Quality and accountability are key principles in our work.

Our work is based on skilled personnel, good knowledge of the operational environment, planning that utilises versatile expertise, regular follow-up and evaluation, and careful risk management. We are guided by international and internal codes and standards on quality, accountability and effectiveness.

Guiding principles and standards

• Our work is guided by a human rights-based approach, gender equality, conflict sensitivity, as well as environmental and climate sensitivity.
• FCA has zero tolerance on fraud and corruption, sexual exploitation and abuse as well as all sort of abuse of power.
• We use the international Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standard in Humanitarian Response (Sphere Standards) as the foundation of quality assurance in our humanitarian response.
• All FCA staff sign a Code of Conduct, where she/he commits in acting in an accountable and ethical manner, and respecting gender equality and human rights.
• To ensure the best intrest of child in all operations, FCA implements a Child Safeguarding Policy.
• FCA is certified against the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) as the first organisation in Finland. We are a member of CHS Alliance.

Complaints handling

We aim at acting in a transparent and accountable way, and delivering high quality. If you think that we have not lived up to our commitments or you have witnessed misconduct from our staff member, it is your right to make a complaint.

Competence and a learning organisation

We execute our basic tasks together with our local partners who are experts in their own environment. We select our partners with care, and support them in developing their operations and strengthening their competence, as needed. We learn together with our partners.

In order for us to perform our work well, we need skilled employees. We invest in the continuous learning of our employees and our partners – in competence, professional skills and attitudes. Our target is to guarantee that our employees have healthy and safe working conditions and to support their abilities to work.

Planning of projects and programmes

We carefully assess each operational environment, related risks, local resources and other factors affecting our work. We take into account other possible actors in the area, as well as their objectives, and aim to complement them in our operations. We bring added value in our thematic knowledge, experience from our programmes, and our connections to international and domestic networks.

Together with our partners, we aim to ensure that local people and communities take part in planning, executing and evaluating projects that affect them. Local responsibility and ownership are strengthened through participation, which helps projects achieve more lasting results.

Follow-up and evaluation of projects and programmes

Together with our partners, we regularly monitor the progress of our programmes and projects. In addition to follow-ups, we carry out deeper programme and project evaluations at regular intervals, conducted by independent experts.

Through follow-ups and evaluations, we gain information on whether our work is producing the desired results or not. This way, if changes are needed in order for us to achieve our goals, those changes can be made as early as possible. Through both positive and negative experiences, we learn to work better and more efficiently. Through our internal reporting and evaluation system, we distribute this information thus developing our entire organisation. Our central financers, such as the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, also monitor and evaluate our operations. See summaries of evaluation reports.

Procurement

We aim to strengthen local expertise and livelihoods with our operations. This also promotes the productivity and sustainability of our work. Particularly following disasters, it is important that local livelihoods recover quickly and people are guaranteed a normal subsistence.

We promote these targets by making as many of the required procurements as possible from local providers.

Our employees and partners have received precise instructions on how to invite tenders and execute procurements.

Good governance

As an organisation, we operate according to good governance and accounting practices.