How we work with clusters

Five commitments

The data belongs to the organisation that recorded it. A cluster lead, a donor and UnityHelp itself see an organisation's records only if that organisation says so. An organisation can leave with its data at any time.
Free for humanitarian actors. National NGOs, community response rooms, national societies, international NGOs and UN agencies pay nothing for humanitarian use. Paid plans for other users fund the platform.
No agency gets exclusivity. No cluster, agency or donor owns the platform, directs its roadmap or decides who may use it.
Nothing about a person leaves the platform. A cluster receives counts and places, never names. Small counts are withheld so that no one can be identified from a figure.
We fit what exists. Organisations keep reporting to the cluster the way the cluster asks. UnityHelp makes that reporting easier; it does not replace the cluster's own systems.

What a cluster can get

Its members' aggregates, by state and locality, when the members consent: sites, facilities, activities, needs the members cannot cover.
Gaps: where a need is reported and no organisation has declared an activity.
Referral pathways: how many referrals were made, answered, and left without an answer, by purpose and state. Never a case.

What a cluster cannot get

A person's record, a case, a household's identity.
One organisation's records without that organisation's consent.
A copy of the platform under the cluster's own name.

Why use UnityHelp alongside your own tools?

Every organisation is free to build its own tool, and some will. Three things UnityHelp adds beside them.

It runs today. UnityHelp runs for Sudan in Arabic and English, offline on a phone, with the referral, site, household and cash workflows working, so organisations can start now rather than wait for a new build.
A cluster's tool serves one cluster. The organisations in the field work across clusters: the same team runs a takaya, refers a survivor and registers households. A tool owned by one agency stops at that agency's mandate, and the organisations end up with five tools and five logins. UnityHelp belongs to no agency, so every cluster is served equally.
You do not depend on us. The organisation's data can be exported at any time, and the software will be released under an open-source licence once the first pilot ends. If UnityHelp disappeared, the platform could be run by anyone.

What we ask of a cluster is not money and not endorsement. It is to let its members use the platform, and to tell us what the cluster needs from it.

Site management

Which gathering sites exist, how many people are in them, who works there, and how crowded they are.

One register of sites that every organisation shares. A site is a place several organisations work in, not one organisation's row.
The site's boundary, walked by a field worker with the phone; from it, the area and the space per person against the Sphere standard.
Who works at each site, and each organisation's own count of the households it has registered there, kept apart, never added across organisations.
Displacement figures from DTM and food security phases from the IPC, refreshed from the sources with their dates, on the same map.

The sector can get the sites, their estimates and their dates, by state and locality, from the organisations that agree to share. Never a household's identity.

Protection and referrals

When a person is referred from one organisation to another, does anyone answer, how long does it take, and which pathways are dead.

A referral from one organisation to one other, for one purpose, with the person's consent, that expires. The case is readable by the receiving organisation alone; the platform's own staff cannot read it.
The receiving organisation's answer: accepted, served, could not serve, or the person did not arrive. A due time by urgency. No free text, because a sentence about a case is where a case leaks.
Referrals to services outside the platform, such as a hospital, a clinic or legal aid, confirmed by the service with a one-time code and no account. A survivor's referral carries no reference at all.
Each organisation's own report: referrals made, answered, answered in time, left unopened, by purpose and state, and the gaps where nobody receives.

The sector can get pathway measurements and gaps from the organisations that agree to share. Never a case, never a name.

Food security and livelihoods

Where people are being fed, whether the food is running out, and who distributes what.

Takayas, the community kitchens, each with its meals served, its food stock as fine, low, critical or depleted, and the people it reaches.
Distribution points, with what is prepositioned by item category and what was distributed.
Each organisation's declared activities in food, agriculture and livelihoods, and the needs it sees and cannot cover; the gap where a kitchen reports critical stock and nobody has declared a food activity there.
IPC phases by area with their dates; WFP market prices by market, never averaged for the country.

The sector can get kitchens and distribution points by locality with their last report, stock status counts, declared activities and uncovered needs. Never a beneficiary list.

Health

Which facilities are open, what medicines have run out, and where an outbreak is starting.

Health centres, with operating status, services and staffing.
Medicine stock by item, with critical shortages flagged; disease alerts from the facility, with the date.
Field reports from the facility in Arabic or English, with a photo or voice note.

"None of the 15 health centres has recorded its stock" and "no health centre is short" are different answers, and the platform gives the right one. The sector can get facilities by locality with status, shortage and alert counts. The platform holds no patient records.

Nutrition

Which nutrition sites are over capacity, where therapeutic food is running out, and where admissions are rising.

Nutrition centres, with admissions, capacity and whether the centre is over it.
Therapeutic food stock, with critical status flagged; field reports from the centre, with the date.
The gap where a centre reports over capacity or critical stock and no organisation has declared a nutrition activity there.

The sector can get centres by locality with status, capacity and stock counts, and the uncovered needs. Nothing on a child or a caregiver.

Cash working group

Did the money reach the household.

A payment list sent to a provider under a declared activity, and the provider's return file, kept as it came.
The household's own word, through a channel the payer does not control.
The state of every payment, derived from the three: instructed, the provider says paid, the household confirms, the household denies, or the provider said nothing.

Two rules: silence is never success, and a provider's "paid" is a claim; only the household's confirmation closes a payment. The working group can get counts by status and the share households confirmed. Never a payee's name or number.

Shelter, non-food items and WASH

UnityHelp records less for these sectors than for the others, and this page says so.

At each site: water access status and the number of families needing shelter, reported by field workers.
Distribution points with prepositioned and distributed items by category, including shelter and non-food items.
Each organisation's declared activities in shelter, non-food items and WASH, and the needs it cannot cover.

Not recorded yet: latrine counts, water quantity per person, shelter condition. If your sector needs these, tell us what a field worker should be asked. The form is built from the sector's question, not ours.

Information management

Who does what, where, and is it current.

Each organisation's activities: one place, one sector, a status and period, households and people planned and reached, declared and updated by the organisation's own administrator.
Needs the organisation sees and cannot cover, in the same form.
Public sources refreshed from the source with their own dates, never the day of refresh: DTM rounds, IPC analyses, UCDP conflict events, ReliefWeb, HDX, FTS funding.

The cluster's 3W stays the cluster's. UnityHelp aims to make an organisation's declaration once and let it reach the cluster in the cluster's format. Information management can get the 3W aggregates of the organisations that agree to share, with the date each row was last updated. Never household or case data.