Aid Worker Voices

Aid Worker Voices PDF Author: Tom Arcaro
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781530476121
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 2014, a sociologist from Elon University and professional humanitarian teamed up to study the aid industry. Through a census-style online survey that was among the first of its kind, over 1,000 aid and development professionals shared their views and opinions on a wide range of topics related to their experiences as the core of the aid industry's workforce. This book is the analysis of those 1,000+ responses. As the title suggests, this represents the voices of humanitarian aid and development workers around the globe - a diverse array of individuals with deep, intense and equally diverse feelings on what it means to be part of today's humanitarian workforce. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the global aid and development industry better. All net proceeds from this book will support the Periclean Scholars at Elon University and the Periclean Foundation.

Aid Worker Voices

Aid Worker Voices PDF Author: Tom Arcaro
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781530476121
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 2014, a sociologist from Elon University and professional humanitarian teamed up to study the aid industry. Through a census-style online survey that was among the first of its kind, over 1,000 aid and development professionals shared their views and opinions on a wide range of topics related to their experiences as the core of the aid industry's workforce. This book is the analysis of those 1,000+ responses. As the title suggests, this represents the voices of humanitarian aid and development workers around the globe - a diverse array of individuals with deep, intense and equally diverse feelings on what it means to be part of today's humanitarian workforce. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the global aid and development industry better. All net proceeds from this book will support the Periclean Scholars at Elon University and the Periclean Foundation.

Chasing Chaos

Chasing Chaos PDF Author: Jessica Alexander
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0770436919
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Get Book Here

Book Description
Jessica Alexander arrived in Rwanda in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide as an idealistic intern, eager to contribute to the work of the international humanitarian aid community. But the world that she encountered in the field was dramatically different than anything she could have imagined. It was messy, chaotic, and difficult—but she was hooked. In this honest and irreverent memoir, she introduces readers to the realities of life as an aid worker. We watch as she manages a 24,000-person camp in Darfur, collects evidence for the Charles Taylor trial in Sierra Leone, and contributes to the massive aid effort to clean up a shattered Haiti. But we also see the alcohol-fueled parties and fleeting romances, the burnouts and self-doubt, and the struggle to do good in places that have long endured suffering. Tracing her personal journey from wide-eyed and naïve newcomer to hardened cynic and, ultimately, to hopeful but critical realist, Alexander transports readers to some of the most troubled locations around the world and shows us not only the seemingly impossible challenges, but also the moments of resilience and recovery.

Aid in Danger

Aid in Danger PDF Author: Larissa Fast
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812246039
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book Here

Book Description
Humanitarian aid workers increasingly remain present in contexts of violence and are injured, kidnapped, and killed as a result. Since 9/11 and in response to these dangers, aid organizations have fortified themselves to shield their staff and programs from outside threats. In Aid in Danger, Larissa Fast critically examines the causes of violence against aid workers and the consequences of the approaches aid agencies use to protect themselves from attack. Based on more than a decade of research, Aid in Danger explores the assumptions underpinning existing explanations of and responses to violence against aid workers. According to Fast, most explanations of attacks locate the causes externally and maintain an image of aid workers as an exceptional category of civilians. The resulting approaches to security rely on separation and fortification and alienate aid workers from those in need, representing both a symptom and a cause of crisis in the humanitarian system. Missing from most analyses are the internal vulnerabilities, exemplified in the everyday decisions and ordinary human frailties and organizational mistakes that sometimes contribute to the conditions leading to violence. This oversight contributes to the normalization of danger in aid work and undermines the humanitarian ethos. As an alternative, Fast proposes a relational framework that captures both external threats and internal vulnerabilities. By uncovering overlooked causes of violence, Aid in Danger offers a unique perspective on the challenges of providing aid in perilous settings and on the prospects of reforming the system in service of core humanitarian values.

Chasing Misery

Chasing Misery PDF Author: Kelsey Hoppe
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781495961465
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book Here

Book Description
“What motivates any of us to do the work we do? And more importantly does that work make a difference?” This is the question film producer and founder of filmaid.org, Caroline Baron, reflects on when she calls Chasing Misery an “unblinking” account of what it's like to be a woman on the front lines of global humanitarian responses. Twenty-one first person essays and 23 stunning photographs give readers a glimpse into the lives of real women who respond to emergencies—their hopes, fears, questions, challenges, frustrations as well as glimpses of the humour, beauty, and hope they find in the midst of misery.

Dead Aid

Dead Aid PDF Author: Dambisa Moyo
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374139563
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book Here

Book Description
Debunking the current model of international aid promoted by both Hollywood celebrities and policy makers, Moyo offers a bold new road map for financing development of the world's poorest countries.

