sdg-awards-logo
Login
Vote Now
Get in touch
Update Profile
sdg-awards-logo
Login
Logout
Get in touch
SDG Awards 2024

Finalist Profile

Welcome to the SDG Awards, a distinguished recognition program honoring the remarkable contributions of individuals, organizations, and initiatives in championing the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Finalist Profile

Peace Operations Training Institute

Visit Website
Linkedin
Peace Operations Training Institute
About Company
  • Company Type: E-learning
  • Founded in 2008
  • Located at Williamsburg, USA
  • Employees: 11 – 50

SDG Awards 2024

Category - SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and strong institutions
Voting Portal

Peacekeeper Training: Provides accessible e-learning courses on peacekeeping, humanitarian relief, and security operations, helping to build the capacity of military, police, and civilians.

➜ Peacekeeper Training: Provides accessible e-learning courses on peacekeeping, humanitarian relief, and security operations, helping to build the capacity of military, police, and civilians.
➜ Collaboration: Partners with entities like the UN and WHO, ensuring that their curriculum aligns with global peacekeeping standards and needs.
➜ Focus on Inclusivity: Through its courses, promotes gender awareness and inclusivity, crucial for just and peaceful institutions.
SDG_Icon 16

1. What is the local impact your organization has achieved regarding your selected SDG? (No Word Limit)

The overarching goal of POTI is to help the people who are helped, protected, and served by peace operations personnel. Our approach to this goal is to prepare peace operations personnel across the world so that they can better serve the local communities with which they eventually work. The local impact of POTI is testified to in reports we receive from deployed POTI-student peace operations personnel. Students typically write about how the course has enhanced their understanding of an issue or given them the skills to perform their duties. For example: 1. One student wrote that the course for military observers “has been an eye opener in the sense that I have gained a lot more knowledge especially in my professional as a military officer who is currently deployed in the Democratic Republic of Congo”. 2. Another student, who took the Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration course and who was serving with UNMISS, wrote: I am satisfied with the knowledge gained from this training because I learned a large number of things I did not know. Furthermore, my mind is more open with regard to certain judgemental beliefs that I used to have without really taking into account certain aspects. (“Je suis satisfaite des acquis de cette formation parce que j'ai appris un grand nombre de choses que j'ignorais. En plus, mon esprit est plus ouvert par rapport a certains jugements que je portais sans vraiment prendre en consideration certains aspects”.) 3. One other student even wrote that the course Implementation of the UN Security Council Resolutions on the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda in Africa even changed the way he interacts with his sisters and wife, and that now family decision-making is more of a collective process. There are so many examples of how POTI’s approach of using technology and focusing on the accessibility of that technology results in our organization being able to reach diverse, global audiences and engender real effects within local contexts, communities, and even families.

