The Elevate Approach
Dive into the philosophy behind Elevate Programs International
Localisation in Development
Our approach to community empowerment.
Localisation in Development
What is localisation?
The concept of localisation was introduced in 2016 during the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul. As a concept, it comes from a place of recognition that development was originally built around international players from the Global North. Localisation intends to subvert this dynamic by shifting power, resources and ownership of humanitarian efforts to local people. We at Elevate Programs International embrace this concept and campaign for putting local actors in the centre of our program design.
7 Pillars of Elevate Localisation
When we support organisations in program design, we enable their humanitarian responses to be more contextually relevant, effective and sustainable. We embrace, translate and teach the same concepts in our intensive programs to ensure that program participants are equipped with the knowledge and skills to meet 21st century humanitarian challenges.
Local Partnerships:
At elevate we collaborate with local NGOs, community-based organisations, and civil society groups to ensure that they play a central role in humanitarian activities. We support and strengthen the capacities of local organisations to enhance their ability to respond to shocks and stresses.
Community Engagement:
We strive to directly engage with communities to better understand their needs, preferences, and priorities. Our aim is to empower local communities to actively design and implement interventions that directly affect them.
Cultural Appropriateness:
We recognise and respect local cultures, traditions, and social structures in the design and delivery of our humanitarian programs. We actively involve local partners at key stages of every program, prioritising cultural sensitivity. Our local translation services ensure effective cross cultural communication.
Adaptability:
When we work on programs design and delivery with our clients, we ensure that the humanitarian initiatives undertaken are tailored to the specific context of the community, considering local customs, practices and available resources. We are adaptable and responsive to changes in the local environment, and understand the dynamic nature of needs and priorities of the communties.
Capacity Building:
We actively promote the self-determination and agency of local communities. Skills and knowledge transfer are core components to enhance our local partners’ ability to capitalise on humanitarian initiatives and respond to future challenges. Recognising that we can gain as much from our local community partners as they can from us, a two-way knowledge exchange is core to the Elevate localisation approach.
Coordination:
When applying our platform approach, we also facilitate the coordination between local, national, and international actors. We collaborate with local government authorities and aim to integrate their expertise and resources into our program design.
Accountability:
Accountability to the local community is central to our decision making. Every program establishes mechanisms for accountability to affected populations at the local level. We communicate openly about decision-making processes, resource allocation and outcomes, which ensures a transparency in our Elevate Localisation approach.
Sustainability:
Wherever possible, we focus on building long-term resilience in local communities. Therefore, our program design, engagement and empowerment processes aim to achieve the highest level of sustainability ultimately fostering community resilience.
In a Nutshell
Elevate recognizes that transformative change is a gradual process, demanding sustained and effective endeavors to transfer power, ownership, and resources to the heart of humanitarian initiatives. We integrate localization into every facet of our work, with the goal of fostering a mindset shift that enhances the effectiveness, sustainability, and fairness of humanitarian efforts.
Humanitarian Challenges in the 21st Century
The reason we’re here.
Humanitarian Challenges in the 21st Century
Elevate was founded with the purpose of promoting community empowerment and shaping international best practices by facilitating and co-designing humanitarian education programs. In a world where our shared challenges have grown progressively intricate and multifaceted, such programs are in high demand. The ever-evolving landscape, marked by technological advancements, emerging trends, geopolitical transformations, and environmental shifts, requires humanitarian organisations and all of us to navigate this dynamic environment.
There are 9 key humanitarian challenges that Elevate aims to address through our services, programs, advocacy and initiatives.
Climate Change and Environmental Disasters
Increased Frequency and Intensity: Climate change has amplified the frequency and severity of natural disasters, such as hurricanes, floods, droughts, and wildfires, impacting vulnerable populations and straining humanitarian responses.
Conflict and Forced Displacement
Protracted Conflicts: Many conflicts persist, creating prolonged displacement situations that challenge traditional humanitarian response paradigms.
Urbanisation of Displacement: Displacement is increasingly occurring in urban areas, introducing unique challenges for aid delivery and protection.
Technological Challenges
Cybersecurity Threats: Humanitarian organizations face risks of cyberattacks, which can compromise sensitive data and disrupt operations.
Use of Technology in Aid Delivery: While technology presents innovative solutions, ensuring equitable access and addressing digital divides remain challenges.
Humanitarian Access and Security
Violence Against Aid Workers: Humanitarian workers confront security threats in conflict zones, impeding their ability to provide assistance to those in need.
Access Constraints: Access to affected populations can be restricted due to conflict, bureaucratic obstacles, or lack of infrastructure.
Political and Geopolitical Challenges
Political Instability: Political instability and changing geopolitical dynamics can hinder effective humanitarian response and complicate coordination efforts.
Humanitarian Diplomacy: Negotiating humanitarian access and ensuring respect for humanitarian principles in politically sensitive contexts is an ongoing challenge.
