"I don't know of a better place to find evaluations of the humanitarian sector"
Managing Director, Development consulting company
The HELP library was created to aggregate and preserve learning from across the humanitarian sector. The library is a public good for the humanitarian sector and beyond.
- Advance humanitarian learning by facilitating discovery of and access to information about what works and what doesn’t work in humanitarian action.
- Contribute to the development of new research about humanitarian performance through archiving and facilitating discovery of learning resources
- Preserve humanitarian knowledge and learning for future generations.
- Host humanitarian knowledge and learning to support the efforts of humanitarian actors to fulfil their accountability commitments.
- Resources hosted in the library focus on learning and helping humanitarians to change and improve their actions and behaviours. Resources that describe humanitarian needs, contexts, or programmes are not included, as these are well-covered on other platforms.
- Resources should be aimed at (or useful for) those working in humanitarian settings or on humanitarian policy/academia.
- Resources should be useful across time, crisis and organisation. The learning contained within a resource should be useful for a broad audience (acknowledging that learning and best practice will change over time).
- ‘Humanitarian action’ is understood in its broadest sense and resources that are useful to humanitarians may take many forms and cover many themes and contexts. Resources related to short-term vulnerabilities, social cohesion and conflict in crisis-affected countries and communities are of course highly relevant. So are resources on countries which face recurrent crises even if they are generally seen as a ‘development’ context, or countries seen as ‘atypical’ settings where humanitarians have launched a response.
- Anyone can submit a resource to the library. Any and all resources that fall within the scope of the library can be added.
- Browse the full collection
- Look for (a) specific resource(s)
- Visit a Collection on a particular theme
The library is open to anyone. Its resources and Collections are particularly geared towards ALNAP’s core audiences, namely:
- Implementers
- Evidence generators
- Policymakers and funders
- Sector reflectors, advocates and communicators
- Academics
- Students and entry-level humanitarians
The library hosts evidence and learning around what works and what doesn’t work in humanitarian action, in the form of the following four resource types:
- Evaluations and Lessons Learned
- Guidance and Tools
- Research and Studies
- Commentaries
Resource formats hosted on the HELP range from long reads, webinar recordings and videos, podcasts, presentations, data visualisations to short reads.
The list below provides more details on which specific resource types are considered in or out of scope of the HELP Library.
Resources within the HELP's scope
- After action reviews, programme and project reviews, rapid learning reviews
- Evaluations (final papers only + annexes)
- Humanitarian standards
- Open-access journal articles and academic books
- Syntheses and evidence summaries
- Opinion-pieces / think-pieces produced by individuals or organisations (that substantively analyse what is being done well / less well in a response or in the sector more broadly, or that provoke new/innovative ways of thinking)
- Reports on global trends in humanitarian action
- Tools & guidance, including manuals, handbooks, guidelines, etc.
Resources outside of the HELP's scope
- Annual reports
- Evaluation-related TORs*, inception reports, baseline surveys
- Feasibility studies/risk analyses
- Funding proposals
- Media/news articles
- Needs assessments
- Open letters and other forms of advocacy content
- Press releases / news articles released by humanitarian organisations
- Rapid analyses, e.g. rapid gender analysis
- Sitreps
- Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
- Strategy (country-level or operational)
- Websites
Collections hosted on the HELP are thematic compilations of tailored resources, addressing the knowledge needs of and advancing learning for one or more of ALNAP’s core audiences and thereby offering a unique service to the humanitarian community. Collections are dynamic, responsive, continuously updated and are either co-curated with partners or curated by the ALNAP Secretariat only.
ALNAP aims to be at the forefront of humanitarian learning. We welcome humanitarian organisations and affiliates to reach out to us concerning the creation of new Collections to benefit the humanitarian community.
You can reach out to us at [email protected].
You can add a resource by submitting the User Resource Submission Form.
Upon submission, your resource will be reviewed by ALNAP and we will reach out to the email you provided in case of any follow-up questions. You will receive an automated email once your resource has been published on the HELP Library.