February 2018
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DearGreetings from the Partnership and Capacity Strengthening team! Welcome to our periodical newsletter on CRS and partner achievements. In this issue, we will reflect on the strides we have made as an agency in our work with partners over the past fiscal year. We will also share updates on Perfecting Partnership 2018, and highlight some new resources available on the Institute for Capacity Strengthening website, including:
- Ukraine Crisis Response: Caritas Ukraine Case Study
- Karuna Mission Social Solidarity: How collaboration among Caritas Internationalis member organizations led to improved institutional development and capacity strengthening
The Partnership and Capacity Strengthening team
P/CS News
A Year in Review
Partnership is integral to the way we do our work as an agency. Throughout FY17, we have collectively increased the number of partners we work with, as well as grown partnership and capacity strengthening as a technical area among our staff. The members of the Partnership and Capacity Strengthening Unit, encouraged by the work our colleagues are doing globally, would like to share a few highlights and accomplishments.
Check out our new video featuring PCS highlights from FY17!
We welcome your feedback and suggestions on how we can collaborate with you even more creatively and effectively moving forward! Please contact us at partnership@crs.org or you can leave us more detailed feedback about your experiences using the ICS on our feedback form. We look forward to hearing from you!
2018 Update
It is an exciting time for the Partnership and Capacity Strengthening Unit. After receiving nearly 300 initial applications, the selection process for Perfecting Partnership 2018 participants is underway! The applicant pool includes a diverse group of men and women, with representation from each CRS region.
This year, for the first time we are having both an Anglophone and a Francophone cohort! This is an exciting addition to the program, and we hope that by having these two cohorts we are able to expand our community to include an even more diverse group of partnership and capacity strengthening practitioners from around the globe.
With the help of regional leadership, we are narrowing the applicant pool and proceeding onto the Yammer Challenge round. The Yammer Challenge round allows participants to share a current, pressing partnership issue and to discuss this issue and ways to resolve it in a virtual small group. This is the most fun part of our application process because the participants get to know each other, and it also gives a glimpse of the current state of partnership work around the globe.
What happens to the applicants who are not selected to continue in the process? For those applicants, and anyone else who is interested in engaging on partnership and capacity strengthening, we are establishing an OPEN community, which will be launching soon. This community will include practitioners from around the globe, and will be open to anyone who is interested. The community will mobilize around challenges in partnership and capacity strengthening and be held online on the Yammer platform, where members will be able to access messages in their native languages. This is an exciting development and we look forward to sharing more in the coming months.
Featured Resources
Karuna Mission Social Solidarity (KMSS) was established and mandated by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Myanmar as its social arm to serve the poor and the needy, inspired by the Catholic Social Teaching principle of “Option for the Poor”. KMSS is organized with a national office located in Yangon, and 16 diocesan offices. A major strength of KMSS is its wide network that extends to all the 14 states and regions of Myanmar, where KMSS reaches out to the often neglected and out of reach vulnerable communities and families.
This learning brief highlights how collaboration amongst Caritas Internationalis member organizations: KMSS, Caritas Australia, CAFOD, CRS and Trócaire, led to the enhanced effectiveness and efficiency of institutional strengthening efforts with KMSS.
The spread of instability in Eastern Ukraine in late 2014 resulted in the internal displacement of 1.7 million people, with another 1.1 million evacuating to neighboring countries. To respond to growing humanitarian needs, Caritas Ukraine expanded rapidly, adding 12 new offices, hiring 600 new staff, and increasing their programming portfolio by over $14 million dollars. Caritas Ukraine is now the largest single national organization responding to the crisis, providing assistance to more than 400,000 Ukrainians. As part of their expansion, Caritas Ukraine partnered with several INGOs including Catholic Relief Services, Caritas Austria, Caritas Vienna, Caritas Germany and Caritas Europa. Through these partnerships, Caritas Ukraine received capacity strengthening support in addition to programmatic funding.
This case study documents the role capacity strengthening and partnership played in Caritas Ukraine’s rapid growth, and provides recommendations for international agencies to use in future emergency response situations.
Looking for previous editions of the P/CS Newsletter? Click here for our newsletter archive on the ICS website.
