Where you might come in
We are entering the next phase of our AidWorkVoices project and again need your help, this time from a few of you who want or may be wiling to share your stories.
One of the most interesting nuggets to come from the survey data thus far are the thoughts you’ve had about identity. In the post “You are as you are seen” many of our respondents–you–wrestled with exactly that: how you are seen by those around you matters on many levels. Many of you believe that the way you are seen (for example: young, white, attractive Western female) has an impact on your overall effectiveness. A second impact is that on the self concept of the aid worker: how she or he feels about her or himself.
Our goal at this particular stage is to deepen the data with more in-depth voices speaking about identity management both in the ‘field’ and in other locations, including at home, and throughout the aid industry. We especially want to hear from aid workers whose ‘at home’ identity (what Goffman would call ‘back stage’) may at times present a challenge.
We’re specifically working here with the concept of “master status” in sociology. There are two general categories of master status: Those that are disclosed as soon as people see you, such as skin color, sex (probably), age (possibly), and some kinds of physical disability or special-ability; And those that can remain disclosed with some effort, for example religion (or lack thereof), sexuality, and relationship/marital status.
Who would we like to talk to? We are interested in more in-depth interviews with aid workers that may have faced and/or currently face workplace challenges related to “how they are seen.” Basically, we want to talk to any aid or development worker in a setting where your sex, sexual orientation, marital status, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, local/non-local designation, age, religion, worldview, or other identity status somehow shapes your ability to be effective. Some examples include (but of course are not limited to):
Jewish aid workers in predominantly Muslim locations, or vice versa.
Atheist aid workers working in faith-based organizations and/or in locations where devotion to some religion is expected (Bangladesh comes to mind, based on recent news coverage).
Non-heterosexual aid workers in, well, most anywhere.
Red-headed aid workers (or those with some other exceptional physical attribute. Any 2 meter+ aid workers?)
Differently-abled aid workers (sight/hearing impaired, ambulatory challenges, etc.)
Medication dependent aid workers (e.g., insulin dependent).
You get the idea…..
Specifically we want to arrange open-ended interviews (via phone, Skype or otherwise) with aid workers who deal with identity management issues such as the above. If you are interested and/or have questions please send a message to me (Arcaro) with details of how you would prefer to be contacted.
We expect that interviews will take approximately 30 minutes. While we may need to interact with you as yourself in the context of an interview, we promise to maintain your anonymity in any publication or other external reference to your interview.
The big picture
We are now entering a very intense phase of analyzing and writing about all of the survey results, both quantitative and qualitative. In addition to making regular (weekly) posts to this blog we are in the midst of outlining a book-length treatment of all the results. Our hope is that we have a beta-version draft out by late fall.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
So, last week The Guardian online ran an article in the Global Development Professionals Network section, in which the authors sort of rambled on about the importance of discussing the sex lives of humanitarians. Yes, you read that right. A research fellow and an adviser at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) want to have a little chat about aid worker sex lives–that is, our sex lives.
On the outside chance that you missed their arousing discussion, check it out.
Yeah, yeah. Aid worker notoriety vis-a-vis all things sexual is legendary. I don’t think there’s any other aspect of the aid worker experience that is more commonly or gleefully portrayed in pop culture remakes of our allegedly exciting lives than our sexuality. From the apocryphal Emergency Sex, to the far-fetched tale of a UK housewive-turned-UNICEF warrior for the poor, to any one of several flaccid attempts to capture the aid worker experience as prime-time television drama, we see very quickly that the common denominator ain’t the Sphere standards for emergency WASH or an obsession with humanitarian accountability. My own first (and by far most commercially successful) furtive fumble down the path of humanitarian fiction shamelessly capitalized on the mythical hyper-sexualization of expat aid workers. Heck,even The Guardian’s own blush-worthy moment on the subject of aid worker sex life indiscretion seems to confirm exactly what everyone already thinks, and so we’ll forgive @IDS_UK for prematurely… er… raising the flag just a little too high on this one. Because, see, if you look at what actual aid workers are saying in the Aid Worker Survey, it would seem that we’re not really as busy getting busy as everyone seems to want to believe.
Let’s look at the results so far from Question 26: Which response below best describes your coping mechanisms (coping with stress, coping with burnout, coping with loss of idealism)?
Q26 responses (combined female & male)
[The response choices (paraphrased) are: I don’t experience burnout; Physical release (yoga, running…); Self medication (alcohol…); Finding strength in one’s faith; “Emergency Sex”; and Reading & writing about the humanitarian experience.]
I’ll skip straight to the spoiler: “Emergency Sex” scored dead last at 3.4% and 4.4% of female and male respondents, respectively.
