Help is on the way

VOLUNTEERING:FROM DOCTORS TO electrical engineers, journalists to logistics experts, the Rapid Response Corps (RRC) is a Mission Impossible-type collective of Irish Government-supported volunteers, sent to some of the most challenging and volatile environments in the world.

Since its formation in 2007, members of the RRC have been deployed in 67 missions across the globe. At present, the RRC is a 130-strong unit, with volunteers drawn from all walks of life and ready to deploy at a few days’ notice.

To get into the Rapid Response Corps, volunteers must go through a selection and training process, which includes military and logistical training at the Curragh Camp in Kildare. Currently, six members of the corps have been deployed to Haiti, while 11 others are serving in places such as Afghanistan, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The RRC was developed following the Asian tsunami in 2004 as a means of co-ordinating the Irish government’s response to major international disasters. Public servants who are accepted into the RRC are permitted to volunteer for up to three months while retaining their salary and benefits. For volunteers drawn from the private sector, subsistence and accommodation allowances in the field are paid by the Government, along with a modest daily stipend.

The experts admitted to the RRC include public health workers, engineers, humanitarian officers and IT experts, many of whom have previous experience in the developing world. The Irish model is not unique in European terms, and follows similar Swedish and Norwegian volunteer corps models.

Despite overseas aid cutbacks, the continued development of the RRC has been ring-fenced for 2010, with a further €1 million investment announced recently by the Minister of State for Overseas Development, Peter Power. The focus this year is on attracting volunteers with co-ordination and information management backgrounds as well as public health workers. Here, five volunteers describe their experiences.

JOHN JEFFERIES, from Cork, is an electrician volunteering in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

ABOUT 10 YEARS ago on my 40th birthday, I wanted to do something different so I signed up with Concern as a volunteer. Over the years I did some work with them, first in Burundi and then in Uganda and Rwanda, mostly electrical installations and installing hardware. A lot of the work would involve the protection of local power supply and helping with radios.

I went to Tanzania and Pakistan in 2002, and I was in Haiti in 2003. I was part of the old APSO volunteer agency, which was a forerunner of the Irish Aid Rapid Response Corps. The previous organisation involved more training than assignments, though.

I joined the Rapid Response Corps (RRC) because of the promise of aid work and training and the fact that the corps is a stand-by partner for the World Food Programme (WFP). I got a call on the Friday after the Haiti disaster. E-mails had already been sent to members of the RRC asking about availability. You’d always touch base after a disaster anywhere in the world, to find out what the story is.

I got the call on Friday around 10am and went to my employers in the ESB to discuss my options. I had a month of annual leave left and they allowed me to take that. By noon, I could tell the RRC I was prepared to go. I left for Haiti on January 18th. I was here seven years ago. The place is completely devastated.

We’re working with the WFP, living in rat-infested tents. We go to bed in the clothes we work in, as we’re getting up a few hours later and there’s little point in changing. This morning, we’re having problems with generators, so we’re working on that right now. I’m helping a guy put in a big satellite dish. We’re basically the service industry to the logistical background here, helping to get offices going and so on.

I have three children, aged 17, 15 and 13, and I look forward to a time when I’ll be the one trying to Skype them wherever they are.

My view on volunteering is that you only have one life and you might as well do something with it. There are people from all over the world working here. I wouldn’t want to be doing it forever, but it’s only a three-month stint. My employers in the ESB are very understanding. I am here on paid leave for one month, and the other two months on leave without pay. In the strictest sense, it doesn’t do your career any good.

ANDY NEEDHAM, from Rathfarnham, Dublin, a former press officer with the FA, is now working in Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya

MY BACKGROUND IS journalism and PR. I worked for the Football Association of Ireland and had never really done overseas work before. It was something I always wanted to do, but whenever I saw the agencies advertising vacancies, they were looking for engineers and doctors and so on. The Rapid Response Corps (RRC) was the first time I saw advertisements looking for journalists and media people. I had taken redundancy at a young age. A month after I saw the advertisements, I applied and went through the training, and one year on, in March 2008, I was deployed to Nairobi.

First it was for three months and then that became a year. I was transferred to the refugee camp I work at now and am coming to the end of my second, six-month placement. The RRC training was good. I was in the first batch to be trained in April 2007. It doesn’t matter how much training you have, adjusting to a different set up is always hard.

My first posting, in Nairobi, was fine; it was a good introduction to how the UN works. I had a basic enough position. Where I am now is the largest refugee camp in the world, and I am the press and media officer for it. Irish Aid pays me a daily rate.

I hope to get another posting with an agency such as UNHCR after my time is up here. It’s the most interesting thing I have ever done in my life. I’m single, but I have my family back home and I came home at Christmas as a surprise for my mother. I hadn’t been home for almost a year and that was tough. The big drawback is that you always think about those you leave behind.

Angelina Jolie was here visiting a while back. She is a UNHCR goodwill ambassador and came for a day mission in September. I think she was on holidays in the area. She did some public information work and pictures. I just had a brief meeting with her. She was very nice, posed for pictures with all the staff and was very cordial.

TONY TAYLOR, lives in west Cork and is currently in Haiti

I’M WORKING FOR the Rapid Response Corps this time. I’m directly hired by CARE International Geneva. But the last three jobs I did were all through the RRC, in Georgia, Darfur and the Philippines. I very much enjoy working with the Rapid Reaction Corps. The work is very interesting and it fits well with my experience. My most interesting posting with them was probably Georgia, in that it was a deployment straight to the Tbilisi office to support the Unicef programme there. This was immediately following the Russian occupation of Gori, as a result of the Georgians attacking Tskhinvali.

Within a couple of hours of arriving, I was in a car passing through the Russian lines to set up a support programme in the west of the country, which had been cut off by the Russian army advance.

