Who is this blog for?
Perhaps you’ve seen the United Nations or Red Cross on the nightly news responding to natural disasters, assisting refugees fleeing war, or helping to rebuild shattered communities? Maybe you have volunteered your time, or given money to a relief operation, perhaps you sponsored a child in Africa or participated in a fundraiser for the Tsunami. Maybe you watched celebrity fund-raisers and wondered in frustration whether there was more you could do than give money to aging rock-stars?
If you’ve ever wanted to run a refugee camp; feed the hungry; shelter refugees; bring assistance to war-torn countries or disaster-stricken populations – if you saw the Indian Ocean Tsunami, wars in the Balkans and Africa, or Hurricane Katrina and your first thought was “I could help, but I don’t know how to get there” – then this blog is for you.
It is for anyone who ever wanted to be a humanitarian relief worker, or work for a development agency overseas. It’s for people who want to find a job that is challenging, rewarding, unusual and absorbing. It will tell you how to get the skills, experience and contacts to find work in this field, but more importantly, it will help you decide whether you really want to. It will tell you the good sides, and the less good sides of a career in the humanitarian industry, and help you navigate the numerous career paths that are there if you know where to look.
It’s the information I wish I had had when I left university and started trying to get a job in the Balkans just after the peace treaty that ended the wars there in 1995. I knew I wanted to work overseas in relief and development, but I didn’t know how to make it happen. I’d just left college and been told by all of the 70 aid agencies that I applied to work for that they did not want to hire me because I had no experience working overseas. The careers counselor at my university told me that working for aid agencies was not a realistic prospect, and that I should consider trying to get a “real job”. I was starting to think she might be right.
Digression – national and expatriate staff
The vast majority of people employed by international NGOs are from the country that they are working in (Indonesians in Indonesia, for example). This makes them ‘national’ staff, governed under the human resource regulations, employment laws etc of that country. A small minority (typically about 5-10%) of staff are ‘ex-patriate’ (latin for ‘outside their country’), and are working in a country of which they are not a citizen (for example, a U.S. citizen working in Indonesia, or an Indonesian working in Afghanistan). These people are typically governed under the human resource and employment law of the home office of the organization employing them.The practical results of this are that there are two categories of employment in most organizations, ‘locals’, ‘national staff’, or ‘nationals’, and ‘ex-pats’, or ‘foreigners’.
The point of this digression is to tell you that this book is about getting a job with an international agency outside your own country. While my experience is as a westerner, much of this advice will apply to you whichever country you are from. These strategies are not as applicable if you live in a country where international agencies work and want to find a job with them. That is quite a different proposition, and you will likely need to apply different strategies.
This is great.
I appreciate all of your information and dedication to this blog. I just came across it and I’m already hooked. haha Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Thank you – I did – hope you did too!
Nick
Hey, I’ve been reading this blog for the past couple days — wonderful database and overview — and I was wondering: how viable would you say an undergraduate degree in Sustainable Development is, especially versus Anthropology with an SD concentration? Or is there a hands-down more viable course of study altogether? For instance, I hear engineering floated around a fair amount. Or perhaps is there a viable trade skill-set (electrician, plumbing, ‘computer information systems’, etc)?
I have maintained great interest in aid work for many years but recently took an indefinite hiatus from university in order to re-align my goals and major, as I realized the anthropologist’s life of grad school and subsequent grant proposal writing is not my optimal career path. I have a couple semesters of Anthropology under my belt and could quite plausibly finish up with an BS/BA Anthro w/ SD concentration, but I’m open to other options and welcome your opinion.
Hi Brittain,
Thanks for the feedback – if you like it please do consider buying the e-book, or at least rating it on Amazon – that helps me a lot!
On the subject of qualifications, there are two main issues: For a certain type of job (i.e. public health, engineering, medical etc) you require a certification or qualification to get the job. For everything else, in terms of getting your first job, I don’t think your education matters very much. What counts is your ability to get things done in challenging environments. One of the main things recruiters looks for when they are trying to figure that out is whether you have a track-record of that on your resume. That’s why field experience is so important.
Note that I’m not saying education doesn’t matter, or that what you take is not important to your path as a professional, simply that an entry level recruiter is not going to ask you what your concentration was in – it doesn’t matter for entry level jobs (unless they are in one of those sectors we mentioned above). Focus on things you are interested in that will get you out into the field a lot!
Hope that helps, and is not too much of a downer…
Nick
Don’t worry, it wasn’t a downer at all. Thanks for the clarification. This blog has helped put things in perspective, so thanks again for that as well. Anyways, I “Liked” your book on Amazon, but don’t see a way to rate — I have to buy to review, yeah?
Actually, I have one more question: in your experience, is there a desire in the developing world (God knows there’s a need) — from the public, the public sector, and/or the private sector — for ecological/sustainable approaches to subsistence, infrastructure, and planning, etc? Or rather, do the people you’ve interacted with have an interest in pursuing a course of sustainable development?
I apologize for the crude breadth of my question haha I’m not familiar with the jargon.
Hey Brittain -
Anyway, the issue of sustainable approaches to development… Boy that is a big question – I’m going to punt it by saying that the ‘developing world’ is not a thing – there is a huge variation in what’s going on socially, politically, environmentally in the part of the world that I think you’re talking about. The reason I’m squeamish about this definition is not entirely to avoid answering the question, but to point out that China is not Chad, and, Western China is not Beijing etc. There are very different forces at work that come to bear on people and ecosystems.
I’ll check the Amazon issue – I’m not sure, but it couldn’t hurt to buy it…
Broadly though, if I were pressed on this issue, I would say that the problem often comes down to – yes – in the abstract, all things being equal, people everywhere would love for things to be ecologically sustainable, and for their development not to be at the expense of vital ecosystems. However, that’s rarely the case, and when forced to make a choice between boiling water so your kids don’t die of diarrheal diseases and preserving local forests, most people cut the trees down.
The other issue is the externality game – very often the people cutting the trees, or whatever the issue is, are not the people most directly affected.
Of course, the whole ball-game from a sustainable development perspective is to find ways out of these problems. So the short answer is ‘yes’, there is a need for these kinds of understandings, but ‘no’, don’t expect the issue of atmospheric carbon to be high on the list of refugees.
Hope that helps somewhat!
Nick