10 NGO Training Courses
We’ve compiled a list of ten NGO training courses covering a broad range of topics like environmental, social, economic, advocacy, and human rights work. These courses are designed to help your team handle different challenges that they’ll encounter as they work to drive social change and improve communities.
1. Meet the Sustainable Development Goals
Meet the Sustainable Development Goals is an EdApp course developed in collaboration with United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), consisting of 4 interactive lessons that you can use to spread the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. This sponsored microlearning course highlights the 17 sustainable development goals put forward by the UN that aim to mobilize governments, businesses, and communities through more inclusive, participatory, and human-rights-based approaches. With the help of these goals, your team can strategize, organize, and deploy projects that create more sustainable development opportunities for communities, especially marginalized groups like indigenous people, women and children, cultural minorities, migrants, and refugees. This course can be accessed via desktop and mobile devices and is made available in 16 different languages including English, Spanish, Hindi, and Arabic.
- Price: Free (up to 10 users); contact for custom pricing
- Length: 5 to 10 minutes per lesson
- Certificates: Available
Created By EdApp
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2. Anti-Trafficking
According to the International Labor Organization, it is estimated that there are between 20 to 40 million people being trafficked and exploited all over the world. To combat this, many NGOs are raising awareness, advocating for stronger anti-trafficking laws, and providing support and services for victims. EdApp’s Anti-Trafficking course aims to help you and your staff understand the signs of trafficking, types of exploitation, and ways you can respond to a trafficking situation. As you go through the lessons, you’ll also learn about the different industries that benefit from human trafficking and how vulnerable groups like women, children, immigrants, and refugees become the most common victims. to exploit. Overall, this serves as a good introductory course for investigating how to prosecute criminals in smuggling immigrants for illegal activities. You can import this 4-part course directly from EdApp’s course library and deploy it to your team in just a few clicks.
- Price: Free (up to 10 users); contact for custom pricing
- Length: 5 to 10 minutes per lesson
- Certificates: Available
Created by EdApp
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3. How to Fundraise: A Guide to Fundraising for Non-Fundraisers
Planning and fundraising are among the most crucial aspects of NGO work that you need to know to effectively organize development projects for different communities. With FutureLearn’s How to Fundraise: A Guide to Fundraising for Non-Fundraisers course, professors from the University of Kent will walk you through the basics of fundraising, as well as how to create evidence-based fundraising research and develop a sustainable fundraising strategy that works for your team. This course also includes key lessons on how your organization can motivate people to donate and build good relationships with donors.
- Price: Free plan; 64 USD upgraded plan; 279.99 USD unlimited plan
- Length: 3 weeks, 4 hours per week
- Certificates: Available with the upgraded and unlimited plans
Created by FutureLearn
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4. Human Rights, Human Wrongs: Challenging Poverty, Vulnerability and Social Exclusion
edX’s Human Rights, Human Wrongs: Challenging Poverty, Vulnerability, and Social Exclusion includes a comprehensive course prepared by SDG Academy, intended for anyone involved in humanitarian work. Consisting of ten training modules, this course discusses important topics like poverty, gender inequality, women’s rights, and the social exclusion of minorities and indigenous people. It gives you a deeper understanding of social inequalities and how the rights of marginalized groups are violated every day. This course also highlights the importance of international laws and regional systems for human rights, communicating for social change, and ways you can support marginalized groups in their fight against inequality and injustice.
- Price: Free audit track plan; 49 USD verified track plan
- Length: 11 weeks, 2 to 4 hours per week
- Certificates: Available with the verified track plan
Created by edX
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5. Modern Slavery
Every day, millions of people across the globe are exploited for personal, commercial, and criminal gain. The International Labor Organization estimates that 71% of these modern slaves are women, while 29% are men. In an effort to fight these rampant human rights violations, EdApp has developed this Modern Slavery course to help you and your team identify perpetrators and recognize their different forms of modern slavery, including human trafficking, child slavery, debt bondages, forced labor, and forced marriage. It also highlights key indicators of modern slavery, how vulnerable groups can turn into potential victims, and most importantly, how to act against forced labor, coercion, and lack of equal pay. This 5-part course is made readily available on EdApp’s course library and is also entirely customizable so you can edit and rebrand the content according to your organization’s guidelines.
