Engaged Toolkit

Improving the Role of Nongovernmental Organizations in Disaster

The primary aim of this toolkit is to improve the engagement of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in disasters. For this toolkit, NGO refers to any group outside of government. This may include civil society organizations, as well as social or community-based groups.

Each section of the toolkit corresponds to an action step that NGOs should take to improve their engagement. All toolkit sections can be used by NGOs independently or as a part of a broader NGO emergency planning group. A single NGO can independently complete Sections One and Two of the toolkit with its internal staff as a way of benchmarking its capabilities to engage during a disaster. The NGO can prioritize specific sections depending on its goals. Section Three is ideally completed in a gathering with other NGOs to reflect on past disaster experiences together, and Section Four is completed to explore what this all means for future NGO planning. Revisiting the toolkit sections routinely can help an NGO monitor its progress in achieving goals for engagement in disaster response and recovery and how well NGOs are working together in a community or region.