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AHA
seeks to empower African people to
find lasting solutions to the challenges facing the continent and advocate for an
African renaissance. We believe that Africans have the necessary skills and
abilities to be active agents of change and to positively impact their futures.
To support our aim we work together with local and vulnerable communities, listening
and responding to their needs and building upon their inherent capacities, to make
lasting differences to people’s lives.
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AHA
believes that every individual regardless of his/her race, religion or gender, has
the right to health, dignity and wellbeing.
Our service is founded on impartiality and we provide
humanitarian assistance on a needs basis. We stand by the principles laid
out by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1981 African Charter
on Human and Peoples’ Rights, upon which we firmly base our own actions and policies.
In all of our relations, internal and external, we listen to and respect other people’s
thoughts, wishes, cultures and traditions, understanding difference and celebrating
diversity.
AHA
reaches out to vulnerable populations throughout Africa, especially those experiencing
forgotten or lesser acknowledged crisis.
We endeavour to work with affected populations where help
is most needed, providing multisectoral assistance to address people’s vital needs.
In order to successfully do so, we maintain a flexible approach, adapting our services
to suit individual circumstances and offering a broad range of programs.
AHA
places great value on building strong, equal and lasting partnerships. In
all of our partnerships we aim to achieve equality, transparency, shared responsibility,
complementarity, mutual accountability and effective collaboration,
as defined by the Global Humanitarian
Platform’s Principles of Partnership.
We believe that Africa needs independent and empowered organizations in order to
provide affected populations with effective and efficient humanitarian assistance.
This can only be achieved if indigenous organisations are able to act as equal partners
in mutually supportive relationships with northern actors.
Dedication
to quality, accountability and optimum transparency
is central to our work, at an operational and management
level. Recently we have paid special attention to the subject of accountability,
working together with SPHERE (Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster
Response), People in Aid and the Active Learning Network for Accountability and
Performance in Humanitarian Action (ALNAP) to maximise our efforts. First
and foremost we are accountable to the communities with whom we work. Good
communication is key to achieving optimum transparency and we encourage open and
honest dialogue, and listen carefully to people’s needs, ideas and feedback.
Donor accountability is similarly important and we work hard to maintain and develop
appropriate and effective reporting mechanisms. In addition to producing individual
reports as necessary, each year we look forward to the publication of our annual
report, providing a comprehensive account of our activities, finances, reflections
and future goals. We continually achieve excellent results, monitored internally
and externally by professional auditing bodies.
We
work hand in hand with affected populations to develop sustainable solutions, based on the individual aspirations and
capacities of each community. We know that change is not something that can
be designed and imposed from outside, but must be a force from within. We
work to support and enable people to identify and achieve their own goals, to experience
renewed independence and enjoy new prospects. We endeavour to contribute to
the long term development of communities, affecting positive and long lasting change.
AHA
is committed to achieving excellence in its work,
maintaining professionalism, good governance and management,
based on integrity, best practise and lessons learned. We work to support
and deliver training, develop our institutional capacity, share information and
knowledge, and monitor and evaluate our programs and achievements. With 15
years of experience working in the field, we measure ourselves by what we achieve
according to the assisted populations with whom we work. In order to continually
improve our services we listen closely to communities, responding and adapting to
their needs. We adhere and contribute to international humanitarian policies
and standards, and encourage learning and innovation in the field.
AHA
ensures that the maximum amount of funds is directed to affected populations, providing a cost effective service, by
limiting our overheads and indirect costs to no more than 7%. For the 13th
consecutive year we have achieved a clean bill of health for our programs from our
partners and auditors, attesting to our high standards and abilities. We are dedicated
to securing diversified funding from different multilateral, bilateral, public,
private, northern and southern sources, to avoid dependence on any one donor.
We advocate for the mobilisation of local resources, especially from the private
sector, including African businesses and regional offices of multinational corporations.
We further seek to develop funding relationships with a long term perspective, which
will enable African NGOs to develop their capacities as a whole, beyond program
specific implementation.
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