Nik Rilkoff
Nik joined HQAI in 2018, bringing a passion for humanitarian accountability. Starting with a women’s development project in Bougainville at the end of the 90s Nik has grown 25 years’ management experience with international and national NGOs across Asia and East and Southern Africa.
From 2015-17, Nik worked for DanChurchAid (DCA) while managing “Listen Learn Act” (LLA), a partnership with Save the Children Denmark and Ground Truth Solutions that worked closely with Sphere and the CHS Alliance.
LLA explored quality and accountability in practice and reinforced the roll-out of the CHS seeking input from affected communities and helped NGOs “course correct” based on that feedback.
As well as auditing organisations on their CHS journey, Nik has worked and volunteered with many community organisations, most recently Age Concern New Zealand, supporting older people to live healthy and active lives, particularly free from elder abuse.
English
Trust, integrity, safety
The staff at a head office told me that they had functioning complaint response mechanisms available to all of the communities they worked with worldwide. The field component of the audit revealed that this was not the case, which was as much of a shock to me as to the NGO itself: the staff truly believed there were systems in place. They subsequently embarked on a journey of systemic organisational and cultural change and have come through that process with one of the strongest CRM consultation processes and mechanisms I have ever seen. It’s an extraordinary achievement for the NGO as well as the communities.