PHAP launches new online community

Connect today to post your question or provide a response to help somebody else in their work.

The COVID-19 pandemic is creating new humanitarian concerns in populations worldwide and affecting the work of humanitarian practitioners in all parts of the sector. In this new operational environment, it is more important than ever that we are able to learn from each other across sectoral and geographical lines. In response to requests from association’s members and wider network, PHAP is launching today a new version of its online community.

The community has been developed with the global humanitarian community in mind, facilitating the provision of timely, practical information and resources in response to questions that arise in practitioners’ day-to-day work, drawing on the tremendous amount of experience among the PHAP network.

Starting tomorrow, everyone with a PHAP account will receive a personalized daily digest, based on your interests. Using PHAP’s thematic taxonomy, you are able to select your areas of professional interest. We have also set up the platform to adapt to your preferences based on your interactions over time (which you can edit at any time). This allows everyone in our diverse sector to interact in the same forum, while still ensuring that you get the most relevant content for your work highlighted in your inbox.

Connect today to post your question or provide a response to help somebody else in their work. Note that you will need to reset your password the first time you log in (your PHAP.community account is currently separate from your main PHAP profile).

Posting questions

Here are a few pointers for how to post a question so that you can help others to help you with your work. Ensuring the following will greatly increase the chance of other members providing you with useful responses based on their experience and expertise as humanitarian practitioners:

• Make questions as concrete and specific as possible so that it is easier to provide a targeted response.
• Provide the context and background to help people understand why you are asking your question and how you will use the responses.
• Feel free to make the scope of your question as narrow as you wish – there is no question too small in scope.

Responding to questions

You are also encouraged to provide responses to others! Reading about your experience of the same or a similar issue will help others see it from a different perspective.

• Provide concrete examples from your work – this makes it easier to relate to for those in other contexts so they can more easily apply it to their own situation.
• Share both positive and negative examples – it is just as useful to learn what did not work.
• Do you know of any publications or other resources that could help? Refer to other useful sources of information in your answer. Or maybe you have access to templates or other tools that you can share.