Caritas-Courage

We aim to do everything in our power to ensure that staff, consultants, volunteers and partner organizations adhere to the highest standards of behavior. A key instrument in this is the Code of Conduct to which each member of staff, volunteer and partner organization signs up.

Accountability and transparency are important to us. While we aim to do everything in our power to ensure respect of the Code of Conduct, we recognize that sometimes we may fail to uphold our values and commitments to the expected standard. We hold ourselves and everyone who works for us accountable.

If you have a concern, we invite you to help us tackle unacceptable behavior, so that we can hold perpetrators to account, support victims and survivors and improve how we do things by learning from our mistakes. Please file a concern via the complaint tool linked below.

• To the tool

We would like to hear from you, if you are concerned about any form of abuse, corruption and fraud, or any other behavior that is not in line with our values and standards.

Complaints can be about staff working for Caritas Switzerland, about volunteers or about partner organizations. We encourage you to complain directly to partner organizations but would like to hear from you if the problem cannot be resolved or is very serious in nature.

Please give as accurate and detailed a description of your concern as possible to allow us to investigate effectively.

You can file your complaint anonymously and communicate with us via an secure mailbox in our complaint tool. But we would be grateful if you could provide a means for us to contact you, as this may be helpful for the investigation.

• To the tool

Complaints will always be processed in confidentiality and the complainant will be protected, as long as the complaint is filed in good faith. Deliberately wrong accusations may lead to disciplinary or legal consequences.

All information of a confidential character will be stored safely, and only the staff involved in the investigation will have access on a need to know basis.

The complaint is processed by the Caritas Courage team, consisting of four employees from different sectors of the Caritas Switzerland office. If the complaint concerns one of these persons, they will be excluded from the investigation. The Caritas Courage team ensures that a formal investigation is initiated depending on the assessment of the complaint. The Caritas Courage team will inform the person who reported the complaint of the results of the investigation. This is done in a secure mailbox, taking into account data protection and privacy.