ESPAÑOL            FRANÇAIS

Dear ,

Greetings from the Partnership and Capacity Strengthening (PCS) team and welcome to our periodical newsletter on CRS and partner achievements! This month we are encouraging country programs to use the Partnership Scorecard and highlighting CRS’ alliance with Caritas Internationalis.

CRS proactively seeks to collaborate with sister Caritas Member Organizations as well as with Caritas Internationalis General Secretariat (CI GS) and regional offices. In recent months, the CRS PCS team has:

• Participated in a Secours Catholique Caritas France seminar on institutional development projects (A2P DIRO) it implements with local Caritas in francophone countries;
• Continued to represent CRS in Caritas Internationalis Institutional Development Capacity Strengthening (IDCS) Working Group and CI Management Standards (CI MS) Implementation Steering Committee.

CRS’ partnership with Caritas Internationalis is also helping to strengthen Caritas Internationalis Member Organizations worldwide with the development and implementation of Caritas Internationalis Management Standards, and both CRS and CI GS have joined inter-agency initiatives to favor and enable localized responses to humanitarian crises.

The Partnership and Capacity Strengthening team

Updates

STRENGTHENING MEMBER ORGANIZATIONS WORLDWIDE WITH MANAGEMENT STANDARDS

Caritas Internationalis is comprised of over 160 member organizations. Recognizing that these member organizations would benefit from increasing their accountability, transparency, organizational effectiveness, and efficiency, a few years ago Caritas Internationalis began to develop Caritas Internationalis Management Standards (CI MS) that could be applied by member organizations.

Caritas Internationalis has developed the major documents supporting implementation of the CI MS; CRS support included:

• Alignment of the Management Standards’ Auditors’ Checklist and CRS’ Sub-Recipient Financial Management (SRFM) Assessment Tool
• Contributions to the Caritas Internationalis Code of Ethics, Code of Conduct, Management Standards Coordinators Manual, and other implementation documents such as terms of reference for Management Standards Coordinators and Assessors
• Testing the Management Standards (self)assessment tool with Caritas Armenia
• Translation of CI MS documents into Arabic (by CRS Lebanon)

CRS has been also funding CI MS implementation for two years already, which includes covering the training costs of CI MS Coordinators and Assessors. A mid-term review is planned for 2017 and will determine the progress of Caritas Internationalis in achieving its goal for all member organizations to be fully compliant to the standards and thus strengthening the capacity of their organizations.

To ensure their accessibility and encourage wide adoption or adaptation, Caritas Internationalis Management Standards document (and a link to the full Management Standards website) are available on CRS’ Institute for Capacity Strengthening (ICS) website. The CI MS team enthusiastically shares information with member organizations about the ICS website and its resources, including in a recent newsletter.

JOINING FORCES TO ENABLE EFFECTIVE AND LOCAL RESPONSES TO EMERGENCIES

Seeking to improve the effectiveness of humanitarian assistance globally, CRS and Caritas Internationalis are committed to strengthening local readiness and helping ensure that humanitarian funding is available to local NGOs and CSOs. This reflects current development trends but is also deeply rooted in CRS’ fundamental commitment to partnership, subsidiarity and serving vulnerable people.

As signatories on the Grand Bargain and Charter 4 Change -- two initiatives pushing for greater support for local CSOs involved in humanitarian assistance -- CRS, as well as other Caritas Internationalis Member Organizations, INGOs, donors, and international agencies have publicly committed to putting these principles into action. Donors are expected to increasingly call for programming that meaningfully engages and strengthens local partners. CRS and our Caritas partners are also well-placed to implement such programs.

CRS is among the Charter 4 Change and Grand Bargain stakeholders developing light mechanisms for monitoring these initiatives. Areas to measure might include the proportion of humanitarian funding granted to truly local partners (i.e., not INGO subrecipients), capacity strengthening investments made in local partners, and tracking how meaningful partnership (e.g., that includes shared vision, responsibility, and risk) can lead to better humanitarian outcomes.

For more information, contact Jennifer Poidatz, Vice President, Humanitarian Response (HRD).

Partnership Scorecard

As FY16 is winding down, the PCS team encourages country programs to use the Partnership Scorecard to reflect on partner relations and capacity strengthening. The survey results and related discussions also provide good insights and evidence to inform plans to improve partnership and capacity strengthening in FY17.

Each country program is expected to conduct the partnership scorecard exercise with at least two partners in the fiscal year. PCS also highly recommends applying the tool with the same partner annually to look at the progress or challenges in the relations. Measuring changes in partnership and capacity strengthening will help review and update the Improvement Action Plan developed during the first scorecard exercise. The Partnership Scorecard and user manuals and other useful documents are available here.

Please contact Linda Gamova, Technical Advisor for Partnership and Capacity Strengthening, for more information.