language and culture, mean that local staff already in-country are often better-placed to deliver effective emergency programs, especially in cases where accessibility is an issue.

SC-US therefore concentrated on placing national staff at the heart of its emergency preparedness strategy. Focused around developing the capabilities of national staff to mount quality emergency response programs, the strategy has a number of elements and is implemented at all levels of the organization.