Update Against Hunger - January 18, 2006
Field Notes:
Culture-Clash Surprises
Dear Action Against Hunger Team Member,
Expats arrive in the field knowing they'll have to adjust to the local culture. However, they often fail to anticipate that they'll need to accommodate each other's diverse cultures as well.
Thrown together both on- and off-duty, expats often come from different cultures and arrive with a variety of expectations. Some prefer to dine early, some late. If everyone decides to go to a restaurant, the choice of cuisine becomes a subject of heated debate. Some expats believe smoking is a God-given right; others want nicotine friends to walk around the block. If living quarters are blessed with a television, some expats will want to watch sports programs while others will insist on soap operas. Most likely, the native language of the majority will prevail among expats, regardless of the local language or the fluency of any individual. And don't get me started on morning people (me) vs. night people (them).
Usually, of course, accommodations are made easily. Usually.
Cathy Skoula
Executive Director,
Action Against Hunger USA (ACF)
New from US Headquarter:
How ACF Volunteering Pays Off
With oceans of gratitude we welcome all volunteers who help us accomplish our tasks worldwide. We constantly need both skilled and unskilled volunteers who can assist us with, say, tracking and analyzing donation patterns by computer or formatting our publications attractivelyor perhaps stuffing envelopes or data entry.
Best of all, the benefits of volunteering flow in two directions. For professionals between jobs, for example, future employers can verify skills and dedication that volunteers have shown while working at our New York headquarters. Take Karin Angwald, for example. She found us on volunteermatch.com where we advertised for a manager of volunteers. She had done similar work in her native Sweden, she explains, "but I had never worked in the U.S., so I needed to learn U.S. office culture." She found that managing volunteers is especially challenging, because she couldn't bribe them with better salaries. Still, she helped us invaluably, and having proved her abilities, she was hired by CIBA Specialty Chemicals to manage personnel development and training. "CIBA needed to know I could do it effectively in the United States," she says. We enabled her to demonstrate her competence.
Even if work for us doesn't translate directly to a commercial job opportunity, experience with Action Against Hunger can help in subtler ways. Former volunteer Lydie Wessels is now a service officer at a private bank helping international high-net-worth clients manage their wealth. Says Lydie: "The connection to ACF is not obvious." Still, working for us on our school program demonstrated that she could take responsibility for and complete a project and that she knew something about international politics (at Action Against Hunger, international politics is a daily hassle). Further, she showed she could work in an international and multicultural environment. After going to work for the bank, Lydie discovered to her surprise that many of her new colleagues volunteer at international aid organizations, and this helped create chemistry among them. "In general," she says, "my work for Action Against Hunger made a positive impression on people."
Prospective volunteers should email us at volunteer@actionagainsthunger.org.
News from the field:
An "Explo" Missionin Poland
Our Country Director in Kenya is Roman Majcher, who is Polish, and he recently returned home to conduct an exploratory mission. Unlike our usual explos, however, Roman wasn't counting needy beneficiaries. Instead, he was assessing whether we should open a headquarters in Warsaw, which would be our sixth.
Roman found good reasons to advocate such a move. Poland joined the European Union in 2004, and by EU law, member countries must contribute annually at least 0.17% of their gross national products to assist world development. In 2004, Poland's contribution was only 0.05%, but it will grow at least to the minimum amount by 2010. Moreover, due to the size of its population, Poland's low donations in 2004 ($134 million) topped Denmark's, even though the Danes contributed fully. Indeed, in 2004 and '05 Poland sent aid money to support our Mission in Mandera, Kenya, and Poland plans to add support for our Mission in Burundi this year. Also, Poland has private and corporate donors whose charitable gifts are encouraged by tax-deductions.
During Roman's investigations, he met with career placement officers at universities in Warsaw and Krakow, as well as with officials at professional associations, and all of them welcomed the chance to refer potential workers to Action Against Hunger. Poland, he found, educates skilled professionals in agricultural sciences, business management, medicine, nutrition, public health, and water-and-sanitation. Roman also visited embassies of neighboring countries in Eastern Europe whose interests match Poland's, and their embassies expressed interest in sending aid dollars and professionals to Action Against Hunger through an office in Warsaw.
If Action Against Hunger's executives decide to open HQ No. 6 in Poland, operations there could begin as early as this spring, but currently nothing has been decided. Stay tuned.
Person Profile:
Profile Hedy Ip
In the summer of 2005, the potential for famine in Niger was so dire that we sent nutritionist Hedy Ip there on her first professional assignment only two weeks after we first interviewed her. We had no time to train her. And though she could read French (necessary in Niger), she couldn't speak it comfortably. Nonetheless, she says, "I'm so glad I took the assignment. It was an amazing experience. It changed my life."
Born and raised in Toronto, where her parents had emigrated from Hong Kong, Hedy studied nutrition at the University of Toronto and discovered humanitarian work while on vacation volunteering in India. The inequality and poverty she saw, she says, led her to choose humanitarian aid as a career.
As a graduate student, Hedy helped her supervisor conduct research in Bangladesh that studied the use of micronutrients to combat malnutrition. While Hedy was there, our mission in Haiti contacted her professor to ask whether the project's discoveries could be useful for us in the Caribbean. "I thought, wow," says Hedy, "an NGO focused on nutrition!" So one month before she graduated, Hedy applied to work for us. After interviewing her, we asked if she'd be willing to leave for Niger in a week. She said she needed two weeks. Hired!
Because of the situation's urgency, the only advance training Hedy had time for was reading a 400-page manual (which she printed out at Kinko's). In Niger, she oversaw Supplementary Feeding Centers in several villages. The nutrition part was easy, she says. And unlike many countries in Africa, the nation was free of civil war, so Niger presented no security problems. However, she was challenged at first by the demands of managing her team and coordinating with the Mission's other managers.
Still, Hedy was surprised at how much autonomy she was given, and she was encouraged to be creative in working with the local community to solve nutritional problems. Because of cultural pressures in Niger to keep mothers at home (to tend children, harvest crops, and be wifely to their husbands), many mothers of malnourished children couldn't stay at our Therapeutic Feeding Centers, so Hedy helped evolve protocols for home treatment. "Everything was using your logic," she says.
Today, having seen the aid biz from inside, Hedy says, "I'm even more motivated. Now I'm sure I fit in. It's my purpose in life." She recently completed her five-month assignment in Niger and is home recharging in Toronto. But she's eager to return to the field as soon as she can. Next time, though, Hedy wants our customary pre-departure training.