- Price: Free (up to 10 users); contact for custom pricing
- Length: 5 to 10 minutes per lesson
- Certificates: Available
Created by EdApp
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6. What is Gender and Why Gender Equality?
Made in collaboration with UNITAR, EdApp’s What is Gender and Why Gender Equality course goes into detail about gender stereotypes, gender inequality, and gender’s relation to poverty, education, and basic human rights. This course also provides insight on the key definitions of gender concepts like empowerment, gender analysis, gender mainstreaming, gender blindness, and gender-based violence, that you as an NGO worker, can use as guidelines to create equal opportunities for your beneficiaries. The course is enhanced with interactive quizzes to drive better retention results and make learning more fun and engaging. It’s also divided into 4 easily digestible lessons that you can complete in just a few minutes.
- Price: Free (up to 10 users); contact for custom pricing
- Length: 5 to 10 minutes per lesson
- Certificates: Available
Created by EdApp
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7. Human Rights: The Rights of Refugees
All over the world, people flee their homes and seek refuge in other countries to escape from conflict and poverty. As NGO workers fighting to create equal opportunities for these marginalized groups, it’s important to learn about their rights and ways you can take action. Human Rights: The Rights of Refugees is an in-depth video learning course by Amnesty International that covers the role of governments in protecting asylum seekers, prejudices and discriminatory behaviors towards refugees, and actionable steps to protect refugees’ rights. Made available in English, French, and Spanish, you can access this course online through edX’s eLearning platform.
- Price: Free audit track plan; 49 USD verified track plan
- Length: 3 weeks, 3 to 5 hours per week
- Certificates: Available with the verified track plan
Created by edX
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8. Tackling Environmental Challenges for a Sustainable Future
From melting glaciers and rising sea levels to increasing plastic waste and unsustainable energy systems, the world is currently facing numerous environmental challenges. This FutureLearn course, designed by the University of York, aims to raise awareness regarding these issues and provide sustainable solutions with the help of proper environmental research. Throughout the 4-week course, you’ll learn more about sustainability topics like global warming, glacier protection policies, ocean pollution, and aquaculture. In some of the lessons, you’ll also find different case studies that you can use as a reference for planning your own sustainable environment projects.
- Price: Free plan; 64 USD upgraded plan; 279.99 USD unlimited plan
- Length: 4 weeks, 4 hours per week
- Certificates: Available with the upgraded and unlimited plans
Created by FutureLearn
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9. International Women’s Health and Human Rights
Made available through edX, this NGO training course is designed by Stanford Online to help you understand how social, economic, and political factors affect women’s health and human rights. This course also delves into critical issues like discrimination, poverty, lack of access to education, reproductive health, and forms of harassment and violence like abuse and sex trafficking. After completing this self-paced online course, you’ll have a deeper understanding of the different challenges that many women face every day, which in turn, can help you recognize violence against women provide them with better solutions and more equal opportunities.
- Price: Free audit track plan; 49 USD verified track plan
- Length: 10 weeks, 1 to 5 hours per week
- Certificates: Available with the verified track plan
Created by edX
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10. Introduction to Microfinance
UNITAR, in partnership with AGFUND, published the Introduction to Microfinance course on EdApp to provide general knowledge on sustainable microfinance and how it can help marginalized communities overcome economic challenges. This course starts with a quick background on microfinance and its evolution throughout the years. It then discusses sustainable microfinancing solutions and technologies like mobile payment and e-wallets that NGOs can put in place to help those in poverty get equal access to financial resources. The lessons are divided into 5 bite-sized chunks to help increase information retention. You also have the option of revisiting this course to refresh your knowledge.
- Price: Free (up to 10 users); contact for custom pricing
- Length: 5 to 10 minutes per lesson
- Certificate: Available
Created by EdApp
Explore the courseMobilizing for social change with NGO training
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) play an essential role in our society. At both local and global scales, they advocate for social change, fight for human rights, and help underrepresented communities tackle problems in sectors such as education, health, infrastructure, and more. As they carry such huge responsibilities, NGOs need to have an effective and well-organized team capable of executing their mission and providing solutions to the different communities they serve. One of the best ways to achieve this is through NGO training. We've provided some of the most globally relevant NGO training courses that can help your team build the knowledge and skills they’ll need to empower communities, overcome challenges, and promote positive change.