Tag Archives: humanitarian

Aid workers need to help local staff avoid scams

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Today, I got an email from a close friend in Kabul, a young Afghan woman who works in an Afghan federal ministry. She forwarded me an email from another Afghan colleague, telling her she had “won” a USA visa and that she had to pay $150 in order to finalize the process. She wanted to know if it was real.

Most every young Afghan woman I know is trying to get out of Afghanistan. They are not only terrified of what the withdrawal of coalition forces will bring; they are terrified of being forced into marriage, and forced to give up their jobs, being imprisoned in a stranger’s home with a family who treat female non-blood relatives as indentured servants – or worse. Afghan women are desperate and vulnerable — in a perfect position to be taken advantage of by someone promising exactly what they want to hear.

For someone with intermediate English skills, the email looked oh-so-real. For me, it was obvious that it was fake, but I’m a native English speaker, a pretty savvy Internet user, and an amateur researcher regarding myths and urban legends. I did my best to explain to my friend how to know when something like this is fake, as this email is. And it made me wish I was there to do a workshop for all of my Afghan colleagues, especially the women, to show them how to avoid email scams.

If you are working in aid, development or humanitarian affairs on site in a developing country, I hope you will consider doing a lunchtime workshop for your locally-recruited colleagues about online scams. Just 30 – 45 minutes would be so helpful. Talk about visa scams, inheritance scams and phishing. Even if locally-recruited staff are particularly savvy about knowing when something is a fraud, their family and friends may not be, and you would be helping them to help their family and friends avoid being taken advantage of.

I am the first to tell a friend that a warning they have posted in their Facebook status or an email warning they have sent to all their friends is a fake. It turned a couple of people into ex-friends – how dare I tell them such a thing is false? Where’s the real harm in forwarding these kinds of messages? Today, I was reminded yet again where the harm is — the very real harm.

Also see:

Being emotionally ready to volunteer – or to continue volunteering

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graphic representing volunteers

Culture Matters is an online curriculum specifically developed by the Peace Corps to help newly-accepted members acquire some of the knowledge and skills they will need to work successfully and respectfully in other cultures. It’s not just about cultural sensitive or cultural awareness, however; it’s also about knowing what to do when one is personally stressed out, feeling overwhelmed, etc. It’s a combination of self-evaluation and self-strategizing. It not only helps to build volunteers’ awareness of how to handle a variety of challenges, it also might help to screen out people who are not emotionally nor mentally prepared, or not emotionally resilient enough, to serve overseas.

Even if your volunteers are not going overseas, they can face feelings of isolation, stress, even fear, especially if they are in high responsibility or high-stress roles, such as

  • counseling women who have been abused (including rape victims)
  • fighting fires
  • providing emergency health care
  • participating in search and rescue missions
  • counseling low-income people regarding financial management
  • repeatedly communicating about a controversial issue that often incites hostility among some audiences
  • working in a facility that houses abandoned animals
  • mentoring high school students
  • serving food to people who could not eat otherwise
  • working with clients in a hospice program
  • helping at a free clinic
  • leading entire teams for a high-profile project
  • providing services to people who have lost everything to a fire or natural disaster
  • providing services to crime victims
  • training people in activities related to any of the above

Volunteers in these and other situations may need mental and emotional health support — activities that will relieve stress, address emotional conflicts, and help them explore how to balance work, volunteering, family and social activities. Otherwise, you risk volunteer burnout, or volunteers providing sub-par service.

Creating such an online curriculum for your own volunteers can be as easy as finding or recruiting a volunteer to interview current and previous volunteers, compiling their feedback into a draft curriculum, and then asking the volunteers to offer edits and suggestions. What a great assignment for someone looking for an internship as a part of their university studies, a retired human resources professional looking to volunteer for a limited task at your organization, someone who wants a project that will look great on their résumé, and on and on.
As part of creating your online curriculum for volunteers to help them handle stress, map resources in your community that can support your volunteers’ health and mental well-being. These can include:

  • communities of faith and secular/ethical societies
  • debt counseling services
  • for-profit and non-profit exercise clubs (private health clubs, the YMCA and YWCA, community pools, T’ai Chi clubs in the park, yoga classes, sports clubs. etc.)
  • centers for aging/senior support
  • free and low-cost health clinics

Also, develop a list of “escape hatches” — lists of of free or very low-cost places nearby where your local volunteers can get away, relax and recharge. This can be a list of nearby city, state and national parks, a list of cinemas in the area, places to get a massage, a manicure, a pedicure or a facial, dance studios, golf courses (even miniature golf courses), art museums, and on and on. If you visit each of these places, you may be able to establish discounts with these organizations for your volunteers.

Provide information about these resources (web site address, physical address, hours of operation, etc.) to all volunteers. Provide the information via a regular group meeting, and/or via your online community. Put brochures for these resources in a place where volunteers take breaks. You can also use the information in one-on-one situations, but the information should be provided to all volunteers, not just those you think might need it.

Provide information on how to reach these places by mass transit and by bike — or provide web site URLs where your volunteers can find this information.

Compiling all of the above information and putting it together on an internal web site or on paper, or gathering brochures from all these various different sites and making a display of them in a staff break room, is a great task for a volunteer.

