We have the pleasure to present you some of the major activities of the Sphere Project office and the Sphere community as a whole since the beginning of the year. This electronic newsletter will substitute the pdf version previously produced by the Sphere Project office. We hope you like the new format. We invite all of you to send us comments you may have, as well as news you would like us to share with the wider Sphere community in our next newsletter in autumn 2010.

The revision process of the Sphere Project Handbook ("Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response") is moving ahead. The launch of the English version of the Sphere Handbook 2011 edition is now envisaged between the 1st and 2nd quarter of 2011. The Spanish, French, Arabic and Russian translations should be published in June 2011.

The drafts of the new common standards (called core minimum standards in the current draft) and of the protection text were posted on the website for a public review process that ended on 16th of July.

As was the case with the previous Handbooks, we hope that the 2011 edition will find great interest among the humanitarian community worldwide and get translated into local languages.

The English Handbook text will be made available for translation as of October 2010. The Sphere Project office will publish four official translations: Spanish, French, Arabic and Russian. We already have had contacts for translations into Chinese and Bahasa Indonesia.

If you are interested in translating the Handbook in other languages, please contact Aninia Nadig from the Sphere Project office ( This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ). You can also consult the updated translation guidelines. They will help you through the translation and publication process.

Sphere trainers have been present in Haiti since February 2010 and have worked with Haitian Sphere trainers, as part of the Quality and Accountability Support Team deployed by the ACT Alliance. They have provided numerous trainings and workshops and are working closely with the Haitian Department for Civil Protection. PAGER is currently translating the Sphere Handbook into Creole. It will be available on our website as soon as possible.

The Sphere Strategy 2015 has been finalised and is available in English, French and Spanish. The Sphere Project office has set the following key strategic priorities for the next five years:

1. Strengthening the capacities (people and tools) of the sector to adopt Sphere more widely
2. Nurturing the political will (among leaders and donors) to support the wide application of Sphere
3. Making common cause with allies who can help achieve Sphere’s vision.

The French version of the Sphere-initiated paper “Taking the initiative. Exploring quality and accountability in the humanitarian sector: introduction to eight initiatives", which aims to facilitate the understanding of the different Quality and Accountability (Q&A) initiatives, is now available. The translation was funded by DanChurchAid (DCA), a member of the ACT Alliance, as part of the Haiti Q&A deployment.

The Sphere 2009 Training Report  is on our website. 110 Sphere trainers and organisations reported on 448 Sphere training and learning activities. The events targeted around 9000 participants in 76 countries, covering four continents.

The Sphere trainers’ database has been developed. It aims to be a user-friendly, searchable tool to find experienced people around the world to deliver Sphere training and learning activities. The Sphere Project office has already received around 20 profiles. All the trainers who have not done so already are invited to send their profile. You can access the database by clicking here .

Sphere trainers around the world have been undertaking a wide range of activities. These include introductory workshops, follow-up workshops, Trainings of Trainers courses (ToTs), and Sphere sessions in other trainings. To see the latest events or to announce your Sphere trainings, see the “Events Calendar”.

Since the beginning of the year, Sphere introductory workshops have taken place in the following locations: Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Denmark, Djibouti, Ecuador, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Palestine, Panama, the Philippines, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Uganda, the United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. These trainings targeted members of NGOs (both local and international), Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies, governments as well as universities and the media.

A national meeting on Sphere was organised by the International Organisation for Migration in Venezuela (Maracaibo) on 24 and 25 May 2010 to share best practices and lessons-learned on teaching and applying Sphere and to identify common interest to reinforce the commitment to Sphere on a national level. This meeting, which aimed to replicate what was achieved in the Latin American meeting of Sphere trainers, on December led to the creation of a Sphere group in Venezuela.

The first Sphere Training of Trainers Course in Portuguese was held in the city of Olinda in Pernambuco State Federal Republic of Brazil, in  January. It was organised by Save the Children UK, in cooperation with the Sphere Project.  The Institute of Studies on Conflicts and Humanitarian Action (IECAH) also conducted a Sphere ToT in Madrid, Spain, in Spanish, in February - March 2010 with the support of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID).

Sphere was also included in an emergency training targeting the staff of Save the Children in the Latin American Region. It was also incorporated in disaster management trainings of the Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies (Morocco and Belize).

Academic and training institutions have been very active. ISPI offers an Advanced Diploma in Management of Humanitarian Interventions, with a Sphere component. The first session was held in May. Bioforce organised a two-day course on Sphere and project cycle management, called “Quality in Project cycle management, the example of Sphere”. It has also developed a new diploma called Humanitarian Programme Manager training with the collaboration of The Sphere Project as a collaborating partner. Please visit Bioforce’s website for more details. Moreover, as part of the Noha the NOHA - European Master's in International Humanitarian Action, a Sphere session was facilitated by Aktion Deutschland Hilft, Board member in the University of Bochum for. A group of students expressed their interest to participate in a complete Sphere Training after the presentation and the Sphere Project office is following up.

The MENA zone office of the IFRC was invited to speak about the Code of Conduct and the Sphere standards at an Expert group meeting in Amman in early May.

Please kindly share with Verónica Foubert ( This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ) and Cécilia Furtade ( This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ) any Sphere related training activities that you have been organising over the past few months or on those that you plan to organise.