Normally I don’t have a routine day, which is the nice thing about working in emergencies. It is essentially a rush to keep up with all the various crises that keep happening, and the push to set up the supporting structures for the organisations. In Georgia, I would spend one day collecting equipment from the airport and the next loading trucks to carry stock around the country.

On other occasions, I might be heading off into the Caucasus mountains for a three-day trip to deliver supplies to orphanages, or to report on the state of health clinics in distant towns.

The next job was Darfur, where the work was pretty unexciting, and involved mainly sorting out a mess in the stores and signing contracts for security upgrades to improve the “hardening” of the Unicef offices. It was made more challenging by the insecurity – attempted assassinations of the local governor outside our office – that sort of thing.

My third job with the RRC was a secondment to Unicef, this time in the Philippines, to respond to the flooding and landslides from the typhoons last year. It involved liaising with the local authorities, supporting the ministry of health and the department for social welfare and disaster relief in getting supplies out to people who had lost their homes. Base this time was an air-conditioned office on the 32nd floor of a tower block in Manila. I rented an apartment and lived comfortably. That is in contrast to where I am at the moment, living in a tent in the garden of the office in Port-au-Prince and getting a shower every couple of days – when I borrow the key of a local apartment. As you can see, there isn’t a typical routine with any of this.

STEFANO SALE has lived in Ireland since 2002 and previously worked in the airline industry. He is now volunteering in Colombia

I AM CURRENTLY deployed with the Rapid Response Corps for a second assignment in Colombia, serving for the UN Office for Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). I am based in the northeast, close to the Venezuelan border. The struggle for control of the land between the National Army and illegal armed groups has had devastating effects on civilians over the years. Sustained pressure on these communities is increasingly reported to be the cause of mass displacements, including some indigenous groups close to extinction.

My current task is to monitor and report on the humanitarian situation at the border. My job is primarily to establish and foster relationships with national and international agencies. The daily routine involves meeting and liaising with government officials and civil society groups, organising missions to affected areas, analysing information and preparing reports. Overall, Colombia is one of most complex humanitarian emergencies around the world and unfortunately it does not get enough media coverage, apart from the news on drug trafficking. With four million displaced persons, 14,000 child soldiers and one of highest rates of homicides and landmine accidents in the world, Colombia should really make the news alongside other humanitarian crises such as Darfur.

I am originally from Italy and I spent 11 years in the UK, before moving to Ireland in 2002. I have a degree in European Studies from the University of London and a master’s in humanitarian action from University College, Dublin. I worked for 10 years in the airline business – logistics, training and facilitation. More recently I’ve been involved in assessing educational aid programmes in India and Nepal, researching government disaster policies in Fiji and the Cook Islands, teaching principles of international development in universities, and social outreach in secondary schools. I have travelled the world extensively over the years.

I started with the Rapid Response Corps in 2008. I found out about the programme through an ad in an Irish newspaper while I was on a plane to India. I was very interested, so I applied and got an interview on my return. The experience has been fantastic. It gave me the opportunity to make new friends and learn new concepts as well as sharing valuable knowledge and experiences with other members of the corps.

There’s no doubt that life at home can be quite different to life away in the field. I have a family and a small baby, so it can be tough at times to deploy at short notice to humanitarian emergencies around the world. I came here first in May 2009. I had a break in Ireland when my son was born, from September until December. My second spell here began in January and I am due to stay until the end of April. There are times when you are on your own and you wish you could be at home with your family and friends. However, the other side of me enjoys the work and the challenges that lie in emergency situations.

ORLA FAGAN from Dublin, former radio researcher, now volunteering in Kabul, Afghanistan

I WORKED IN radio as a current affairs researcher and before that I worked in 2FM. I wanted to work in the area of development, but realised nobody wanted me, as I didn’t have qualifications. I did a master’s in Galway on development. I left RTÉ because I had been lucky in that I had ended up doing what I wanted to do, and it was time to give something back. I’m no Mother Teresa but I felt I had been lucky in my career.

I had done a certain amount of travelling in Africa and the developing world as a tourist. I was struck by the inequality that I saw. Later, I heard Muhammad Yunus speak on radio. He set up a microfinance project in Bangladesh and won the Nobel peace prize. I was very taken by what he had to say about how we could all become equal.

I ended up working in the field after the Asian tsunami and that gave me a great insight into what disaster was about and how you could do good or bad reconstruction. I was working in an area called Chalang in Indonesia, where 700 of the 7,000 population survived. That experience led me to the Rapid Response Corps. I was on the first training course three years ago. They brought us down to the Curragh and we did off-road driving and exposed us to the sound of gunfire and that type of thing. In Kabul, where I am at the moment, a lot of the doors are made of steel and when they bang you jump. We have a tin roof on our house, and when the cats jump on it we have to assess: is it an AK-47 or is it a cat on the roof? It’s hard to train for that experience.

At the moment there is a big military drive in Helmand Province and it is leaving a lot of people in distress who have nothing to do with poppy-growing or the Taliban. There are innocent people suffering. I’m hoping to get down there at the weekend. I’m mainly working in press and information and letting people know what the humanitarian situation is.

In terms of my family, this is what I do and they have to accept it. They don’t have a choice. After the attack at the UN guesthouse in October, for instance, they got quite upset at the conditions here. But it’s just part of where I am at the moment.

I’m finishing a six-month placement soon and then I’ll do another three months. It can be quite mundane, but I’m hoping to get to Helmand to see a little of what the rest of the country is like. Women are invisible in this society. Every time I go onto the street I am struck by the fact that there are no women, and they have no place in any decision-making. It’s fascinating because the culture is so different to anything in Ireland.Deadline for applications to the RRC is March 12th. For more details, see irishaid.gov.ie