The Crisis Caravan

The Crisis Caravan PDF Author: Linda Polman
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1429955767
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
A no-holds-barred, controversial exposé of the financial profiteering and ambiguous ethics that pervade the world of humanitarian aid A vast industry has grown up around humanitarian aid: a cavalcade of organizations—some 37,000—compete for a share of the $160 billion annual prize, with "fact-inflation" sometimes ramping up disaster coverage to draw in more funds. Insurgents and warring governments, meanwhile, have made aid a permanent feature of military strategy: refugee camps serve as base camps for genocidaires, and aid supplies are diverted to feed the troops. Even as humanitarian groups continue to assert the holy principle of impartiality, they have increasingly become participants in aid's abuses. In a narrative that is impassioned, gripping, and even darkly absurd, journalist Linda Polman takes us to war zones around the globe—from the NGO-dense operations in "Afghaniscam" to the floating clinics of Texas Mercy Ships proselytizing off the shores of West Africa—to show the often compromised results of aid workers' best intentions. It is time, Polman argues, to impose ethical boundaries, to question whether doing something is always better than doing nothing, and to hold humanitarians responsible for the consequences of their deeds.

Farewell, Four Waters

Farewell, Four Waters PDF Author: Kate McCord
Publisher: Moody Publishers
ISBN: 0802491219
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book Here

Book Description
Day 14: It should have been the beginning . . . All she needed were stamps and signatures. Marie and her translator stood in the government offices in Kabul, Afghanistan, to complete the paperwork for her new literacy project. The women in her home town, the northern village of Shehktan, would learn to read. But a spattering of gun shots exploded and an aid worker crumpled. Executed. On the streets of Kabul. Just blocks from the guesthouse. Sending shockwaves through the community. The foreign personnel assessed their options and some, including Marie’s closest friend, Carolyn, chose to leave the country. Marie and others faced the cost and elected to press forward. But the execution of the lone aid worker was just the beginning. When she returned home to her Afghan friends in Shehktan to begin classes, she felt eyes watching her, piercing through her scarf as she walked the streets lined in mud brick walls. And in the end . . . It took only 14 days for her project, her Afghan home, her community—all of it—to evaporate in an eruption of dust, grief, and loss. Betrayed by someone she trusted. Caught in a feud she knew nothing about, and having loved people on both sides, Marie struggled for the answer: How could God be present here, working here, in the soul of Afghanistan?

Making Aid Work

Making Aid Work PDF Author: Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262260395
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 68

Get Book Here

Book Description
An encouraging account of the potential of foreign aid to reduce poverty and a challenge to all aid organizations to think harder about how they spend their money. With more than a billion people now living on less than a dollar a day, and with eight million dying each year because they are simply too poor to live, most would agree that the problem of global poverty is our greatest moral challenge. The large and pressing practical question is how best to address that challenge. Although millions of dollars flow to poor countries, the results are often disappointing. In Making Aid Work, Abhijit Banerjee—an "aid optimist"—argues that aid has much to contribute, but the lack of analysis about which programs really work causes considerable waste and inefficiency, which in turn fuels unwarranted pessimism about the role of aid in fostering economic development. Banerjee challenges aid donors to do better. Building on the model used to evaluate new drugs before they come on the market, he argues that donors should assess programs with field experiments using randomized trials. In fact, he writes, given the number of such experiments already undertaken, current levels of development assistance could focus entirely on programs with proven records of success in experimental conditions. Responding to his challenge, leaders in the field—including Nicholas Stern, Raymond Offenheiser, Alice Amsden, Ruth Levine, Angus Deaton, and others—question whether randomized trials are the most appropriate way to evaluate success for all programs. They raise broader questions as well, about the importance of aid for economic development and about the kinds of interventions (micro or macro, political or economic) that will lead to real improvements in the lives of poor people around the world. With one in every six people now living in extreme poverty, getting it right is crucial.

Impossible Odds

Impossible Odds PDF Author: Jessica Buchanan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476725160
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book Here

Book Description
An account of the aid worker co-author's dramatic January 2012 rescue from kidnappers in Somalia by members of a Navy SEAL Team Six unit offers insight into the effective use of targeted U.S. military missions.

Navigation by Judgment

Navigation by Judgment PDF Author: Dan Honig
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190672471
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
Foreign aid organizations collectively spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually, with mixed results. Part of the problem in these endeavors lies in their execution. In Navigation by Judgment, Dan Honig argues that high-quality implementation of foreign aid programs often requires contextual information that cannot be seen by those in distant headquarters. Drawing on a novel database of over 14,000 discrete development projects across nine aid agencies and eight paired case studies of development projects, Honig shows that aid agencies will often benefit from giving field agents the authority to use their own judgments to guide aid delivery. This "navigation by judgment" is particularly valuable when environments are unpredictable and when accomplishing an aid program's goals is hard to accurately measure. Highlighting a crucial obstacle for effective global aid, Navigation by Judgment shows that the management of aid projects matters for aid effectiveness.