Fighting hard to help the victims of war
Guardian Unlimited Saturday April 19, 2003
The struggle to get help to Iraq has put aid workers on the front pages. But it's a competitive business which demands practical skills and experience as well as qualifications, reports Nic Paton
As the humanitarian crisis in Iraq deepens, the work of the world's aid agencies has come centre stage. But while television pictures of front-line aid workers bringing food, water, medical and other relief to people in desperate need have become all too familiar from crises around the world, it is just one small part of a much bigger picture.
Relief work is the public, indeed glamourous, face of the aid business, but the vast majority of aid and development agency work is, in fact, the job quietly of improving lives and battered environments.
Aid agencies rely on a vast array of support staff, such as political lobbyists and fundraisers, IT, finance and logistics specialists, media and policy experts, managers and administrators and often, on high streets up and down the country, volunteers and employees in shops.
The first thing to realise if you fancy working for an aid agency is not to expect to find yourself doling out food in Um Qasr at any time in the immediate future, says Mark Goldring, chief executive of volunteering organisation VSO.
A former development worker with both the UN and Oxfam, Mr Goldring stresses that a burning commitment to do good, while warmly welcomed, is rarely enough. You need to be able to prove you have experience or skills that can be put to practical use.
"It could be something in your own profession or in international development, either paid or voluntary. But it needs to be more than travelling," he says.
Getting into aid and development work is extremely competitive, agrees Andrew Thompson, international HR director for Oxfam, and getting into overseas field work is even tougher - with good reason.
"We cannot just put keen but inexperienced people into situations where are beneficiaries are relying on them, because for them it is life or death," he says.
Perhaps one of the most popular routes into field work is through a job in a support role, adds Mr Thompson. "But you have to be patient, and you need to be committed. We look for people who can push things through and take decisions, but also work as part of a team."
At Oxfam, employees are drawn from many different sectors, says Mr Thompson. Within its regional management centres alone there will normally be senior managers, fund raisers, people doing media and advocacy work, policy researchers, health and education workers, economic and humanitarian crisis specialists, poverty specialists and so on.
Voluntary work is another good route. "A lot of our volunteers are graduates and a lot of them use it as a stepping stone to get into the development sector," says Nicola Jamie, advocacy co-ordinator with charity Students Partnership Worldwide.
Doing voluntary work in India gave Jenny Willott, head of advocacy at Unicef in the UK, a taste of development work, but it was through working in parliament that she honed her professional skills. Ms Willott, 28, worked in the office of Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik for two years.
After a stint with Barnardo's in Cardiff, she joined Unicef in November 2001. With a remit to lobby MPs and civil servants and generally raise awareness about Unicef's work, her knowledge of the corridors of Westminster has proved invaluable, and was a key reason for her getting the job.
None of the jobs on her team are "entry level", she admits. "You have to have quite a good level of knowledge of the political system or working with the press. We will not just take people because they have a degree in bright ideas."
Formal entry routes are few and far between, too. Oxfam runs a UK graduate entry scheme, which tends to be focused on administrative and support roles, and some organisations, such as the World Bank, the UN and the Department for International Development, have internship schemes, but these are almost always at degree or postgraduate level.
Aid work undoubtedly can be extremely dangerous, as the death in Iraq last week of Canadian aid worker Vatche Arslanian, shot in crossfire in Baghdad, has highlighted.
It can also be emotionally demanding but hugely rewarding, says Dereje Wordofa, head of Oxfam's regional policy team. Mr Wordofa, 37, has worked extensively in Ethiopia, Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda.
"You have to have a lot of tenacity and personal strength. You are emotionally involved but you do not express it. It should not affect your rational thinking," he says.
Development work requires passion, commitment and multi-disciplinary skills but also an in-depth knowledge of the organisations and people you are dealing with, he argues.
"You need to know who you need to be changing in terms of behaviour and policies, and who are the allies you need to work with."
I am doing something worthwhile
Some 800 people applied for Arry Fraser's job as a policy researcher at Oxfam. But it was the skills she had picked up as an analyst at Business Monitor International, a specialist business and global markets publisher, that helped her to stand out from the crowd.
"It was a deliberate choice to go and work in the private sector to gain commercial expertise, I wanted to learn how financial markets work," says Ms Fraser, 25, who has been with Oxfam since January.
A Cambridge University social sciences graduate, she went to Venezuela for a year after graduating and then did a masters degree in politics and development at the London School of Economics.
"You really feel that you are doing something worthwhile, people are committed, professional and dedicated," she adds of working for Oxfam.
While very happy with her new role, Ms Fraser's long-term ambition is to gain more experience in development work in the field. And her advice for others wanting to work in aid agencies? "Be prepared to go into other sectors to build up skills. And just keep trying - perseverance helps."
Nursing skills were key to role in Brazil
Three years working as a volunteer on a leprosy programme in a remote village in the Amazon helped to convince nurse Jan Smith that aid and development work was what she wanted to devote her life to.
On her return she did a course in tropical medicine at London's St Pancras Hospital for Tropical Medicine, a degree in Latin American studies at Essex University and finally, in the summer of 1999, landed a job as programme officer for the Latin American section of CAFOD, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development.
"It has been a perfect opportunity. You meet marvellously inspiring people who are absolutely and completely dedicated. Last year, I went back to Brazil twice, which is about average," says Ms Smith, 41. She believes her practical skills as a nurse, backed by her volunteering experience and her academic work, were the key to her getting her the job.
"People think just doing a degree in international development studies will get you a job, but it's not true," she says. "You need to have some skills and you need to know that you are good at it, because all you will be able to take with you is your ability to do the job - and even that is hard because you are in a different cultural context."
It's also essential to have "endless enthusiasm" and excellent communication skills, she believes. "I can one minute be talking to someone living in a shanty town in Brazil and the next someone at the Foreign Office," she says.