Community of Practice
Field consultations that formed the basis of the GPC Strategic Framework 2016-19 underlined the need for information exchange and lessons learned to be shared across operations. As a result the GPC Community of Practice was created to ensure that GPC support is better targeted to the needs of the field and that protection actors inform analysis and priority setting at the global level.
To foster a culture of innovation and information sharing, the platform will dedicate space to protection cluster coordinators, the GPC’s Area of Responsibilities and task teams to exchange information and give feedback on lessons learned and activities rolled out in the field.
The platform also hosts a public ‘Exchange’ space open for other protection actors, to facilitate peer to peer support as well as exchange of information. The purpose of the platform is to build a more inclusive and diverse community to share field practices, ideas that worked (or not worked) and discuss innovative ways to make protection action more effective. In doing so, the platform nurtures rich discussions with the aim of yielding new and fruitful approaches to protection challenges.
In the future, the platform also will host a “protection challenge” which focuses on convening the collective talents of practitioners within and across traditional and non-traditional actors. The protection challenge will crowdsource new ideas and best practices to help solve direct challenges that the Global Protection Cluster faces in the field. Building on the GPC Strategic Framework objective of engaging with a wide variety of actors and potential new partners, the challenge section will enable collaborative problem solving and idea generation. It is a space, where the online community can contribute ideas, solutions and discussion to a common issue or concern.
The GPC Operations Cell administers and moderates the Community of Practice. IRC, with the support of the GPC Operations Cell, will administer the protection mainstreaming page. Discussions will be moderated in English, French, Arabic, and Spanish.
Please visit the GPC Community of Practice and share your experiences, views or post a question as well as ideas.
For more information on the Community of Practice, please refer to the subsequent documents or contact us at GPC@unhcr.org