Author Archives: jcravens

About jcravens

Jayne Cravens is an internationally-recognized trainer, researcher and consultant. Her work is focused on communications, volunteer involvement, community engagement, and management for nonprofits, NGOs, and government initiatives. She is a pioneer regarding the research, promotion and practice of virtual volunteering, including virtual teams, microvolunteering and crowdsourcing, and she is a veteran manager of various local and international initiatives. Jayne became active online in 1993, and she created one of the first web sites focused on helping to build the capacity of nonprofits to use the Internet. She has been interviewed for and quoted in articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press, as well as for reports by CNN, Deutsche Well, the BBC, and various local radio stations, TV stations and blogs. Resources from her web site, coyotecommunications.com, are frequently cited in reports and articles by a variety of organizations, online and in-print. Women's empowerment and women's full access to employment and education options remains a cross-cutting theme in all of her work. Jayne received her BA in Journalism from Western Kentucky University and her Master's degree in Development Management from Open University in the U.K. A native of Kentucky, she has worked for the United Nations, lived in Germany and Afghanistan, and visited more than 30 countries, many of them by motorcycle. She is currently based near Portland, Oregon in the USA.

Are You a Member of the Cyber Sweatshop?

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One of the most contentious discussions ever on OzVPM, an online discussion group for volunteer managers in Australia and New Zealand, was whether or not it was appropriate for people to volunteer for for-profit companies. The discussion started with a question on April 7, 2010, and it exploded with 221 messages for the month, on a group that averages about 35 messages in a month. Boundaries were pushed. Tempers flared. Teeth were gnashed. No conclusion was every reached.

Of course I was in the middle of it all. I said that, indeed, volunteers already DO contribute to for-profit organizations. I talked about volunteers in for-profit hospitals and for-profit hospices. I talked about volunteers at a recent Triumph motorcycle event I had attended. I talked about how these companies didn’t involve volunteers to save money; they involved volunteers because volunteers were the best people for the jobs. I also brought up that at least 90% of the content on Facebook was generated for free by users, meaning that we were all volunteering online for a for-profit company.

A year after I was bringing this up in workshops and online, The New York Times has thought of it as well, publishing a commentary, At Media Companies, a Nation of Serfs, which laments:

the growing perception that content is a commodity, and one that can be had for the price of zero… Old-line media companies that are not only forced to compete with the currency and sexiness of social media, but also burdened by a cost structure for professionally produced content, are left at a profound disadvantage.

Journalists aren’t happy. “The technology of a lot of these sites is very seductive, and it lulls you into contributing,” said Anthony De Rosa, a product manager at Reuters, in the article. “We are being played for suckers to feed the beast, to create content that ends up creating value for others.”

This isn’t the first time this concern has been vented, and that a backlash has been built against an online media company by users providing its content — remember America Online? Several of its users sued over ownership of the content they had created for AOL, content they weren’t paid for. Note this from the Wired.com article Disgruntled users called it a Cyber Sweat Shop from a few years ago:

Call them volunteers, remote staff, or community leaders – they are the human face of AOL. They host chats, clean scatological posts off the message boards, and bust jerks for terms-of-service violations. Fourteen thousand volunteer CLs not only play hall monitor to AOL’s vaunted “community,” they are that community. Their hours? Flexible: Some work as few as four per week, others put in as many as 60… Six months ago seven former AOL community leaders asked the Department of Labor to investigate whether AOL owes them back wages.

A disgruntled AOL community leader started making noise about his unfair treatment as far back as 1995. Here we are, 16 years later, having a very similar conversation about the Internet. Is there another backlash coming?

Volunteers don’t necessarily save money, even online volunteers: Wikimedia’s content is created and managed primarily by volunteers, yet Wikimedia still needs to fundraise every year to cover the many costs that come with involving several thousand online volunteers. And look at the quality of Wikimedia content – if I can’t find a fact in an academic article or newspaper article, I won’t quote it in something I’m working on, and many people feel similarly; without professional editors, the information there cannot be fully trusted.

