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CARE International Accountability Framework

CARE is committed to accountable, just and sustainable development that benefits and upholds the rights of the most vulnerable and excluded communities around the world, especially women and girls. A core part of our work is promoting inclusive governance and processes for citizens to interact with and interrogate governments and institutions to strengthen their performance. We recognise that as a large international organisation, we too must be held to account. CARE defines accountability as explaining, being held responsible for and hearing the perspectives of others about how well we are meeting our commitments - and then actively making changes and improvements based on what we’ve learned and heard.

We have committed to deliver a bold set of impact goals, to collaborate with others to do so and to perform in a way that makes the best use of the resources entrusted to us. Throughout we are committed to behaving as an open, transparent organisation that is set up to encourage participation in shaping our work and hearing feedback on how we are doing. We use a CARE wide Accountability Framework to regularly collect, analyse and discuss a mix of data, information and evidence to assess these commitments and answer the following questions:

To what extent are we making progress against our impact goals and shared priorities? What gaps to we need to address, where do we need to accelerate? How vibrant is our network overall, and each CARE office within it? Where are the areas for improvement and organisational development? How well are we collaborating with key stakeholders and engaging key constituents? How do they regard us? To what extent are we modeling the principles of transparency, feedback and participation in our internal ways of working and externally?

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Our Commitments

Impact: CARE and our partners’ contribution to bringing about sustainable change in the fight against poverty and injustice, specifically through our commitment to support 150 million people from the most vulnerable and excluded communities to overcome poverty and social injustice by 2020. We measure this through a set of 25 global outcome and change indicators.

Organisational Performance: CARE commits to being an efficient, effective and equitable organisation that makes best use of the resources entrusted to us to deliver on our impact. We assess the health of our network, our ways of working, the progress on our strategic directions and our future-oriented organisational development. We monitor performance standards and analyse key programmatic, financial, human resource, gender and good governance data. We also assess how well we are upholding our internal policies and meeting the external commitments we have publically signed on to.

Collaboration: CARE believes in the power of collaboration for greater impact, and is committed to strengthening how we partner and engage with others. We evaluate the relevance and strength of our collaborations – the wide range of actors and communities with whom we partner, those who fund our work, those who mobilise with us to influence change and the governments that host us – and how well we enable and unleash the potential of these collaborations.

CARE integrates our core accountability principles throughout and monitors how well we are enacting them:

Transparency – The opportunity to see and understand

Feedback – The opportunity to share input, concerns, suggestions for improvement and to get a response

Participation – The opportunity to be actively involved and help shape strategy and decision-making

There are five main pages in the Wiki, and they are listed under Pages in the sidebar on the left:

• Quality & Accountability (Q&A) at CARE
• Standing Team
• Accountability Framework
• Quality & Accountability (Q&A) Resources
• Facilitation Tips & Tricks

It is possible to return to this home page from anywhere in the Wiki, simply by choosing Wiki Home, located above the Pages section.

The sidebar on the left is visible from any page so it is easy to navigate to another page or access any of the Useful Links. The first group of links, CARE Links, includes the main sites those involved in Q&A at CARE access on a regular basis. Accountability Links features links to useful accountability sites and databases outside of CARE.

The last section, Discussion, allows users to post questions, best practices or otherwise collaborate with each other. In order to post, you must first sign in to the Wiki. However, It is not necessary to sign in to the Wiki in order to view its contents.

The top right hand corner allows you to link to other CARE Wikis you have joined via My Wikis, change settings in My Account, seek Help, Sign in or Sign out of the Wiki.

About this Wiki

What is (and what is not) the Quality and Accountability Wiki?

• This Quality & Accountability (Q&A) Wiki is mainly a navigation tool and is designed as an easy-to-use and accessible hub for key information related to quality and accountability at CARE.
• The Q&A Wiki is not designed to be a library or archive. An extensive reference library is available on the CARE Emergency Toolkit (CET) for CARE-specific resources or the Emergency Capacity Building Project(ECB Connect) website for materials that are also relevant for other humanitarian agencies. Links to these (and other relevant) sites have been inserted to facilitate access.
• What content is available on the Q&A Wiki is a minimal set of current best practice examples of policies and tools (guidelines, checklists, etc.) to facilitate the work of Standing Team of quality and accountability specialists and other interested staff members in CARE. Content will be replaced when updates become available or if another example is judged to provide a more useful example of good practice.
• A collaborative space for CARE staff to share experiences, ask questions and engage in discussions related to Q&A.

Who is the primary target audience for this Wiki?

• Standing Team members, sector specialists and all those who are involved in quality and accountability at the country and headquarters levels.
• However, others seeking information about CARE's approaches and learning about Quality and Accountability are also very welcome to browse!

Why a Wiki?

• Wikis allow for easy collaboration and discussion.
• They are faster and easier to access than some other information portals used by CARE.
• Other CARE wikis like the Program Quality and Digital Library (PQDL) and the P-shift wiki are successful: They provide a hub for information, facilitate online collaboration and are used by their target audiences.
• This Wiki will join a growing community of interconnected CARE Wikis.

How to use a Wiki:

• How to join a wiki.doc
• How to upload a document.doc
• Wiki Tutorial PowerPoint.ppt
• Wiki Orientationfrom CARE
• File Naming: Please use the following naming convention when adding documents to this site. year.month.day_document description. For example: “2010.12.05_After Action Review Guidelines”.

About this wiki:

• This wiki is maintained by the CARE Emergency Group. Please contact ralston@careinternational.org or chisholm@careinternational.org for advice or to suggest improvements.