Together We Shelter: Capacity-Building Program for Local Organizations Providing Humanitarian Aid The Project will concentrate on the provision of humanitarian aid (NFI/Shelter) to IDPs and other populations affected by the military conflict by mobilizing and enhancing the capacity of local CSOs. 

The goal of the project is to increase the capacities of the Ukrainian civil society organizations that provide vital protection services to people affected by the conflict in full adherence with humanitarian assistance principles. This will be achieved by realizing two outcomes:
O1. Ukrainian local civil society organizations delivered SNFI support to vulnerable populations through the small grants program for local initiatives
O2. Ukrainian CSOs improved their capacity to provide services, including humanitarian assistance, to people

Under O1, EEF will launch a small grants program through an open call for small and medium-size CSOs that provide NFI/Shelter support to local populations. 
The program will aim to help communities affected by military actions and to meet humanitarian needs of internally displaced persons and affected populations, especially in hard-to-reach areas, newly accessible areas and areas with high concentration of IDPs. Organizations operating in Dnipropetrovska, Kyivska, Lvivska, Kharkivska, and Khersonska Oblasts will be encouraged to apply. EEF will run two waves of small grants: under the first wave, it will award 10 grants of up to US$ 30,000 to provide shelter support under the second wave, it will award for at least 15 grants of up to US$ 25,000 to local organizations to provide NFI support.

During the selection process and grant implementation period, EEF will provide mentoring and coordination support in revising application forms for selected candidates, grant management, consulting on how to provide SNFI support in adherence to the principles of accountability to affected populations (AAP) and protection from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA), verification of narrative and financial reports of the organizations. To ensure that the assistance under the project gets to those who most need it, EEF will work with both organizations known to it through its other programs and those that are new to EEF. Special attention will be paid to including women’s organizations, especially small CSOs, Community-based organizations (CBOs), and volunteer organizations. 

Under O2, EEF will develop and roll out to its 25 subgrantees under Outcome 1 a comprehensive capacity-building program. In order to help CSOs assess their institutional development needs, EEF will offer its subgrantees an Organizational Capacity Assessment (OCA) – a structured tool for the facilitated self-assessment of the organization's capacity that leads to action planning to improve the capacity. Based on the OCA outcomes and feedback received from CSOs, EEF will provide its subgrantees with tailored capacity-building and mentorship opportunities.  

An important component of the project is the development of a distance-learning course for Ukrainian CSOs on principles of providing humanitarian assistance, including AAP/PSEA. The course will be developed and uploaded on EEF’s Zrozumilo! distance-learning platform (zrozumilo.in.ua). After it is tested on an initial group of students, it will be available free of charge to everyone interested subject to a simple and free registration on the platform. This approach will create an important resource that can be used in future by all Ukrainian civil society organizations and volunteer groups that wish to work with OCHA UHF.  

The capacity-building measures include online and offline training events and workshops online self-paced training courses networking events. Partner CSOs will be able to benefit from EEF’s online training in such important areas as financial discipline and audit, fundamentals of project management, monitoring and evaluation, fundraising.