A decade-long commitment to humanitarian quality and accountability in Asia

It all began with their response to the devastating 2005 earthquake in Kashmir. Community World Service Asia hosted activities on behalf of the Sphere Project in Pakistan for the first time and soon became its country focal point. One year later, it became an ambassador for the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP).

Since then, Community World Service Asia has come a long way. A few figures may help us grasp the scope of the work done:

A few highlights of the work developed throughout the decade include five international deployments to assist in disaster responses – Myanmar (2008), Sri Lanka (2009), Japan (2011), the Philippines (2011) and Nepal (2015) – as well as translating the Sphere Handbook and the HAP Standard into local languages, organising the first Sphere Focal Point Forum in Asia (2011), among many others.

“Our regional partnership with Community World Service Asia has been a success,” says Aninia Nadig, responsible for Advocacy and Networking Management at the Sphere Project office. “They have actively supported the setting up of Sphere focal points in a number of South Asian countries while carrying out excellent and innovative work around quality and accountability training and research.”

Community World Service Asia aims to continue ensuring that mind-sets and practices change, leading to increasingly people-centred interventions, growing participatory approaches, deepened community ownership and the inclusion of communities in decision-making processes.

Over the last decade “we have ensured that individuals are treated with dignity and that their voices are heard,” says Community World Service Asia. “We will work towards the same goal with equal zeal in the decades to come!”