I certainly have my own limits regarding when I think it’s appropriate to ask someone to work for free, and when I think such goes too far. I am on numerous online discussion groups, and I freely share a lot of resources – and it takes several hours of my time to do so. I admit I’m not doing it just to be nice; I’m also hoping that it could lead to paid work. I’m happy to share my time for free only up to a point, however: at least once a week, I have to turn down at least one request asking me to review a business plan, offer advice on a web site, etc. – for free. Unfortunately, the utilities company, DirectTV, my car insurance company, grocery stores, gas stations, my Internet Service Provider, and others that charge me for products and services do not accept volunteer time helping nonprofit organizations or aspiring entrepreneurs as payment.

I used to freely provide answers on the community service section of YahooAnswers, where the same questions about volunteering, community service and fund raising events get asked over and over again. At first it was to learn more about teen perceptions about volunteering, but it dawned on me finally that I was adding tremendous value to this Yahoo service, without being paid for it. So I created a series of web pages on my own site to answer these frequently-asked questions, and started pointing questioners to these pages; if visitors click on the GoogleAds on the page, I get a few pennies. In less than a year, I’ve raised enough money to pay for my web site hosting and my domain name ownership. Without this financial incentive, I’m not sure I would continue answering questions on YahooAnswers.

I also have seen a different trend emerging: more and more sites that pay people for their time to contribute to projects, instead of asking them to volunteer it: CrowdSpring, Yahoo’s Associated Content service, Freelancer.com, Elance.com, Guru.com and similar sites pay people for the content they create. If the companies using these services could get the quality content they need for free, they would NOT be paying for it. Will other sites now getting their content for free, like YahooAnswers, eventually have to follow suit in order to get the quality content more and more users are demanding?

I’ll end with this: the hilarious Should I Work For Free chart that was brought to my attention during my presentation in Hungary last month.

What it is like to be a consultant

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A frequently-asked question to me is, “What is it like to be a consultant? How can I be one?”

I’ve offered what advice I can, like about how to telecommute/work from home and how to pursue a career in humanitarian activities, but today, I’ll share a Friday funny that shows what it’s often like from a financial standpoint to be a consultant (thanks to Martin Cowling for the heads up):

Video

Criticism Continues for UK Government Talk Re Volunteers

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Like the USA federal and state governments, the government of the United Kingdom, lead by Prime Minister David Cameron, is hoping that its citizens will step up and volunteer their time — work for free — to provide local services that local and federal governments no longer want to fund. Cameron calls this the big society drive. He wants volunteers — unpaid staff — to take over the staffing of post offices, libraries, transport services. He never says that it’s being done to save money: he says that staffing these organizations with volunteers will empower individuals and give them a greater voice in their communities.

Anyone who knows me or this blog knows that I am passionate about involving volunteers, so much so that I do not trust a nonprofit or community-focused initiative that does not involve volunteers – and does not involve them in more than rudimentary tasks. I believe involving volunteers does benefit communities far beyond money, and have said so many times (see the list of links at the end of this blog).

But let’s be clear: Cameron is being disingenuous about why he wants volunteers engaged in these programs. It’s all about defunding programs, not about increasing community involvement. 

If he were serious, then he would be talking about increasing the money for the resources needed (training, people, etc.) to involve larger numbers of volunteers. He would be talking about increasing funds to Volunteering England, the primary institution in England for tracking, supporting and celebrating volunteering in the country, not cutting them.

The criticisms have been going on for a while now in the British press (‘Big society’ museum plans in Liverpool condemned, 19 July 2010). But this month, the criticisms seem everywhere:

I hope that US politicians who are making similar noises about saving money with volunteers are paying attention; this is what is in store for you if you get serious “big” ideas about volunteers. The criticism will be 10 times louder in the USA!

By all means, let’s undertake activities to involve more volunteers in nonprofits and the government in the USA – AND LET’S PAY FOR THAT. Volunteers don’t just magically show up and get the work done, without a tremendous amount of money and paid staff to support them. Even Wikimedia online volunteers aren’t free!

Also see these blogs on related subjects:

Volunteer online & make web sites accessible!

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Knowbility is hosting a terrific online event, AIR Interactive, that gives online volunteers a chance to either

    1. create an accessible website for a musician or arts web site of your choice and submit the URL by March 5th.

OR 

  1.  choose from these sites and critique the accessibility features and redesign one page for accessibility. Submit by March 5th.

AIR-Interactive participants help ensure that as arts go online, rich cultural experiences can be enjoyed by everyone – including people with disabilities.

Online volunteers need to register and then access online tutorials. There are two call-in conferences for participants to receive live consultations.