2. What is the global impact your organization has achieved regarding your selected SDG? (No Word Limit)

POTI’s overarching goal is to help people in conflict and post-conflict situations by expanding the knowledge of and improving the capacities of peace operations personnel. Our approach to this is global, and this approach means that we contribute to the improvement and capacity-building of peace operations forces on a structural level: the professionalism and capacity of United Nations and other organisations’ peace operations personnel worldwide have been enhanced through the study of POTI courses. POTI achieves the goal of reaching present and future peace operations personnel through three programmes: the National Training Centre E-Learning Platform (NTCELP); E-Learning for Mission Staff (ELMS); and Individual E-Learning for Peacekeepers from Select Regions (IELP). Through NTCELP, more than 50 centres worldwide now incorporate POTI e-learning into their training through the NTCELP programme; POTI garnered enrolments from personnel serving on all United Nations missions in operation between 2020-2023 thanks to the ELMS programme, and we provide training to individual peace operations personnel from Africa, Latin America, and the Asia Pacific through the IELP programme. Altogether, POTI has more than 95,000 enrolments annually. All students studying through these programmes receive free access to all training materials and are able to enrol and complete courses at absolutely no cost; this means that e-learning is provided freely to peacekeeping training centre staff and students, military, police, and gendarmerie, and Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Foreign Affairs personnel from the regions of Africa, Latin America, and the Asia Pacific. Outside of these sponsored programmes, POTI also offers about half of its courses for free to all interested. In total, paid enrolments are less than 2% of total enrolments. POTI provides a full curriculum of e-learning on peace operations to its students. This curriculum is broken down into five categories: Common Core; Humanitarian Concepts and Human Rights; Mission Components, Operations, and Procedures; Gender Awareness; and History of Peace Operations. Each category contains a variety of courses on topics related to the category. The Common Core includes courses on the UN system, principles of peacekeeping, and ethics. These courses are created in partnership with subject matter experts and UN entities. Courses are updated regularly to ensure that future and present peace operations personnel are receiving the most up-to-date information and training possible. Another way that POTI ensures global reach and global impact is by offering translations of courses. POTI endeavours to provide as many translations as possible, and the organisation currently offers twenty-two translations in French, fifteen translations in Spanish, three translations in Portuguese, and one translation in Arabic. Lastly, a key aspect of the Institute’s approach to global impact is by ensuring the technological accessibility of course materials. All courses are provided in pdf-format with an online final exam. The entire process of registering an account to downloading course materials to completing the final exam is tested on a virtual 3G network to ensure maximal accessibility even in places or at times when a student might not have fast or steady internet. POTI also offers additional training tools like interactive modules and audiobooks to allow students to learn in the way that best suits them, but the core parts of each course are the pdf textbook and online final exam. POTI approaches the question of global impact with a multipronged strategy that focuses on distribution and availability of materials, depth and breadth of course materials, and technological accessibility of course materials. This strategy reaches a maximum number of students, ensures their ability to use the courses, and covers diverse topics and ideas that are crucial to peace operations while allowing for students to choose ones most relevant to their needs or locale. In this way, POTI is able to achieve global impact by providing training to individuals across the world to enhance their capacity and knowledge and thereby contribute to the amelioration of global peace operations systems.

3. What is the scalability of your innovation and how do you plan to achieve it? (No Word Limit)

POTI e-learning is scalable beyond the needs of world peace operations. As of July 2024, the United Nations counted just over 60,000 personnel deployed on peace operations. Taking into account personnel in training, personnel who recently completed a mission, and other non-active personnel, the actual number of UN peace operations personnel is much higher. There are other organizations and ad-hoc coalitions that are currently carrying out active peace operations, including the European Union and the African Union. Even with all such operations considered, the number of peace operations personnel (including active, inactive, and those in training) pales in comparison to the technological capacity of POTI to serve students. POTI e-learning is entirely automated: students can enrol in and complete courses without the need for direct intervention on our side (though we do offer student support should they run into any trouble or have any questions). This also includes students who are using the courses as part of training at a national training centre or on a mission. Students are able to register their account using the centre’s eligibility code, at which point they have access to all courses and are added to the list of students that training centre or mission training staff can view in the admin portal. In this way, POTI is able to achieve scalability for students globally while still supporting local centre and mission training initiatives.

4. What is your organization’s unique strategy for using technology to achieve your selected SDG? (150 Words Limit)

The strategy used by POTI for using technology to promote peaceful and inclusive societies and to provide access to justice for all (SDG 16) is to create impactful courses, focus on relevant audiences (present and future peace operations personnel), and maximize accessibility to those courses. POTI courses focus on numerous topics, but questions of inclusivity—specifically of gender inclusivity—are crosscutting issues in all of our courses. Additionally, POTI courses are used by police, gendarme, military, and civilian professionals who are directly involved in peace operations and actively working to promote peaceful societies. Our approach to technology maximizes accessibility by keeping the core parts of courses simple to allow for students with slow or unsteady internet to use our courses. We test our site, app, and core course materials using a virtual 3G network to ensure accessibility for all.

