Community Engagement in Humanitarian Action (CHAT) Toolkit [Updated Version]

"Partnering and collaborating with communities has long been viewed as crucial to improving public health and its core value of social justice."

Past emergencies and humanitarian situations have shown how high-quality community engagement (CE) for social and behaviour change (SBC) programming is non-negotiable for preparedness and response. The Community Engagement in Humanitarian Action Toolkit (CHAT) is a compendium of guidance and practical tools that can be used by humanitarian practitioners within national governments, civil society organisations, and donor agencies, as well as any expert leading and supporting CE and accountability efforts in humanitarian programming. CHAT was jointly developed by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), The Collective Service, CDAC Network, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Updated and expanded from the May 2015 version, the 2022 CHAT is aligned with global frameworks, policies, and standards, including the Core Commitments for Children in Humanitarian Action (CCCs), and also builds on existing CE resources, guidance, and tools. As part of the revision process, a participatory country validation exercise was conducted with input from humanitarian organisations and decision-makers within the national governments and civil society, experts leading CE interventions, donors, and other partners.

CE,SBC in humanitarian action calls for examining complex, cross-cutting, and underlying barriers to resilience and community well-being, including societal drivers of inequity, fragility, and conflict. It supports well-planned engagement with communities to reduce their vulnerability to different types of crisis while being more inclusive and local in approach.

CHAT includes an action framework with interactive resources that systematically links CE actions for all elements of the humanitarian programming cycle (HPC), including needs assessment and analysis, strategic response planning, resource mobilisation, implementation and monitoring, operational review, and evaluation. CHAT draws attention to country examples that demonstrate successful application of CE and learnings from different crisis contexts.

Specifically, the CHAT toolkit is divided into 5 sections:

1. Introduction and Overview: Section 1.1 introduces CHAT, shares who it is meant for and explains how to use it. Section 1.2 explains CE,SBC and its role in humanitarian action, accountability to affected populations (AAP), and CE linkages for the field. It outlines global policies, frameworks and standards to which CHAT has been aligned and presents a CE,SBC Action Framework based on Community Engagement Minimum Standards and Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS).
2. Natural Hazards: Section 2 presents a comprehensive package that covers CE,SBC resources, tools and guidance to address geophysical, hydro-meteorological, and climatological hazards. It includes the global programming framework, advocacy guidance for institutionalisation of CE,SBC for natural hazards, coordination mechanism, social data for action with guidance for risk analysis and needs assessment, CE,SBC plan with approaches across sectors, and cross-cutting areas and monitoring and evaluation (M&E). CHAT provides additional guidance on media engagement, documentation, and knowledge management. It ends with a checklist that allows users to track processes and tools while planning and implementing their CE,SBC initiatives.
3. Conflict and Fragile Situations: Section 3 deals with conflict situations, including armed conflict and civil strife. It provides resources, tools, and guidance to mainstream CE for peacebuilding. Its sub-sections include a global programming framework for preventing conflicts, advocating for institutionalisation for CE,SBC for sustaining peace, refining the coordination mechanism, updating the social data for action, and conducting M&E. There is additional guidance on media engagement for peace, documentation, and knowledge management. The section concludes with a checklist for users to track processes and tools while planning and implementing their CE,SBC initiatives.
4. Disease Outbreaks and Epidemics: Section 4 describes key elements and provides resources, tools, and guidance for disease outbreaks and epidemic management. It provides information on 15 deadly diseases of the century and reinforces preparedness and response around prioritised risks. It provides advocacy guidance for institutionalisation of risk communication and CE (RCCE). It also shares details on national RCCE coordination mechanisms and social data for action, including behavioural surveillance and a rapid knowledge, attitude, and practices (KAP) and RCCE planning and budgeting process with M&E. It provides resources for infodemic management and effective media engagement while undertaking relevant documentation. The section ends with a comprehensive checklist for RCCE actions.
5. Complex Humanitarian Emergencies: Section 5 explains complex humanitarian emergencies and their characteristics with several how-to tools. It covers issues such as large-scale movements of refugees, migrants, and internally displaced persons where CE,SBC can play an important role. This section provides guidance for response only (and does not include preparedness) for new emergencies. For ongoing conflict emergencies, use Section 3 to develop and implement comprehensive CE,SBC interventions (from preparedness to response).