Gender-Based Violence and Inequality
Vulnerability of Women and Children: Women and children often face higher risks of violence, exploitation, and abuse in humanitarian crises, requiring targeted protection measures.
Economic Crises and Poverty
Economic Fallout: Economic downturns can exacerbate poverty and increase vulnerability to humanitarian emergencies.
Humanitarian Financing
Funding Gaps: Humanitarian organizations often grapple with funding issues, as available resources may be insufficient to meet the growing needs in crises.
Ethical Dilemmas and Accountability
Ethical Challenges: Humanitarian actors confront ethical dilemmas, including issues related to data privacy, resource allocation, and aid prioritization.
Accountability: Ensuring accountability to affected populations and transparency in humanitarian operations remains a critical challenge.
We operate in these areas of global urgency, where we seek to raise awareness. At Elevate, we select our partners and service delivery areas to address the challenges outlined above. We remain committed to enhancing our operational approaches, broadening our network of partners, and extending our support to those in need. If you have ideas on how we can collaborate with you or your organization to enhance our collective capacity in addressing the aforementioned challenges, please get in touch.
Humanitarian Program Excellence
Harnessing global best practice for a comprehensive, localised and targeted service delivery.
Humanitarian Program Excellence
At Elevate, we have developed our platform and networking approach to embrace ever-increasing global complexity enabling us to provide best-practice in humanitarian programming.
Our service delivery approach embraces complexity through our modular, scalable, one-stop-shop approach to humanitarian program delivery, as well as through our open-source approach to the development of our community of practice. We host a centralized framework that services these outcomes. Our approach strives to forge connections, foster collaborations, and continually expand our network and partnerships so that humanitarian industry best practice is increasingly adopted. We are committed to ongoing learning, adaptation, and evolution to ensure our organization effectively addresses the challenges of the 21st century.
The Elevate Community of Practice
The Elevate Community is a network of likeminded and passionate individuals, communities and organizations who actively engage in learning from each other. We collaborate, share knowledge, experiences and best practices in the field of humanitarian programming, assistance and development.
Key features of our community of practice include:
Ethical Considerations: Ethics is at the heart of our Elevate Community and guides everything we do. We constantly strive towards addressing dilemmas and challenges related to humanitarian programming. Our extensive networks and practitioner insights allow our collective ethical decision making to grow and for the design of humanitarian programs to occur in a principled and accountable manner.
Knowledge Sharing: Members of the Elevate community share information, lessons learned, and best practices related to humanitarian programs. This can include sharing insights on disaster response, emergency relief, development projects, program design, leadership in crisis and beyond. We share a deep believe in working with local knowledge to truly create fit-for-purpose humanitarian solutions.
Collaboration: The Elevate Community fosters collaboration among its members, encouraging joint initiatives, partnerships, and coordinated efforts in addressing humanitarian challenges and implementing best practice approaches to program design. We collaborate widely to empower various stakeholders to work towards greater two-way knowledge exchange to enhance our collective progress towards equity.
Capacity Building: EPI serves as a platform for capacity building, where individuals can enhance their skills and knowledge through shared resources, training programs, workshops, and other learning opportunities. Have a look at our Professional Development page to learn about our upcoming opportunities in this space.
Networking: Our Elevate community members have the opportunity to connect with like-minded professionals, organizations, and experts in the humanitarian field, creating a network that guides international best practice through the facilitation and co-design of humanitarian education and development programs.
Innovation: The Elevate community creates a space for innovation, where members explore and implement new ideas, technologies, and approaches to improve humanitarian knowledge exchange opportunities.
Advocacy: Our Community engages in advocacy efforts to promote humanitarian principles, ethics, and policies at local, national, and international levels.
The Elevate One Stop Shop Approach
We provide a comprehensive service delivery package for conducting humanitarian programs in challenging environments. We support our clients with lodging, cultural immersion, local liaison, language/translation, program design, and many more services. A truly holistic, One Stop Shop approach.
Some of the key service elements include:
Modular Service Components: Our programs, workshops as well as our advisory services are designed as services with modular components that can be developed, deployed, and updated independently. Interconnectivity ensures seamless integration between different service modules for a holistic and cohesive client experience.
Scalable service delivery model: The design of our service delivery model applies a scalable architecture to accommodate changes in demand. Our platform can adapt to evolving requirements and technological advancements. All this with a client-centred design in mind to enhance the overall experience for service client.
Agile solutions for rapid iteration: We apply agile development methodologies to enable rapid iteration and continuous improvement. By ensuring quick deployment of new features, updates or services we respond efficiently to the humanitarian market and stakeholder needs.
Performance monitoring and continuous refinement: In every product and service, monitoring tools are implemented to track the performance and reliability of the Elevate product suite. We have integrated mechanisms for gathering user and performance feedback which allows for insights and ongoing refinement.
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