5. What challenges did you encounter while working for your selected SDG, and how did you address them? (150 Words Limit)

Every year POTI must work hard to ensure continued funding of its programmes. Funded primarily by governments, POTI is susceptible to changes political situations in our sponsor nations. Additionally, because of restrictions attached to our funding packages, certain key parts of our functioning as an organization cannot be paid for using grant-provided funds. This means that even when POTI receives enough grant funding, we may still encounter difficulties paying for things like tax services (key to our continued status as a 501(c) nonprofit organization). As a small organization, we have limited capacity. Our work requires constantly reviewing and updating courses, and we also strive to add new courses to cover new, developing, or previously unaddressed topics. Balancing these and other projects is a significant challenge, as we must keep the number of courses at a manageable level for us while still providing the best training possible for our students.

6. How did you engage local communities and stakeholders in your work, and what was their feedback? (150 Words Limit)

POTI engages with local communities and stakeholders in a variety of ways. Primarily, these are institutional engagement efforts and student questionnaires. POTI performs multiple official outreach campaigns to key partners across the world each year. These partners include national training centres, key institutions in countries included in the IELP programme (e.g. national police in countries that contribute police personnel to peace operations). POTI meets regularly with these groups to better understand how they use the training, how effective the training is, how training has benefitted personnel on mission, and more. In addition, POTI regularly meets with military and diplomatic personnel of countries involved in peace operations to gain insights and aid in the distribution of training materials. POTI students are given questionnaires to fill out three times after completing a course: upon completion of the course, after three months, and after nine months. These questionnaires help POTI better understand how effective the training materials are, how useful the knowledge gained is once a student is on mission, and what other topics could be useful for students.

7. Which organizational skills and resources did you use to deliver goods/services without harming the environment or society? (150 Words Limit)

POTI provides e-learning that can be used on devices that students own or have access to. Not only is this an environmentally responsible solution to the question of training materials for peace operations personnel, but it also allows POTI to reach students across the globe with ease. In addition to in-browser access on computers and mobile devices, students can access POTI courses via the POTI Classroom mobile apps for Android and iOS. In all these cases, POTI seeks to achieve its goals by using technology and resources already on hand.

8. In your view what roles do businesses, governments, and civil society should play in achieving the SDGs, and how can they collaborate effectively? (150 Words Limit)

Civil society organizations like POTI have the opportunity to advocate for those individuals they specifically serve. In our case, we specialize in advocating for the rights of those in host countries of peace operations as well as the wellbeing and safety of those serving on peace operations. We work with UN agencies and training centres to create a mutually beneficial and harmonious ecosystem of training to meet these goals and in doing so advance the UN agenda and SDGs.

9. What advice do you have for individuals or organizations aiming to create positive change and support the SDGs? (150 Words Limit)

It is crucial always to keep in mind the main beneficiaries when planning, and taking their feedback into full consideration will ensure project success and sustained outcomes. One must always keep the dignity and wellbeing of the beneficiaries, as this will more often than not lead to positive outcomes.

10. How would winning this SDG Award help you enhance your impact and expand your project? (150 Words Limit)

Winning this SDG Award would help enhance the impact POTI has by providing further recognition of the important work that POTI does. This SDG Award and other respected, international forms of recognition bring attention to impactful work and thus help organizations like POTI establish partnerships, get further funding, and generally continue functioning to pursue their mission and goals further. If POTI were to win this SDG Award, it would directly contribute to our ability to provide training to present and future peace operations personnel, to contribute to the amelioration of peace operations structures worldwide, and most importantly to help ensure that populations protected and served by peace operations personnel are served by the best personnel possible with the necessary training, knowledge, and skills to ensure success and a positive impact.

11. What are your future objectives regarding your selected SDG? (150 Words Limit)

The core mission of POTI is directly related to SDG 16. We are committed to bringing impartial, essential, and practical knowledge to civilian, police, and military personnel working towards peace worldwide. Going forward, we plan to continue pursuing this goal. Amongst other things, this includes course development—creating, updating, and translating courses—and outreach to strengthen existing and create new partnerships with stakeholders. We are also working on adding new resources for our students, notably interactive modules. These will enhance the learning experience but will not replace the core model of our courses (pdf textbook with an online final exam), as we continue to prioritize accessibility to our training materials.
sdg-awards-logo

Powered by

SDG Awards, hosted by the SDG Alliance of the European Technology Chamber since 2019.

About Us

Quick Links

Contact Us

Facebook Linkedin Instagram

Legal