ReliefWeb’s Training section has been gaining popularity. Last year, the section advertised about 3,000 training opportunities by more than 570 organizations, catering to the needs of humanitarian professionals - a 16.5 per cent rise in the number of advertisements compared to the previous year and a threefold increase since 2009.
These days, training opportunities for humanitarians are offered in a range of ways, many using the latest technology to allow distance learning. Students can now earn their academic degrees from home, while those unable to attend conferences in person can follow the action in real time - or even after the fact while listening to a permanently archived webcast. To address this myriad of events, we listened to your suggestions and have made some changes to the Training section, specifically focusing on making it easier for advertisers to submit their training opportunities.
To advertise on ReliefWeb, you need to have an account. Registration is free and you can sign up at https://reliefweb.int/user/login. From here, go to the Training section and click on the “Advertise on ReliefWeb” link. This will take you to a page where you can promote your training opportunity.
Due to the rising number of e-learning courses and webcasts, we now offer more flexibility for courses without specific start and end dates.
We have added a checkbox for ongoing courses - labeled "No start/end dates - this is an ongoing course" - on the left-hand side of our advertisement posting form under the "Course dates” section. You’ll be required to add a link to your webpage containing the original advertisement or event listing, and you can copy and paste this in the Event URL field.
Applicants will be able to easily find registration information in your advertisements. Applicants sometimes mistake ReliefWeb as the actual advertising organization and try to send their materials directly to us. We now include a separate, mandatory “How to Register” section which will enable you to post contact information and other important details to make sure that these applicants will directly contact you instead.
On our actual website, this “How to Register:” information appears at the bottom of the advertisement as a separate section with a blue header.
In some cases, training opportunities occur simultaneously with a conference or course held at a physical location, and are later archived as webcasts. You can now select either on-site and/or online under the “Training Format.”
In other cases, multiple partners host events. You can now select more than one organization - even if it is not the one that you work for.
If you do not see a particular organization listed, you can write in the name in the “Body” field. A ReliefWeb editor may contact you about permission to post advertisements on the site on behalf of that organization or follow up with questions before publishing the ad.
We also decided to make a distinction between courses that are free and those that require registration fees. These checkbox options are featured in the “Cost” section on the right hand side of the form.
Finally, an important feature of our advertisement posting form is the lists of Training Types, Training Categories and Themes. These target your advertisements to registrants who are interested in specific subject areas or types of study. Some of our API partners also use these keywords to automatically display your content on their respective websites.
Clicking on a Training Type, Training Category or Theme will provide an expanded definition in order for you to understand how we organize content on ReliefWeb. For example, the screenshot above includes a description for our Lecture/Discussion Training Type, a general category that includes report launches, Twitter chats and webinars. Choosing the correct fields will help our users accurately search for advertisements according to topics and content.
We hope that these changes will allow more flexibility in advertising opportunities on ReliefWeb and continue to bring quality participants to your organization. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at training@reliefweb.int or visit the Training section at reliefweb.int/training.