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COMPAS & Quality Forum
COMPAS users, trainers, evaluators,… join the new discussion group on the COMPAS method and Quality issues in the humanitarian sector, and share your experiences about the subjects you care about !
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News
2013-02-28    Introduction to Sigmah software - 3 April 2013 (Paris)
Information and Quality management for International Solidarity organisations
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2012-08-16    Training course "Evaluating the quality of humanitarian projects" from 12 to 16 November 2012
This training course in French will be held at Groupe URD's Training Centre in the south of France (Drôme Provençale).
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2012-05-02    Training course "Quality Management in humanitarian programmes" from 11 to 15 June 2012
This training course will be held at Groupe URD's Training Centre in the south of France (Drôme Provençale) in French.
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Quality COMPAS
Presentation
«It is not enough to do good, you have to do it well.».
“Just as a compass helps navigators to find their bearings no matter what the conditions at sea, so the Quality COMPAS guides humanitarian actors in their project management and evaluation processes and can be applied to any context, type of project and institution."

Humanitarian aid agencies, relief interventions and funding provided for crisis?affected populations have undergone significant changes over the past decade. Humanitarian contexts are becoming more complex prompting civil society actors to engage in a process of professionalisation. Simultaneously, field operators are being encouraged to assume more responsibility vis-à-vis aid beneficiaries, as their interventions are subject to an increasingly vocal critique.

The age of improvisation – when the intervention itself was more important that the results – has come to an end. Today, aid agencies are aware that they assume a dual responsibility towards aid donors (public and private) and beneficiaries alike. They are looking to improve the quality of their interventions, aware that “it is not enough to do good, you have to do it well”.

Quality management issues
The quality of humanitarian aid is central to various issues:
•  Improving the quality of services provided to aid beneficiaries;
•  Political issues (reaffirming the identity of humanitarian organisations, clarifying their position, coordination, etc.);
•  Technical and financial issues (in light of the complex nature of the different contexts and tasks involved, the importance of effectiveness and efficiency);
•  Ethics and deontology (the responsibility of aid agencies towards beneficiaries and public and private donors, fulfilling one’s commitments, etc.);
•  · Transparency (internal lines of responsibility and external communication).

Several initiatives for improving humanitarian practices have emerged since the end of the 1990’s, today forming the Quality Initiative Group. However the constraints involved in managing projects in volatile and complex crisis situations highlighted the need for a quality assurance method that is adapted to the humanitarian sector.
It is in response to this observation that Groupe URD, a research, evaluation and training institute for humanitarian aid, began working on this issue. In 1999, Groupe URD and partners launched an applied research project, the Quality Project. This project came to a close in 2004 with the launch of the first version of the Quality COMPAS.
 
The Quality COMPAS is a quality assurance method with its own set of tools, training modules and consultancy services, which have been designed specifically for aid agencies with the overall aim of improving services provided to crisis-affected populations.

• COMPAS Method,
• Dynamic COMPAS
• COMPAS Training
• COMPAS Consulting
 
 
Updated  23-05-2013