“We are accumulating some fabulous prizes including round trip for two from Southwest Airlines, SXSW passes for 2012 and more.”

Knowbility is a nonprofit organization based in Austin, Texas with a mission to ensure barrier-free IT – supporting the independence of people with disabilities by promoting the use and improving the availability of accessible information technology. It’s traditional Accessibility Internet Rallies (AIR) are onsite web design competitions to benefit local nonprofit organizations and schools by providing them with free, professionally designed ACCESSIBLE websites. In these events, of professional web developers learn skills to create accessible web content and then use those new skills to create accessible websites for local community groups. The result: dozens of professionally designed, accessible websites are donated to nonprofit groups and hosted for free for one year.

The AIR Interactive event allows anyone with Internet access to participate! It’s a great example of virtual volunteering!

 

 

Drop the Jargon!

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Trina Wallace, a writer at ngo.media, has written a fantastic blog, Here’s to a jargon-free voluntary sector in 2011:

Too often, charity writing is littered with the latest buzzwords and highfalutin phrases in the belief that this sounds impressive. Strip away the jargon, though, and there’s often very little meaning underneath.

Brilliant! Read it! Show it to all consultants you work with! It’s an article that United Nations staff and those at other humanitarian organizations should read as well…

My favorite Super Bowl moment: NFL Man of the Year

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My favorite Super Bowl XLV moment came before the game: it was the presentation of the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year award.

Minnesota Vikings (American) football player Madieu Williams was the 2010 recipient of the award. Williams has built a primary school in Sierra Leone and is now building a secondary school there. His foundation sponsored a mission to Sierra Leone that brought American teachers, surgeons and dentists to help educate the teachers at his school, give free dental cleanings to all of the students and provide free surgeries. He recently gave a large donation to create The Madieu Williams Center for Global Health, affiliated with the University of Maryland College Park School of Public Health. The center focuses on the public health issues in Prince George’s County and Sierra Leone, his birthplace. Williams is also involved in the North Community YMCA, the United Way and Harvest Prep/Seed Academy.

The other nominees were Oakland Raiders’ Nnamdi Asomugha and the Chicago Bears’ Israel Idonije.

Asomugha serves as Chairman for the Orphans and Widows In Need (OWIN) Foundation, providing food, shelter, medicine, vocational training, literacy efforts, and scholarships to widows and orphans victimized by poverty or abuse in Nigeria. In 2006, Asomugha launched the annual Asomugha College Tour for Scholars program, taking selected students from San Francisco Bay Area high schools on college tours across the country. Asomugha participated in the 2009 Meeting of Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) to discuss the importance of global service and student activism. Additionally, Asomugha distributes backpacks to the incoming freshmen each year at Narbonne High School in Los Angeles and outfits the football and basketball team with shoes, a mandate he wrote into an endorsement contract he signed with Nike.

Idonije established the Israel Idonije Foundation to help families in economically challenged communities around the world. It provides medical health care services, clean water and youth sports empowerment programs to underpriviledged residents in Africa. Its Street Love program provides assistance for the homeless and those in need of support. Its First-Down Attendance Program works to encourage and sustain sutdents’ regular school attendance, high achievement and good citizenship in Chicago and Winnipeg. More than 600 students participate annually. It’s a shame, however, that the Foundation’s web site isn’t accessible under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.

The three finalists were chosen by a panel. All of the 32 nominees receive a $1,000 donation to the charities of their choice. The three finalists will receive an additional $5,000 donation to be made in their names. The final winner of the award receives a $20,000 donation to the charity of his choice.

What a shame I didn’t see this news covered on any TV news report. If we have to be subjected to stories about NFL players’ reprehensible behavior (Michael Vick, Ben Roethlisberger, Brett Favre, etc.) can’t we also have some positive news about off-the-field activities as well?

On a related note, Forbes did an interesting article about celebrity charities, focusing on the amount of money they have given out versus how much they spend in overhead.

Also see an article I did back in 1999 about Fan-Based Online Groups Use the Internet to Make a Difference (would love to have the time and resources to update this!).

