Supporting Local Civil Society Organisations in Armenia: Localisation case study, Mission Armenia

“Mission Armenia” (MA) is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) founded in 1988 and registered in 1993 after the introduction of the NGO sector in Armenia. Mission Armenia’s mandate is to promote protection of fundamental human rights of vulnerable local and refugee elderly people and people with disabilities, youngsters, families with many children, orphans, etc., and lobby for social policy change.

Over these years, tens of large-scale projects have been implemented by Mission Armenia with a total amount of over USD 35 million in grant funding by USAID, US Embassy, UNHCR, BPRM, the World Bank, Japan Social Development fund, Caritas Sweden, Embassy of Japan, German Embassy and many more international/European agencies/ governments.

Mission Armenia has provided integrated social, health, care, and legal services to over 47,500 local and refugee poor and vulnerable people of different age and gender groups.

The NGO is the founder and promoter of the Community-based Service Provision Model in Armenia which aimed to ensure dignified life for non-institutionalised disadvantaged elderly and other vulnerable people and prevent their social-psychological segregation from their community.

The NGO is a member of a range of national and international networks and has a branch in Australia.

Save the Children conducted two focus group discussions (FGD) with MA to get their insights on the results of localisation efforts carried out during the recent cooperation as part of the above-mentioned emergency response projects. The FGDs were based on the concept of seven dimensions of localisation used by Save the Children – partnership, capacity building, child participation, funding, coordination mechanisms, policy influence and visibility. The questionnaire developed for the purpose of this FGD is attached to this case study.

The objective of the assessment was to ensure deep dive into the relationships between Save the Children and MA as part of humanitarian response project and to assess:

• what worked well, what didn’t, and how to approach localisation next time and in other contexts;
• how to strengthen preparedness and what other capacity building support is required for local actors to perform autonomous work;
• partners’ expectations and recommendations, including garnering specific feedback on which of the seven dimensions of localisation are most important to the partners and why.