Trust is crucial to the success of humanitarian action, but it is often taken for granted. It is tied up in relationships, hard to earn and easy to lose. Building trust with and within communities is complex, cannot be based on assumptions and requires an understanding of influencing factors, including social, economic, cultural, and environmental aspects. Without a tool to measure trust, it is difficult for humanitarian actors to act and develop strategies to build and maintain trust. But tools alone do not create trust. It is important that they are standardized and adapted to local dynamics. At the same time, they must enable humanitarian actors to use the data to develop specific programs and interventions that build and maintain trust and improve the effectiveness of their actions.

The Community Trust Index is an initiative launched by the IFRC Community Engagement and Accountability Team to help humanitarian organizations, actors and programmes measure trust from one side and act on data to improve work on the ground and at the local level of humanitarian work. TheIndex comprises six implementation steps, including planning, data collection and analysis, but also the creation of evidence-based action plans.

This interactive session builds on thispreviousCommunity Trust Indexwork to encourage open dialog and provide a platform for different perspectives, views,and experiences from the humanitarian sector. It invites professionals from the humanitarian sector, includingimplementers, researchers,and policy makers, to engage in a dynamic debate togenerate key recommendations toshape the future of the Community Trust Index, whichisboth a benchmark for measuring trust and a source of actionable recommendationsto improve the humanitarian work. The aim is to explore the fundamental aspects of measuring, building,andmaintainingcommunity trust in humanitarian action more broadlyand inspecificthematic issues like the climate crisis.