Volunteer centers need to re-assert themselves

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteersIn 1995, I started volunteering with a new nonprofit organization called Impact Online, which later became VolunteerMatch. Impact Online created one of the first web sites that allowed nonprofit organizations to recruit volunteers. Many organizations faxed their volunteering assignments in to us, because they didn’t have Internet access; I was one of the people who helped type those assignments into the online database (if an organization didn’t have email, potential volunteers called the organization with volunteering opportunities they were interested in). At that time, Impact Online was also trying to promote the very new idea of virtual volunteering; the organization was already involving online volunteers itself, and knew of at least a dozen organizations who were engaged in the practice; it wanted to try to get other organizations to do the same. Two years later, I was working for Impact Online, directing the Virtual Volunteering Project.

Back then, I talked to a lot of volunteer centers about ImpactOnline/VolunteerMatch, trying to encourage them to, in turn, encourage the organizations they worked with to use the web site to recruit volunteers. And most of the replies were along the lines of:

But if organizations use that web site to recruit volunteers, no one will call our volunteer center any more! There will be no need for our volunteer center!

Which, of course, wasn’t true, and I did my best to debunk that fear-based myth. I heard it again from volunteer centers in Germany 10 years later, and I heard it from volunteer centers in Australia just last year! In fact, I still sometimes hear it even here in the USA. Yet, I haven’t heard of any volunteer centers closing because of the many volunteer recruitment web sites out there.

One of the biggest reasons traditional volunteer centers are still needed: many organizations that need volunteers, and potential volunteers themselves, don’t know how to use volunteer recruitment web sites properly. Organizations post poorly-written assignments, or post one mega/general announcement instead of listing individual volunteering opportunities separately (which means potential volunteers cannot find the service opportunities they are looking for). Or the organizations don’t know how to identify volunteering assignments to post to such a site. Organizations don’t understand that they have to reply to people quickly, or the volunteer management protocals they must have in place before they post any assignments. Potential volunteers sign up for opportunities before thinking about what their availability is for volunteering, or need advice on which opportunities would be right for them (if you doubt me, just have a look at YahooAnswers Community Service). Volunteer centers are needed to address all of these issues.

In addition, traditional volunteer centers are needed to

  • provide expertise to corporations about employee volunteering,
  • help coordinate group volunteering efforts,
  • help communities prepare for disaster response with volunteer,
  • help people who want to serve on a board of directors at a nonprofit,
  • offer courses in the effective engagement of volunteers,
  • educate the public – and public officials and even the press – about the importance of volunteerism, to counter myths about volunteer engagement (It’s a great way to save money! Fire your staff and replace them with volunteers!),

and on and on.

So, volunteer centers: quit resisting third party volunteer recruitment web sites. Encourage their use among your clientele, and focus your energies on all of the many areas related to effective volunteer engagement where your expertise is needed!

UK Volunteering Tsar Doesn’t Have Time to Volunteer

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Lord Nat Wei, the British official charged with kick-starting volunteering in the U.K. and encouraging citizens to take over the delivery of a variety of community services, has found that volunteering to run this initiative three days a week is incompatible with “having a life”.

Like the USA federal and state governments, the U.K. government is hoping that its citizens will step up and volunteer their time in order to provide local services that local and federal governments no longer want to fund. Prime Minister David Cameron calls it the big society drive, and he wants volunteers to take over the staffing of post offices, libraries, transport services. He says that staffing these organizations with volunteers will empower individuals and give them a greater voice in their communities.

Cameron is right that involving volunteers in public sector organizations gives the community a greater voice in how those services are run – and that reason is why I encourage public sector organizations, not just nonprofits/NGOs, to involve volunteers. But as this case of the U.K. volunteering tsar illustrates, there are not large numbers of people who have the time to staff a public service on top of holding down a job and spending time with their families.

In addition, volunteers are not free: someone has to pay for their screening, training and ongoing support. There are organizations that are staffed primarily by volunteers, such as the American Red Cross and the Girl Scouts of the USA, but the required infrastructure to effectively support these volunteers is enormous – these volunteers don’t just magically show up and get the work done, without a tremendous amount of money and paid staff to support them. Even Wikimedia online volunteers aren’t free!

The Guardian story about the UK volunteering tsar has been flying around among my fellow volunteer management consultants with much commentary – we’ve had a tremendous good laugh over it. The irony of the situation has been delightful. We are all skeptical about government-promoted volunteering plans, in the U.K. or otherwise, having seen oh-so-many come and go, making missteps we try to warn them about. This is just the latest. Yes, we’re being smug. Don’t miss the comments on the story as well.

