About the project

EMPACT was a Capacity Building project co-financed by the EU Aid Volunteers (EUAV) program. The project ran from 2019 to early 2021. The aim of capacity building projects is to make the partners in prospective hosting countries for volunteer deployments ready for this task and enable them to fulfill all formal requirements for certification in the program. The actual deployment projects can work in a variety of areas, including humanitarian aid and disaster risk reduction. 

EMPACT followed a classic workshop-based approach on guiding participating non-EU organisations toward certification as EUAV hosting organisations. With two regional focuses (East Africa and Balkans), many of these project activities took place in these two regions, with additional activities, before and especially after the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world, done via teleconferencing.

In addition to the capacities strictly prescribed by EUAV, the prospective hosting organisations also had the opportunity to build capacities in related areas and standards, such as the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) or optional e-learning modules. 

The participating operative EU organisations mentored the prospective hosting organisations. They shared their experience in EUAV and CHS in this process. ANPAS were already certified in EUAV themselves, the other EU-based operative partners DPA and White Cross were in the process of certifying in parallel to the project. 

All prospective hosting organisations had applied for certification by the end of the project.