About Us

Launched in 2016, the National NGO Program on Humanitarian Leadership (NNPHL) endeavors to prepare current and future generations of humanitarians to address today’s most salient global challenges. NNPHL provides cutting-edge training to enhance humanitarian professionals’ leadership skills and enable them to respond effectively in times of disaster, conflict and crisis. Funded by the US Agency for International Development Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance, NNPHL is implemented through a consortium—Concern Worldwide US, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and International Medical Corps—that brings together a unique combination of operational, academic, and technical expertise with a deep understanding of the humanitarian coordination system and steadfast commitment to investing in humanitarian leadership.

Our Mission

NNPHL aims to provide dynamic and relevant training opportunities that help learners build their skills, knowledge, and confidence to take on leadership responsibilities in humanitarian organizations in order to improve the delivery of services to those in need of humanitarian assistance.

Our Role

As a consortium of operational NGOs and an academic initiative, we have combined our areas of expertise to develop tailored leadership courses and trainings for humanitarians and those interested in humanitarian action. NNPHL’s diverse set of instructors provides a unique look into the world of humanitarian leadership through two leadership development courses. One is this open-access, e-learning course—the NNPHL Online Course—which introduces leadership approaches and explores other challenges faced in humanitarian and disaster settings. The second is an innovative, blended-learning program for national and local humanitarian professionals. Learn more about this challenging leadership training program here.

The NNPHL Consortium

Concern Worldwide
Concern Worldwide is a non-governmental international humanitarian organization dedicated to the reduction of poverty in the world’s poorest regions. Concern is active in 24 countries and implements emergency response programs as well as long-term development programs in areas including livelihoods, health, and education. Concern brings over 50 years of experience helping the poorest and most vulnerable communities to this project, ensuring that the voices of all participants are heard.

The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) is University-wide center supported by Harvard University’s Office of the Provost and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health through the Department of Global Health and Population. HHI’s mission is to improve the effectiveness of humanitarian strategies for relief, protection, and prevention through research, humanitarian programs. Instill human rights principles and practices in these strategies and educate and train the next generation of humanitarian leaders.

International Medical Corps
International Medical Corps is a global, humanitarian, nonprofit organization dedicated to saving lives and relieving suffering through health care training and relief and development programs. Established in 1984 by volunteer doctors and nurses, International Medical Corps is a private, voluntary, nonpolitical, nonsectarian organization. Its mission is to improve the quality of life through health interventions and related activities that build local capacity in underserved communities worldwide. By offering training and health care to local populations and medical assistance to people at highest risk, and with the flexibility to respond rapidly to emergency situations, International Medical Corps rehabilitates devastated health care systems and helps bring them back to self-reliance.

Why Leadership Training?

New conflicts, advances in technology, the increasing severity of natural disasters, and international migration and displacement patterns are just a few of the major global trends that have transformed the international humanitarian field in recent years. Each year, millions of people are left in desperate need of immediate life-saving aid, protection, and assistance. States, the United Nations, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), national non-governmental organizations, community-based organizations, and militaries, all play a role in relief and recovery from major international crises.

These organizations and the individuals that work for them possess an array of technical skills and knowledge required to effectively meet the needs of affected populations, and they must do so in complex environments where accessing populations may be challenging. Once populations have been accessed, humanitarian agencies must reliably identify population needs, coordinate amongst themselves to avoid gaps in service or duplication of effort, must behave in ways that respect the local population’s dignity and livelihoods, adhere to the affected State’s laws, and respect the missions of their fellow aid agencies.

Humanitarians must take into account the practical realities that can mean the difference between success and failure during a response. This field requires vision and strong leadership, yet few humanitarians are actually trained to lead, and few humanitarian agencies incorporate leadership training programs into their training models.

Over the years, the NNPHL partners have seen firsthand the need for improved leadership, as well as the potential for leadership training programs to strengthen the leadership capacity of humanitarians.

Currently, our NNPHL blended learning course is designed to provide leadership training opportunities to humanitarian professionals working at national level NGOs. The training program is a 5-month long innovative blended learning model that is regionally based and requires an application process. You can learn more about the NNPHL blended learning course on our webpage.

Notably, NNPHL is working to ensure that leadership development opportunities are available for a wide range of humanitarians and those interested in humanitarian action, not just those who are able to attend the NNPHL blended learning course.

Therefore, we have developed the NNPHL Online Course, which is an open-access, e-learning version of our NNPHL training that touches on many of the same topics we discuss in the NNPHL blended learning course. The following topics are discussed in the NNPHL Online Course:

Adaptive Leadership for Humanitarians
Theories of Leadership
Leadership and Management in Humanitarian Crises
Introduction to Gender and Humanitarian Action
Monitoring and Evaluation and the Growth of Humanitarian Response
Planning and Risk Management in Humanitarian Response
Challenges in Humanitarian Security
Gender Leadership in Humanitarian Action