Also see:

 

 

 

Update: Martin Cowling has also blogged about this delicious story.

voluntourism: use with caution

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An incendiary report by South African and British academics focuses on “orphan tourism” in southern Africa and reveals just how destructive these short-term volunteering programs can be to local people, especially children.

It works like this: Western tourists pay an organization to travel for a few weeks, even several weeks, to a poor but exotic place where foreign volunteers are supposedly needed to help countless abandoned children, giving love and support to desperate young children. Providing an emotional connection with needy young children for a few weeks is at the core of what these voluntourists want to experience.

This report brings up many of the things I do in my own caution about volunteering abroad, such as how these programs can take away local jobs. But in addition, as this report notes:

There are serious concerns about the impacts of short-term caregivers on the emotional and psychological health of very young children in residential care facilities. The formation and dissolution of attachment bonds with successive volunteers is likely to be especially damaging to young children. Unstable attachments and losses experienced by young children with changing caregivers leaves them very vulnerable, and puts them at greatly increased risk for psychosocial problems that could affect their long-term well-being.

VSO UK said a few years ago that young people are often better off backpacking in developing countries, traveling and getting to know local people simply as paying tourists, rather than paying for most “voluntourism” experiences. VSO’s criticisms of paying-to-volunteer companies are absolutely right on:

a lot of young people are exploited by gap-year volunteer charities, being told that they are going to help people when, in reality, the volunteers are just making money for the company by paying for their feel-good experience (and these volunteers could have had just as meaningful experience had they simply traveled in the country as tourists.

A lot of pay-to-volunteer companies cater to the needs of the voluntourist rather than the local communities they claim volunteers will support. The voluntourist gets a feel good experience, but the local people don’t really benefit in any tangible way. These companies can contribute to that old-time colonialist thinking: we’re from the West, and we’re here to help you poor, pathetic people. That’s not a way of thinking that should be cultivated. And I get anywhere from annoyed to enraged by the attitude by many in the west: I’m a good person with a big heart and therefore I should be sent to a poor country, housed and fed, and allowed to cuddle orphaned babies and hug disaster survivors.

In addition, some voluntourists — people who pay for a feel-good experience — are not properly trained, supervised or supported, and are put in dangerous situations and are permanently injured or even killed in accidents that were easily preventable. For instance, a British student was electrocuted while working as a conservation volunteer in Fiji and a panda cub bit off part of the thumb of an American volunteer who was feeding the animal at a reserve in southwest China.

But with all that said, I also believe that not all of the pay-to-volunteer companies out there are misguided or exploitative. There are companies that employ local people in most paid roles with the company, that put the volunteers in positions where the volunteers are learning from local people as much, if not more, than they are teaching/leading/working, that keep volunteers as safe as any tourist to the country can be, and that give volunteers a great (nothing short of great for that amount of money), immersive experience. There are companies that open the eyes of Westerners about the realities of developing countries and what it really takes to transform communities, with volunteers knowing up front that their few days or weeks aren’t going to make any difference in the lives of local people in the long-run, and learning that its their post-trip actions and new knowledge that could make a difference for those local people in the long-run.

Here are directories of short-term volunteering organizations, online and in print, that can help you identify credible programs:

I strongly recommend the book How to Live Your Dream of Volunteering Overseas, by Joseph Collins, Stefano DeZerega, and Zehara Heckscher. It will give you details about what international volunteering really entails, why some organizations require that international volunteers pay, suggestions on how to raise funds for such, and an excellent overview of your options for fee-based overseas volunteering. But best of all, it provides tips and worksheets that can make your volunteering have real impact for the local people, and benefits for you long after the experience is over.

Also see “The possible negative impacts of volunteer tourism” by Daniel A. Guttentag, published 26 March 2009 (fee required – or try your local library).

Here’s THREE endorsements of pay-to-volunteer programs that I will make, but only because I know the people heading these organizations, I know they don’t take just anyone (candidates must have some basic skills), and I know what difference these organizations make for local people (not just how warm and fuzzy they make the participating volunteers feel):

World Computer Exchange

    • (WCE). Volunteers travel in teams of seven and assist local WCE partner organizations that have received WCE computers. Volunteers assist with troubleshooting, training and technical support. To be eligible, volunteers must be 21 years of age, have some prior tech skills, and a willingness to participate in technology-related tasks and education. For certain trips there are some language requirements. Trip participants also visit local families and enjoy a variety of opportunities to experience the local culture. Also, accepted volunteers must pay the costs for their trip (flight, etc.).