Even if most of your volunteers don’t take advantage of these free and low-cost services, think of the message you are sending to your volunteers by providing this information: that you value them and their health, that you understand that their volunteering activities can be stressful, and that your organization CARES. What a powerful form of volunteer recognition.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

aid worker arrested in Haiti

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An American aid worker is being held in Haiti, accused of kidnapping a 15-month-old boy. Paul Waggoner is the co-founder of Materials Management Relief Corps, a humanitarian organization that seeks to provide logistical support to medical workers in Haiti.

According to news reports, Waggoner was working at the Haitian Community Hospital in Petionville in February when a Haitian man sought treatment for his 15-month-old son. The child died. Dr. Kenneth Adams, a volunteer physician on staff at the Haitian Community Hospital, said he was present when the child’s father returned to see his son and “witnessed as the father looked at the baby for several minutes, waiting for the baby to breathe.” He said the man took pictures with the deceased baby before he left. Jeff Quinlan, who was working as director of security at the hospital when the child arrived said he told the father that the boy had died and instructed him to return within 24 hours to take the body. But he said the father instead returned more than 24 hours later with a “witch doctor” claiming the child was still alive. Hosptial workers said the body was cremated because the father had not claimed the remains within 24 hours.

Waggoner had nothing to do with the child’s care, according to hospital staff. One colleague said this may be an effort to extort money from Materials Management Relief Corps or Waggoner’s family. The conditions in Haiti’s National Penitentiary, where Waggoner is being held, are horrific: as many as 70 inmates are crowded into 20-by-20 foot cells without plumbing, in lockdown conditions. Diseases, like tuberculosis and AIDS, are rife in the prison. Haiti is also currently battling a cholera epidemic.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I believe Mr. Waggoner is innocent, and, therefore, this case illustrates one of the risks faced by aid workers that doesn’t get talked about much: getting entangled in local justice systems. It’s why I do not encourage people to volunteer on their own, sans any host organization: Mr. Waggoner at least has the support of Materials Management Relief Corps. But an independent volunteer who waltzes into a local NGO and just starts helping – if he or she is falsely accused of stealing, of hurting a child, or worse, there is NO organization that will be helping you!

Indeed, there are some aid workers that do bad things:

All horrific cases, and all of these cases put all aid workers under a cloud of suspicion in many countries, making their work extremely difficult. But the reality is that most aid workers not only do not engage in such horrific behavior, aid workers are also frequently the target of sexual abuse, kidnapping and assault themselves: type aid worker sexually assaulted into Google.com and you will end up with a long, horrific list of incidents against aid workers including stories that talk about:

And on and on. I’m a frequent international traveler and sometime aid worker myself, and don’t want to be alarmist. I do believe you can do good while traveling abroad. But take security cautions seriously, and remember that the more solo you are, the harder it will be to get any support if you face a local justice system.

You can contact US government officials to urge them to do more to secure Waggoner’s freedom. Blog about this case yourself to raise the profile of this case on search engines and, potentially, in the media.

Also see Vetting Organizations in Other Countries.

UPDATE: He’s just out of prison, but still in Haiti.

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.

What triggers humanitarian action?

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What constitutes humanitarian action, or triggers a humanitarian response? The obvious answers: a devastating natural event, like a flood or earthquake, or a devastating war, civil or otherwise, or a widespread illness outbreak, like HIV/AIDs.

But a staff member at ALNAP asks in a recent blog: what about urban violence? What about an ongoing cycle of violence that leaves local people and communities just as devastated and insecure as any of the aforementioned conditions that usually trigger a humanitarian response? What about, for instance, the unfolding violence in Rio de Janeiro, as government forces confront the drug gangs that have for years terrorized individuals and communities and wreaked havoc every bit as devastating as a series of tornados? (I realize a lot of people in the USA may not be aware of what’s happening in Rio right now, as its the violence in Mexico that dominates what little international news we get).

The author points out that, in such violent situations, large-scale involvement of international agencies would probably NOT be welcomed by local governments. But are there approaches from the humanitarian world that the local government and donors might undertake? He asks further:

How can humanitarian agencies engage with these issues, and maintain the flexibility to respond to needs in ways that are both principled and pragmatic, wherever they may arise? And how will programming need to change to ensure agencies provide timely and relevant assistance which delivers durable humanitarian outcomes in challenging urban contexts?

It’s a fascinating blog! If you are an aid or development worker, or a government person who might face such a situation, its worth your time to read.

(ALNAP is the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action).

 

International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development

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December 5 – today – is International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development, as declared by the United Nations General Assembly per its resolution 40/212 in 1985.

This is not a day to honor only international volunteers; the international in the title describes the day, not the volunteer. It’s a day to honor, specifically, those volunteers who contribute to economic and social development. Such volunteers deserve their own day. Such volunteers are part of the reason I bristle at all the warm and fuzzy language used about volunteers.

I think it’s a shame to try to turn the day into just another day to celebrate any volunteer — there are plenty of days and weeks to honor all volunteers and encourage more volunteering; why not keep December 5 specifically for volunteers who contribute to economic and social development, per its original intention?

And just to be clear: by volunteer, I mean someone who is not paid for his or her service, and if he or she has a “stipend”, it covers only very essential expenses so the volunteer can give up employment entirely during his or her stint as a volunteer, rather than the stipend being as much, if not more, than some mid and high-level government workers of a country are making. Yes, that’s a dig.

Here’s how I volunteer.