Innovations in Local Coordination of Humanitarian Response: How ‘Community Cabinet’ Transforms Aid in Southern Ukraine

Publication date: January 24, 2025

The implementation of digital tools — ‘Community Cabinet’ and ‘Partner Cabinet’ — is one of the crucial steps in strengthening the capacity of de-occupied communities in Mykolaiv and Kherson regions to manage their humanitarian needs. We’ll now explore the new capabilities of the local coordination mechanism Link, implemented by the Legal Development Network in cooperation with the Czech humanitarian organization ‘People in Need’ with funding from the UK government, and its impact on communities.

Digital Transformation of Humanitarian Aid

«The implementation of the Community Cabinet is not just a technological solution, but a genuine qualitative leap in humanitarian aid coordination. We are witnessing how communities are gaining greater autonomy and professionalism in identifying and articulating their needs», — says Project Manager at the Legal Development Network Oleksii Tertyshnyi.

As of early January, the Community Cabinet is being used by 50 community informants (local representatives who collect and verify humanitarian needs).

This tool provides its users with a wide range of functionalities.

Community representatives can directly report new needs. As a result, 17 needs have already been entered into the database. These are then reviewed and verified from two or more sources by LINK data collection managers.

Contact persons can view the complete history of request fulfillment in settlements of de-occupied communities. This helps avoid request duplication and improves planning.

When a community’s needs listed in Link are met, community representatives can promptly report this, thus preventing duplication and ensuring information completeness.

The Community Cabinet allows real-time monitoring of submitted requests’ status: “awaiting verification,” “active,” “in progress,” or “completed.”

The new service enhances the transparency and effectiveness of humanitarian response. Community representatives can be confident that all requests are accounted for, while aid providers receive accurate and up-to-date information, helping to avoid duplication and ensure efficient resource allocation.

As of early January 2025, the Link platform has covered 332 new settlements in 24 communities. In total, 4,607 needs have been collected, of which 2,767 are verified at least once every 14 days.

We remind that the Link local humanitarian response coordination mechanism focuses only on unnoticed and unmet humanitarian needs. These are specifically what primary data collection specialists inquire about during field visits, of which over 300 were conducted in 2024. Thanks to the Link local coordination mechanism, 609 needs have been met.

Data analysis shows three key areas of requests:

1. Housing and non-food items
2. Water, sanitation, and hygiene
3. Healthcare

“The needs statistics are dynamic and change depending on many factors: season, weather conditions, security situation. This is why such an operational system of data collection and updates is critically important,” emphasizes Oleksii Tertyshnyi.

In January 2025, the Link platform plans to implement another tool — the “Partner Cabinet,” which also offers enhanced capabilities for information management.

Through the cabinet, partners will be able to reserve needs for fulfillment, see their entire history of work with communities, track current requests by settlements, and much more.

“Our goal is to create not just a technical tool, but a comprehensive ecosystem for humanitarian aid management. The Community Cabinet and Partner Cabinet are fundamental elements of this system that are already demonstrating their effectiveness,” concludes Oleksii Tertyshnyi.

Public dashboard – allows you to book needs for fulfillment,

Community Cabinet – a tool for managing needs at the local level,

Partner’s Cabinet – a space for effective coordination of assistance.

How Link Helps in Project Planning

The LINK platform data serves as a practical tool for solving specific community problems. A notable example is the case of providing assistive devices, where the collected information helped form a comprehensive aid request.

“Thanks to the systematized data from the LINK platform, we were able not just to identify the need for assistive devices, but also to justify it to donors with specific numbers and facts. This significantly strengthened our argumentation and accelerated the aid delivery process,” says Solomiia Zinets-Matsyshyn, Head of NGO “Triangle” from Kolomyia, Ivano-Frankivsk region.

The information collected through the LINK platform made it possible to:

• Accurately determine the number of people requiring assistive devices
• Compile a detailed list of necessary equipment
• Assess the priority of needs
• Define the geography of aid distribution

“When preparing the application, the ability to see the complete picture of needs in the region was very helpful. It turned out that the demand for assistive devices was not an isolated problem of individual families, but a systemic challenge for many communities. This allowed us to develop a comprehensive approach to solving the problem. We saw in practice that the LINK platform is not just a database, it’s a tool that helps transform information into real assistance,” concludes Solomiia Zinets-Matsyshyn.

Strengthening Communities’ Capacity to Manage Their Needs

The comprehensive training program became an important component of the Link platform’s work in 2024 to strengthen communities’ capacity to manage their humanitarian needs. The program covers a wide range of competencies — from practical first aid skills to strategic planning.

“We understand that effective humanitarian needs management is a complex process. Communities must not only be able to identify and articulate their requests but also possess tools to meet them. That is why our training program covers various aspects — from basic survival skills to strategic planning and leadership,” says Iryna Chaika, Director of Organizational Development at the Legal Development Network.

Program Development Components

The training program includes:

• Trainings on effective humanitarian response coordination
• Resilience skills development
• Leadership potential strengthening
• Improving remote communication
• Practical workshops on autonomous work
• Implementing recovery and development strategies

“When we talk about humanitarian needs management, it’s important to understand that this is not just about collecting information. It’s about the community’s ability to independently determine priorities, find solutions, and effectively use available resources. Our training program is a tool for developing such capacity,” emphasizes Iryna Chaika.

The program is already demonstrating specific results:

• 120 informants received practical skills in providing pre-medical assistance
• Participants are provided with professional first aid kits through Nonviolent Peaceforce partners
• Comprehensive training program covered 12 de-occupied communities in Mykolaiv and Kherson regions
• Created a network of trained activists capable of responding to emergencies

This comprehensive approach to training and development creates a strong foundation for communities to more effectively manage their humanitarian needs, become more autonomous and resilient. This is particularly important for remote settlements where response speed can be critical.

The LINK platform has become more than just a technical solution. Through continuous improvement and adaptation to community needs, it helps humanitarian organizations act more effectively with limited resources, and enables communities to communicate and manage their needs.

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