Unite For Sight and its partner eye clinics and communities work to create eye disease-free communities. “While helping the community, volunteers are in a position to witness and draw their own conclusions about the failures and inequities of global health systems. It broadens their view of what works, and what role they can have to insure a health system that works for everyone…” This program was featured on CNN International. Volunteers, both skilled and unskilled, are 18 years and older, and there is no upper age limit. It is obligatory for accepted volunteers to purchase insurance coverage through Unite for Sight’s recommended provider, and volunteers are responsible for all travel arrangements, visa vaccine requirements, lodging, airfare, food, and any additional expenses.

Global Xchange, a program of VSO UK, proclaims proudly, “Looking for a holiday? Look somewhere else.” It’s made up of two programs: Youth Xchange, which gives 18-25 year olds from the United Kingdom the chance to spend six months making a real difference to the lives of disadvantaged people; and Community Xchange, a six-week programme for community workers and practitioners to learn how to help young people become active global citizens, and how to get different cultures interacting with each other and exchanging ideas.

If you have volunteered overseas and paid a fee for the experience, I strongly urge you to offer comments about that company on Yelp or your own blog. Some of the most frequently asked questions on online groups, such as YahooAnswers or The Thorn Tree, are regarding experiences with fee-based volunteering abroad programs. People ask, “Has anyone heard of such-and-such organization, and is it a good idea to use them to go to Africa to volunteer?” You could help others make the right choices by reviewing the company that sent you abroad, on Yelp or any other customer review site.

If you want to volunteer abroad on a short-term gig, and are wondering how you are going to pay the two or three thousand dollars to make it happen (your payment covers transportation in the country, housing, training, staff supervision and support, work permits from the government, and security), see: Funding Your Volunteering Abroad Trip. And buyer beware: ask the tough questions of the company, and ask to speak with at least two people who have volunteered abroad with the company. How the company reacts to your questions will speak volumes about the quality of the company.

If you want to volunteer long-term (six months – two years) in a program that does NOT require you to pay (PeaceCorps, VSO, UNV, etc.), and you are highly-skilled (you speak another language in addition to English, you are a successful professional or business owner who can train others in some areas of your expertise, you have volunteered or worked extensively locally, in your own community, in capacity-building activities, etc.), see this resource. If you aren’t highly-skilled but want to engage in activities over the next few years that will make you a more viable candidate for long-term volunteering programs, this same resource will also help you.

July 17, 2017 update: Charities and voluntourism fuelling ‘orphanage crisis’ in Haiti, says NGO. At least 30,000 children live in privately-run orphanages in Haiti, but an estimated 80% of the children living in these facilities are not actually orphaned: they have one or more living parent, and almost all have other relatives, according to the Haitian government.

June 2025 update: the bulk of the above blog is from 2011. There are still a LOT of unethical voluntourism programs out there. But there ARE ethical programs out there: in fact, I just participated in a voluntourism program myself. And it’s a program that may even have something that’s been missing from some of my professional international development work. Read the blog for more. 

Security Management in Violent Environments

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The Humanitarian Practice Network has published a new version of Good Practice Review 8 on Operational Security Management in Violent Environments. The new edition both updates the original material and introduces new topics, such as the security dimensions of ‘remote management’ programming, good practice in interagency security coordination and how to track, share and analyse security information. The new edition also provides a more comprehensive approach to managing critical incidents, in particular kidnapping and hostage-taking, and discusses issues relating to the threat of terrorism. It’s published by the Humanitarian Practice Network at ODI.

One of the unique aspects of this publication is an entire chapter on sexual aggression, which offers blunt advice to both women AND men regarding how to prevent rape and sexual abuse during aid and humanitarian deployments.

The Humanitarian Practice Network at the Overseas Development Institute is an independent forum where field workers, managers and policymakers in the humanitarian sector share information, analysis and experience.

I really hope that the Peace Corps will read this report, per its recent and apparently ongoing mishandling of the sexual assaults on some Peace Corps members. The document’s frankness and specifics are something the Peace Corps could learn from.

No matter what your role in humanitarian actions/aid work, no matter what agency you are working with, download and read this publication, and then compare it to the manual/policies for your own agency. If you see a need for improvement in your agency’s practices and policies, speak up!