The majority of all respondents (41% of females, and 40% of males) chose “Physical release“–yoga, running, or some kind of physical exercise as their primary stress release or coping mechanism. The remaining categories ranked as “Self Medication” (23% Female, 21% male), “Minimal Stress” (13% female, 18% male), “Reading/writing about the humanitarian experience” (12.8% female, 7.8 male), and “Strength from faith” (5.5% female, 8.5% male).
You can look at this breakdown in many ways. But for now, from a staff care perspective (and writing as a manager and frequent leader in field operations), I find the prevalence of “self medication” the most troubling in this lineup. In response to The Guardian’s hand-wringing, I’ll simply point out that according to our data thus far, it seems that more aid workers pray as a coping mechanism than engage in sexual activity.
Q26 responses in table form (combined female & male)
This is the only question in the Aid Worker Survey which addresses or gives the option of sex, specifically, and so for sure we’re assuming a potential link between work or context-related stress and aid worker libido. Although the writers from IDS cover a wide range of aid worker sex related worries in their article (not just sex as stress release), on the basis of only the response data from Q26, it is reasonable to ask whether this really ought to be the first thing HR (or security, apparently) worries about.
It’s also worth taking another look at some of the other data, too, though, with a view to the IDS’s angst about our sex lives. Q12 “Which best describes your relationship status?”, for example. The choices under Q26 are: Single and dating; Single and not dating; In a relationship. Here’s how it shakes out.
Response to Q12 (disaggregated by sex)
For the moment let’s assume that “single and dating” and “in a relationship” sort of hang together. In this context something like 68% of females and 83% of males are in some kind of relationship. No, I’m not naively assuming that dating or being in a relationship rules one out from participation in the alleged sexual misbehavior. Anyone can have a bad deployment, or just an evening of drunken (likely, according to Q26…) indiscretion, and of course there are those who are serially unfaithful. But based purely on personal observation as a long-term aid worker, it is my opinion that relationship status does make a difference. For all of their sometimes rough edges, aid workers are usually people of some kind of principle. Moreover, in my real job as a supervisor and frequent mentor to young newbs, I can tell you that there is no issue which comes up as frequently as relationships, specifically the desire for a relationship. When aid workers are in relationships–even relationships with challenges–the gravitational pull is toward doing everything possible to make those relationships work.
The ins and outs of aid worker sex lives will surely make interesting reading (to some). But that it’s something we must absolutely worry about now… well that’s a bit of a claim.
By hardly the second sentence into The Guardian’s article (written by those two researchers from IDS):
“…your day-to-day management challenges also included arguments over what time your colleagues could watch porn in the common room, and negotiating how staff could get to and from a brothel. Yet it is often a reality of the job and it is time we talked about it.”
Where to start? How about here: In a prior post, my research partner on this project described the “typical” aid worker, based on the results of this survey to-date. Once more with the spoiler: it’s a single, 30-something female. You can read the numbers in different ways (and we’ll eventually make raw data available in full), but basically the proportion of the single, 30-something women is above two-thirds of the total.
Based on the simple proportion of women to men in the industry overall, along with what we know from other sources about the propensity of men versus women when it comes to behaviors like paying for sex or consuming pornography, the statement above feels like a bit of overblown hand-wringing.
Also, I just have to say: in 23 years of continuous aid work, including quality time in some of the more notorious team houses in some of the more notorious responses, I have never (not once to-date) heard of aid workers watching porn in the common room. Nor have I ever heard of anyone ever needing the permission of the security manager before sleeping with someone from another other organization (see the caption under the photograph in the original article). And these days I usually supervise the security manager.
* * * * *
Surely some of the issues raised by The Guardian matter. The power dynamics involved and the potential for exploitation when aid workers become involved with local people while deployed (especially if they become involved with beneficiaries or disaster survivors) is terribly serious and worth larger, honest discussion. But a call for more discussion of aid workers’ sex lives (scintillating as that all might seem) needs to be grounded in some actual data, and framed in ways which correspond to real issues, rather than over-the-top, made-for-TV stereotypes.
* * * * *
Think I’m wrong? Sound off on in the comments thread below this post, or on my Facebook page, here.
Want to take the Aid Worker Survey yourself? (of course you do) Do it!
J. is a full-time professional humanitarian worker with more than twenty years of experience in the aid industry. He currently holds a real aid world day job at a real humanitarian organization as a senior disaster response manager.
In a previous blogosphere life J. wrote a blog about aid work called Tales From the Hood, and was half owner/curator of the uber-awesome Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like.These days he occasionally blogs about serious topics at AidSpeak (aidspeak.wordpress.com).
