Bond launches leadership tool to help with safeguarding in aid sector

Bond has today announced the launch of a new leadership tool to help organisations build a positive safeguarding culture against sexual exploitation and abuse in the aid sector. The tool will help guide leaders through how to assess their organisational culture about safeguarding and develop clear actions to help prevent all types of harm, including sexual exploitation, abuse and sexual harassment. The discussion-based tool was developed by Bond’s NGO safeguarding working group on leadership and culture to encourage leaders from organisations to work through 6 areas identified as the foundations of a strong safeguarding culture: accountability; policies and processes; do no harm/safer programming; survivor-centred approach; awareness-raising; and safer recruitment and HR processes. Each section is broken down into behaviours that support a positive safeguarding culture and includes questions for guided discussion and actions to consider.     Stephanie Draper, CEO of Bond, commented: “The past few years have proven that organisations cannot deliver good safeguarding practice without a healthy safeguarding culture. It isn’t enough to meet minimum compliance standards. Organisations need to live and breathe a strong safeguarding culture and as leaders, we play a fundamental role in creating this. Yet, pinning down what an organisation's culture is can be very difficult.” “We hope this tool will help guide leadership teams and staff through the process of assessing the strengths and weaknesses of their own organisational culture so they can have the honest and challenging conversations necessary to prevent harm, including sexual exploitation, abuse and sexual harassment.” Frances Longley, co-chair of the Bond safeguarding working group on leadership and organisational culture, said: “A healthy safeguarding culture has to be everybody’s responsibility, but it will only succeed if leaders step up to the challenge and lead by example. We’ve built this tool to help leaders to work with their teams through discussion to understand what a positive safeguarding culture looks like, and crucially, what they need to change to strengthen their own cultures at work. "Leaders who are serious about safeguarding must set clear expectations, and meet those expectations themselves. They need to invest in high standards, ask for feedback from their staff and be open about the organisation's shortcomings. And leaders must encourage honest, constructive conversations and be transparent about how they deal with unacceptable behaviour.” The leadership tool builds on the existing safeguarding commitments from the aid sector and was designed to help generate conversation, supporting leaders of the whole organisation, as well as, specific teams who want to improve safeguarding. It is also complemented by a shorter culture tool to help the wider organisation understand what an effective safeguarding culture is. The toolkit has been funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.   Main image: by fauxels from Pexels

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