Welcome!

This site is about getting your first job as a humanitarian aid worker. Whether you want to run refugee camps, micro credit programs or health programs, this is my personal opinion (not my employer’s) about ways to make the transition to international relief and development work.

My take on getting a job as a humanitarian aid worker is organized by chapters (on the right-hand side under the heading Book chapters) – and is supposed to be read top-to-bottom more or less like a book. Book reviews, practitioner interviews and other pieces are posted below. Find out more about this blog here.

Please read the disclaimer, and understand that this line of work is not risk free. You need to do your own research, make your own decisions, and take responsibility for them.

If this site is as useful to you as a book you might have paid for please consider buying my new Kindle eBook, which contains much of the content from this site, thoughtfully formatted for off-line reading on a Kindle, iPad, laptop, or other e-reader. It’s $6, and honestly, what can you get for that these days? Get it here
One more thing – I would love anyone who likes this site to got to Amazon and review the e-book – it really helps me to recover some of the costs of hosting this site – thanks!

Should you take a Kindle overseas?

Should you take a Kindle with you on your first assignment instead of the huge pile of books you’re going to end up needing? Well, as always, it’s not that simple. The idea is seductive, you could leave behind a suitcase full of books and journals, and carry pretty much the entirety of human knowledge in a piece of technology the size of a notepad. While I’m down with that in principle (if, that is, you actually have all the books you want electronically, and don’t end up having to buy them again), in practice I think I would advise against this particular piece of electronica.

For one thing, it suffers from all the usual flaws of technology: It’s fragile, doesn’t like getting wet, you can’t use it to hammer a nail into the ceiling to hang a mosquito net, and it’s a theft target.

On the plus side, it can hold all the reference books you will ever need, but then so can your laptop, which you’re going to need anyway (and while we’re talking about laptops, I’ve been totally won over by the new MacBook Air – tiny, fast, and no moving hard drive!) So, save the hundred and fourty dollars, buy my e-book instead, and read it on your laptop!

That’s for non-fiction reference books, which play to the strengths of e-readers in my mind, then, for fiction, take real books – just a couple of them, and trade them with others.

Of course, if you want one anyway, it helps me support this site if you buy it from the link here (the price is the same for you).

Psychological first aid resources

The World Health Organization has just come out with some interesting new resources around psycho-social support in emergencies and mental health issues for emergency workers. Their new guide ‘Psychological First Aid: Guide for Field Workers’ covers how first responders can best offer social and psychological support as they provide humanitarian aid to people suffering from serious crisis events. It provides widely agreed upon psychological first aid materials for use in low and middle-income countries. It reflects the emerging science and international consensus on how to provide basic support to people in the immediate aftermath of extremely stressful events.

This link provides a downloadable version as well as other resources from the WHO.

Buy the eBook and support this site!

In the bad old days, if you wanted to publish a book you had to cut down a tree, pulp and bleach it, and then scribble your treatise on the flattened leaves, before carefully binding it. Nowadays, thanks to the collapse of traditional publishing, at the press of a button you can commit your content to the internet, where everyone can read it for free. Yea internet. Of course, that leaves the little problem of how to pay your rent, but hey, I’m sure we’ll figure that out eventually.

Thankfully, my website is now available in eBook form, which means you don’t have to labor through pages of free HTML, but rather you can browse at your leisure on the e-reader of your choice (as long as it’s a Kindle, iPad, iPhone, PC, Mac, or something else that runs Kindle software). Plus, you can pay me about the cost of a beer, which will console me somewhat about not being able to pay my rent from book sales.

So if this site was at least half as useful to you as a book you might have bought, click this link and go buy (and review) my ebook, at about half the cost of a book ($6) I think you’ll find it’s a bargain! Thanks!

Get it here.

More career advice from Alanna Shaikh

Alanna Shaikh

We last heard from Alanna when she gave us her tips on careers in international public health, but in the meantime she’s been busy setting up a mailing list and writing e-books on the topic of international development careers. She writes a weekly newsletter in the question / answer format based on either her experience or a guest expert. The newsletter is a $2 a month subscription (although she’s candid about not minding if people subscribe just for a month to get their question answered!), and the e-book summaries of the questions are $12.99 each. Examples of the types of questions she deals with are: “How long do I have to work for free?“, “What are the best types of entry level job?s“, and “What degrees are most useful?“.

I’m a fan of her advice and approach, and if you’re looking for more thoughts on getting a job in international development I’d definitely recommend you check her out at alannashaikh.com.

An example of the DIY job phenomenon

One way to get your start in this line of work is not to focus on getting a job at all, but instead on building your own NGO. This story from the Huffington Post is about a young woman who founds an orphanage and a school in Nepal, and is a fascinating example of the DIY phenomenon. It demonstrates that it’s certainly possible to have an impact in ways other than the traditional approach of getting a job with an existing agency.

Of course, there are downsides to this. It’s riskier, both in financial and security terms, and there is a real danger that for every Maggie there are dozens of stories like this that don’t work out so well.

Read the story here, and watch a video of Maggie speaking about her experiences here.

Tell me your story!

Sorry for the long break in postings, family and a day-job continue to get in the way, but I’d like to get the ball rolling again by asking you for your story, successful or not what has been your experience of looking for your first job in relief and development? Drop me an email and tell me about what you’ve tried, what has worked and what hasn’t,

Thanks,

Nick

Tiana Tozer, Monitoring and Evaluation Manager, Mercy Corps Sudan

Tiana Tozer

Tiana Tozer is currently Mercy Corps’ Monitoring and Evaluation Manager in Sudan, she is also an elite athlete and a wheelchair user. She came to Mercy Corps after an accomplished first career in the private sector. I spoke to her about her career, how she got her first job in relief and development, and the challenges facing people with disabilities in the international relief and development world.

Nick: What made you first want to work in the international relief and development field?

Esker Copeland, Internship Coordinator at CARE USA

Esker Copeland coordinates CARE USA’s US and international internship and fellowship programs. He has a background in international affairs and development, and a master’s degree in public health. His career background includes work in US non-profits liaising with universities and corporations to provide support for education programs. I asked him to talk about what he sees from a recruiting perspective and his view on careers in humanitarian work:

Nick: You deal with a lot of people in your role who are starting out in their careers, thinking that they might want to work in international relief and development – how do you select people who you think have potential for your program?

Jolynn Fisher, NGO Program Support, Afghanistan

Jolynn Fisher, Afghanistan

Jolynn Fisher has worked for Mercy Corps since 2005, and has been in Afghanistan since Spring of 2009. Currently she is in charge of providing programmatic support functions to Mercy Corps‘ activities in Afghanistan. She has a background in communications and journalism, and I caught up with her as she was starting her day in Kabul. Her blog Lost N Words describes (amongst other things) her experiences in Afghanistan. Here she talks about her career start, and some of the challenges she has faced.

Nick: Jolynn – you made the difficult move from working in a headquarters office to being an expatriate – how did you first decide you wanted to become involved with humanitarian aid work? How did you get your first job with Mercy Corps then make the transition overseas?

Alan Noble, Emergency Recruiter at World Vision International

Alan Noble is the Manager of Global Surge Capacity at World Vision International. He is based in Monrovia, California, but travels often to World Vision offices around the world to identify and support the training of people to serve in responding to the largest global emergencies. Here is his personal opinion and advice about getting a job as a humanitarian aid worker.

Nick: Alan, tell us a little about your background – how did you find your way into this line of work?