Session 3: Leveraging social sciences for community engagement in humanitarian action

The social sciences have long had a solid connection to humanitarian action. A recent project has aimed to strengthen this further in how humanitarian actors engage communities in their work. In collaboration with more than 70 humanitarian partners across humanitarian practice and academia, the Social Science for Community Engagement in Humanitarian Action (SS4CE in HA) project has been aiming to facilitate community engagement of affected and at-risk communities throughout the humanitarian program cycle.

This session will be the first in which the outputs from the projects will be showcased, exploring those that focus on concepts related to decolonization, social justice, and localization. Panelists will be discussing how social sciences and community engagement in humanitarian action can be implemented towards more ethical, inclusive, decolonized, social justice, and effective practices, as well as how to approach resourcing for systematically integrating social science for community engagement.