Assessment Capacities Project (ACAPS) - HelpAge International 2010

The project is a joint initiative of the Needs Assessment Task Force (NATF) represented by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and a consortium of NGOs (HelpAge International Merlin and Norwegian Refugee Council). Key partners include the Overseas Development Institute Tufts University the Karolinska Institute Columbia University and relating specifically to building in-country capacities the Emergency Capacity Building Project. Under the auspices of the NATF the Assessment Capacities Project (ACAPS) is addressing systemic deficiencies in current common assessment approaches by developing and deploying a core of competent reliable and trained assessment experts to facilitate and support timely high quality coordinated multi-sectoral needs assessments and assessment preparedness on behalf of Humanitarian Country Teams. From this roster ACAPS then deploys teams to support up to 14 assessment preparedness or needs assessment missions. Their task is to support Humanitarian Country Teams in the collection and analysis of data across all sectors and vulnerable groups in a given disaster. Assessment findings and lessons learned from ACAPS are shared through the NATF networks and the NATF website.