Ukraine: OCHA transforms NGO’s technical skills to help more people in front-line areas
By Mariia Teteriuk and Yaroslav Berezovskyi
A Ukrainian non-governmental organization (NGO) working in the country’s front-line areas has transformed the way it processes people’s needs and reports to donors, thanks to a partnership with OCHA.
Relief Coordination Centre (RCC) operates in Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia Regions, working with more than 290 local NGOs to organize logistics, manage high volumes of evacuation requests and collect essential data to guide response efforts.
RCC is a micromodel of OCHA’s coordination role, but for smaller and local organizations in the Kharkiv Region. This year, the Ukraine Humanitarian Fund, the world’s largest OCHA-managed Country-Based Pooled Fund, allocated US$2.5 million to support RCC’s activities.
From Google Sheets to dashboards
RCC uses Google Sheets to track evacuees and aid distributions at the Kharkiv transit site. But when the volume of evacuees significantly increased in March 2024, those Google Sheets became ineffective. That’s when OCHA stepped in.
"At the beginning of 2024, we were normally coordinating about 40 evacuations per day," recalled Oleksandr Kulyk, RCC’s Head of Information Communication and Technology. "But when the Vovchansk offensive [the Russian Federation’s military offensive in the border areas in Kharkiv Region, which began in April 2024] started, it was up to 1,000 people a day arriving at the transit centre. There was a huge amount of data that needed to be processed."
OCHA helped RCC strengthen its information management systems, first by improving its data-collection practices. OCHA introduced the use of standardized geographic codes, known as pcodes, to enhance location data accuracy, and it advised on duplication and consistency in registering evacuees.
Once a reliable data set was established, OCHA’s Information Management Unit created the Kharkiv Transit Centre Evacuation Dashboard. It visualises evacuee flows, places of origin and destination, and types of assistance provided at the transit centre. When RCC later launched a rapid needs assessment to better understand the remaining needs of people who had passed through the centre, OCHA helped develop an additional dashboard page to present the results.
RCC can now report to donors and partners more effectively and ensure the response is aligned with changing needs.
“The dashboard developed in cooperation with OCHA is actively used by humanitarian actors, local authorities and volunteer groups,” said Bohdan Yakhno, RCC Director in the Kharkiv Region. “It offers real-time insights into evacuees’ needs, and helps inform both immediate assistance and future planning. Furthermore, the dashboards serve as a valuable resource for advocacy, drawing on data from rapid needs assessments and other pertinent sources.”
Making the response more inclusive
OCHA’s Disability Adviser trained RCC on collecting disability-disaggregated data, which has helped the NGO’s assessments and transit centre operations become more inclusive. RCC has since enhanced its expertise in inclusive response, and it now routinely incorporates disability-related data into its assessments and response monitoring.
Scaling up
Working with OCHA helped RCC to enhance its data-collection, analysis and visualization practices, and the NGO is now applying these new skills to other projects.
Bohdan explained: “As an organization, we have experienced significant growth in our data-management and visualization capacities, which we are already applying to the development of new informational products as well as the enhancement of existing ones.”
OCHA continues to provide technical support to RCC as needed. The partnership highlights how targeted assistance can effectively enhance front-line humanitarian action, even in the most challenging environments and despite the global humanitarian financing crisis.