In the midst of a pandemic, the past year was a challenge for many organisations. Sphere stepped up its efforts to convene and share expertise and further promote the application of humanitarian standards, through our global community.
Whilst Sphere has continued to build its online presence over the past 3 years, the challenges in 2020 accelerated the expansion of its online offerings, including training packages and the launch of a new function enabling users to submit comments to the Sphere Handbook digitally.
With webinars and online events becoming important means to promote global uptake and the impact of humanitarian standards, Sphere invested considerably in accessibility – translation of resources, simultaneous interpretation, sign language interpretation and live captions. Adequate resourcing of accessibility must be a priority for humanitarian organisations and donors, to ensure that the most vulnerable and marginalised are not further marginalised and disadvantaged.
Our engagement with the Sphere community was more frequent in 2020, reached more members, focal points and humanitarian practitioners, including those in the global South, and contributed to a greater sense of connectedness.