Upholding Programme Quality
We are proud to announce that War Child Holland has successfully undergone verification against the Core Humanitarian Standard, through a process conducted by independent auditing body HQAI (Humanitarian Quality Assurance Initiative). The verification process gives confidence to affected populations, donors, the public and other stakeholders that we are continuously improving the quality and accountability of our services.
Quality and accountability are core aspects of all of our activities. The four-year verification process continues to help us assess and uphold programming of the highest quality, reduce risks and continuously improve our services.
The process of independent verification has been very helpful, building on our culture of learning and continuous improvement in the way we respond to humanitarian challenges. War Child Holland now has a clear understanding of where systems, policies and practices are strong and effective, and where further improvements are needed.
A full audit re-scoping and sampling will be conducted in the next audit cycle as War Child Holland has recently undergone significant strategic and organisational changes through the development of the War Child Alliance. The new body is a formal alliance between War Child Holland, War Child UK, War Child Netherlands, War Child Sweden, War Child Germany and Canadian affiliate Children in Conflict.
The War Child Alliance is committed to the Core Humanitarian Standard and the improvement plan in preparation for the next audit cycle.
Quality Management
Efforts to maximise the quality of both War Child’s external products and internal processes are at the heart of our organisational strategy. In support of these efforts we have a Quality Management System (QMS) in place.
A QMS is defined as “a collection of business processes and procedures which aims to ensure that the quality of products or services meets - or exceeds - customer expectations”.
The QMS utilised by War Child is driven by continuous improvement, a risk-based focus and an orientation towards stakeholders. And in April our QMS was certified with the internationally recognised ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 9001:2015 standard through an independent audit conducted by consultants EIK Certificering.
The certification audit resulted in some improvement actions that we implemented over the course of the year. We also obtained the Partos 9001:2025 (2018) certificate, which is specific to Dutch development organisations with processes audited against the ISO 9001:2015 standard.
The QMS (and its certification) helps shape the processes and organizational measures of both War Child Netherlands and the War Child Alliance. Many of the processes are universal and paramount for the programme country teams, as well as for War Child Sweden and War Child Germany. But processes that are internal to these teams, such as local security procedures or money handling procedures, are left out of scope.