The Sphere Project is celebrating this year its 10th anniversary. In this occasion, a special report was published: "10 years of Sphere in Action, enhancing the quality and accountability of humanitarian action".

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Khaled Khalifa, Islamic Relief’s Country Director in Malaysia and Sphere’s focal point in the country has signed a contract with Cyberjaya University, to teach a Sphere oriented disaster management course to the students of its College of Medical Sciences. The course will cover the following: introduction to Sphere, standards common to all sectors, water, sanitation and hygiene promotion, food aid, food security and nutrition, shelter, settlement and non food items. This agreement is a breakthrough in promoting Sphere to academic institutions in Asia. For the first time medical students will study sphere as part of their academic curricula and will have marks based on their understanding of disaster management concepts. It is possible that other institutions follow suite, a matter that will contribute to creating better qualified aid workers in the future.

The Lutheran Church in Colombia wants to share some experiences from our emergency projects that are supported by ACT in the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Sphere. As a member of ACT, we are committed to the standards and the Humanitarian Charter of the Sphere project.
  
In 2006, we produced a book where we presented our "humanitarian help to vulnerable communities and to the displacement people in Colombia."  In this book, we described some of the works we have done such as: the housing and the drinking water improvements and the psychological recovery issues guided by the Sphere handbook.

This report on the Relief Response for the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from Manam on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea provides a detailed review of all sectors in relation to minimum Sphere standards (in Annex 2).

The Inter Agency Group (IAG), Orissa, India produced a series of case studies and mini field stories on Sphere initiatives in Orissa. This anthology of case studies is the outcome of the series of consultation with seven organizations UNDP, UNICEF, Action Aid, Catholic Relief Services, Concern Worldwide, Indian Red Cross, and World Vision highlighting the commitments to the Humanitarian challenges by various organizations in Orissa, India.

This case study is aimed at sharing the experience of the Sphere focal point in Pakistan. It could be useful for organisations who would wish to replicate practically this process in another emergency.

 

Written by: Michael Paratharayil¹, Email:  This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it , Regional Emergency Officer- Central and South East Asia and Middle East, Christian Aid, London, UK

Christian  Aid (CA) has been pro-active in promoting and applying Sphere Standards in humanitarian programmes since the  project was launched. It implements humanitarian programmes through 600 national NGOs in more than 60 countries across the world. CA’s approach to implementing humanitarian programmes is to  accompany partners in their work and to provide staff in country to work with the  partners. Since 1997, CA has ensured that all staff are trained on Sphere Standards and the Humanitarian Charter.  Our humanitarian programmes are based on Sphere and monitored and evaluated against them. From an organizational experience, this approach has resulted in greater quality, accountability, co-ordination and the participation of the beneficiaries. We have highlighted  5 examples below, on how CA and partners have applied Sphere Standards and the Humanitarian Charter in different parts of the world.