Building the Skills of Humanitarian and Development Professionals Around the World
In late 2010, floods in Pakistan affected 20 million people in one of the worst disasters the world had ever seen. With so many children impacted by the floods, Save the Children needed to quickly train thousands of aid workers responding to the crisis. They contacted the Cornerstone OnDemand Foundation, and in just a few days we launched an online learning portal for Save the Children’s aid workers to take critical online training before deploying to Pakistan.
Out of this tragedy, we discovered there were humanitarian aid and development professionals around the world who had the same need for high-quality, accessible online training. We assembled an advisory committee of leading organizations and leveraged Cornerstone OnDemand’s learning management system to pilot an early version of DisasterReady in 11 countries with 20 humanitarian and development organizations.
In 2013, we launched DisasterReady with a simple but powerful mission: To better prepare humanitarian and development professionals for the critical work they do by providing high-quality, relevant online learning resources at no cost. The entire catalog of over 1,500 courses, videos, reference documents, and assessment-based certificate and certification programs are available on demand and 100% free.
Developed in collaboration with NGOs, U.N. agencies, humanitarian experts, and professional development providers, DisasterReady has curated and developed the largest free online learning library targeted to humanitarian and development professionals at every stage of their career.
Individuals can sign up and take self-paced online learning resources for free with the portal and content provided in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic. Today, more than 1,300,000 humanitarian and development professionals and organizations trust DisasterReady as a primary source of continuous learning and development.
As part of our commitment to providing high-quality online learning resources to the humanitarian and development sector, we are a proud member of the CHS Alliance.
Awards
2023
DisasterReady.org, in collaboration with EI Powered by MPS, is proud to celebrate winning four prestigious Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards® in learning and development for our Project Management Essentials Certificate provided at no cost to humanitarians.
2021
Awarded the Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards® Gold medal for Excellence in Learning which recognized DisasterReady.org for our innovation and excellence in making online education accessible to the global humanitarian sector.
