Experience of cooperation with ShelterBox

Experience of Cooperation with ShelterBox and Can Humanitarian Aid Be Harmful?

It’s impossible to implement 21 truckloads of humanitarian aid without making mistakes. In this article, I will share insights on working with international organizations and what should be considered to make your aid more effective.

My name is Viktoriya Zablotska. I am a fundraising manager at the National Network for the Development of Local Philanthropy. I was involved in the implementation of humanitarian aid from ShelterBox in Ukraine and want to share my experience.

How Do International Donors Differ from ShelterBox?

Very often, Ukrainian charitable organizations are engaged as purely implementing (executing) partners. That is, there is an international organization managing the project, and it hires a Ukrainian organization solely for the distribution of humanitarian aid. It does not care about the internal processes of this organization or the fact that those involved in distribution are underpaid. I would call this a parasitic partnership.

We were lucky to cooperate with the British organization ShelterBox. In working with them, our organization is treated as an equal partner.

We got to know ShelterBox in the fall of last year. ShelterBox is an organization that provides emergency aid to people in dangerous and difficult situations. We met them in person at our office. They handed us a rather large stack of papers—printed tables filled with numerous questions. Various ones, such as: “How do you recruit staff?”, “What are your policies and procedures?”, “What are your security policies?”, as well as questions about governance, roles, missions, and completed projects. To start working together, we had to answer all these questions—of course, in English. This would have taken a significant amount of time.

In December, we invited them to a conference with the community foundations of our network. After ShelterBox communicated directly with the project implementers, they reduced the number of required questions to 10–15. However, when we began discussing our next project, it turned out that we still had to go through the full compliance process. So, they sent us a document with numerous questions again, even though we had already demonstrated our capabilities in practice.

Throughout the entire project, the British team was highly supportive and accommodating…

For example, we are in Ukraine, and all our documentation must be in Ukrainian, while they in the UK use English. So, ShelterBox covered the costs of translating the documentation into Ukrainian for us. They also translated feedback from our community foundations and the people who received the aid from Ukrainian to English.

We also allocated a rather large budget for logistics, but we managed to save on that. With the money saved, we were able to increase the payments to local managers, as they worked more than originally planned. This also speaks to ShelterBox’s flexibility, as they allowed us to make these changes to the budget. In most donor-funded projects, you can make slight adjustments to the budget, but with ShelterBox, I just needed to write one letter with justification. In the case of some other organizations, this would have required a lot more work. For example, there could be one letter, a second letter, an official document with explanations, waiting for confirmation, providing additional clarifications, changing the initial project budget, and so on.

Partnership and Mistakes:

A lot depends on the people involved. The ShelterBox team working with us was genuinely interested in our success. They are planning to visit again soon to teach our team and the community foundations in our network about mine safety, first aid, humanitarian law, and working with UN clusters. As an organization, they respond to emergencies, and sooner or later, they will leave Ukraine to help in other places. However, they want to make a significant contribution to the development of the organizations they work with and the countries they operate in. I believe this is a characteristic of the specific team we worked with. They are willing to advocate for our needs and present new perspectives to their leadership and higher structures. But it is important that the heads and leadership of these organizations are ready for these changes.

For example, when we were told to undergo the compliance processes to implement the second project, we expressed our concerns, as it would take a lot of time and resources to answer all the questions. Instead, we suggested using information about us from the UNPP (United Nations Partner Portal), as ShelterBox is part of the UN cluster system. This was satisfactory to them, and they only asked for one of our financial documents. This also shows their flexibility and adaptability.

When we discussed feedback on the project with ShelterBox, we prepared a slide with mistakes from both our side and theirs. For example, they acknowledged that they overestimated our ability to handle such a large volume of humanitarian aid and that they should have offered us another person for our team sooner. Not every donor would admit that. As for our mistakes, they also exist, as working with such projects can be tricky, especially when you have to plan months ahead. We started discussing the project in October-November. By the time all the bureaucratic processes were completed, the project proposal was made, and the project agreement was signed, then there were legal signatures from both sides. After that, we had to wait for the funds to arrive, for the goods to be produced in Turkey and delivered to Ukraine, and for the trucks to stand at customs… All of this takes time. As a result, the trucks with aid arrived in Ukraine at the end of January.

Our aid was intended for the winter. Even from the feedback of aid recipients, it’s clear that a small percentage of people used the stoves, as they were no longer relevant by that time. Therefore, the key is quick response. It’s important to think not only about the present. There’s little that can be done in the moment. When planning similar projects, you need to think months ahead. What will be relevant when the aid arrives?

We also made a mistake with the number of feedback collection leaflets. There weren’t enough leaflets for the number of people who received aid. And not everyone who received a leaflet could use it, because, for example, most pensioners don’t have smartphones and therefore cannot scan the QR code and fill out the feedback form.

What’s next? Can humanitarian aid support Ukraine’s economy?

We haven’t finished the previous project yet, and we’re already planning the next one. The new project has three parts: working with IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons), working with people who have returned to de-occupied regions, and working with dormitories for housing IDPs. The budget turned out to be quite large. We are now discussing possible implementation options.

Our previous project was done very quickly, and that affected its implementation. Now we know our mistakes and will take them into account. It’s hard to predict exactly what will be needed by people in 6-8 months, considering the terrorist state next door. It’s difficult, but we’re trying.

Recently, we discussed with ShelterBox via video call what we can do to really help people quickly, such as in the situation with the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam. We are considering the possibility of keeping rapid response kits in stock so that, in case of need, we can immediately deliver them from the warehouse to the event site.

Another important point – the humanitarian aid provided to Ukrainians was purchased in other countries. This might have been cheaper compared to buying it in Ukraine, for example, in Turkey, but logistics also added costs, plus time. ShelterBox is now open to the idea of us purchasing some of the products in Ukraine. This will reduce logistics time and documentation work, as we won’t need a broker to deal with customs. It will also support local Ukrainian production, as humanitarian aid, unfortunately, has a very negative impact on Ukrainian entrepreneurship. We are interested in the development of Ukraine, including entrepreneurship. That’s why ShelterBox is ready for us to purchase part of the humanitarian aid in Ukraine from Ukrainian producers.