J. has written several books, including the world's first humanitarian romance novel, Disastrous Passion, and a non-fiction book entitled Letters Left Unsent.
Follow J. on Twitter @evilgeniuspubs
Question 60: “Please elaborate on your views about the future of humanitarian aid work.”
The majority of respondents who have answered this question thus far seem to have focused their comments on things ultimately to do with technical delivery, implementation and efficiency. But a few have chosen take on what I consider to be probably the most important question facing the humanitarian aid and development industry today.
“I think the aid industry is still figuring out what its role should be and how it should have an impact – and the people who can support that (taxpayers, donors, etc) still aren’t sure about its value. I am hopeful but somewhat skeptical that the aid industry will continue to grow and always have a positive impact, as a result.”
This response hits it on the head. What is our role, as aid workers and aid organizations, vis-à-vis the bigger picture? Maybe times were simpler 30 years ago, before Rwanda, or 20 years ago, before Hurricane Mitch and Kosovo, or 10 years ago, before The Tsunamis. Now, in a post-Haiti earthquake and full-on Syria, South Sudan, Central African Republic period the standardized, pat answers fall flat. That famous quote about aid being “a measure of humanity, always insufficient…” (widely attributed to ICRC) is great marketing but it doesn’t really help us analyze either the increasingly complicated contexts where we work, or the less obvious, sometimes long-lasting effects that we often have on those contexts.
“I think the line will become more and more blurred between humanitarian aid work and military aid/stabilisation/restructuring/military operations in the future and we will need to stop pretending that aid organisations are not implementing the policies of donor governments and are not neutral (in the vast majority of cases) and are spreading the capitalist ideology of the “western” world.”
This response hits closer to home with reality than many of us wish was the case. It seems clear that the humanitarian principle of impartiality and neutrality are aspirations, not descriptions of how things are in fact.
“Humanitarian aid will always be needed and will have a positive impact on lives, however I am increasingly concerned about the reality that we are responding to political crises and conflicts of which there is no end in sight and no political will to solve. Humanitarian aid cannot and should not be used as a political tool and the frequency of how often that is happening currently is worrying.”
And then…
“I hope that the amount of cash we funnel through humanitarian aid will change; though that’s unlikely given the governments who need to support their foreign policy interests. I do think that aid as we are currently doing it is on track to become irrelevant and boring, and not a core part of change-making in the world.”
Personally, I remain a believer in what I call the humanitarian enterprise. I think we have a role to play in changing the world for the better, and I hope that we can find a way out of the irrelevant-boring loop.
What do you think? What is our role? What does our future look like?
J. is a full-time professional humanitarian worker with more than twenty years of experience in the aid industry. He currently holds a real aid world day job at a real humanitarian organization as a senior disaster response manager.
In a previous blogosphere life J. wrote a blog about aid work called Tales From the Hood, and was half owner/curator of the uber-awesome Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like.These days he occasionally blogs about serious topics at AidSpeak (aidspeak.wordpress.com).
J. has written several books, including the world's first humanitarian romance novel, Disastrous Passion, and a non-fiction book entitled Letters Left Unsent.
Follow J. on Twitter @evilgeniuspubs
Though I don’t have any firm numbers to go by, a quick scan of available data is that English is not the first language of most humanitarian aid workers. While it is a fact of life that the default language of many (most?) organizations in the aid world industry is English (with French coming in a very strong second), of the over 300,000 aid and development workers globally I’ll repeat: for most English is at best a second language.
This fact is perhaps reflected in our data in that we have attracted a very small number of local aid workers:
Our main goal in taking on this project was to provide a space for more discussion about the lives and views of aid workers and so, toward that goal and more specifically toward the goal of hearing more -and more diverse- voices, we are working on translating the survey into Arabic, French, Spanish and German. Please send us a Tweet if you have suggestions for other languages – especially if you have someone able to do the translation.
In other news, check out this article in Devex International Development Career Forum that mentions our survey and also quotes my collaborator J.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
As we pass 600 hits, what does our “sample” population look like so far?
And why is “sample” in quotation marks? As we mention in the FAQ, our target population -those who are now or have in the past worked in the aid/development industry- is not a homogeneous, database available-at-the-ready population. Just the opposite: you are all spread across the world in an astonishing array of locations and work circumstances, from New York City-urban to South Sudan-rural. We have here is a snapshot of a necessarily self-selected group of souls who have invested some precious time on our survey.
Some bits from the data:
Age/gender/’race’
Though those who identified as female make up 68% of our respondents, there is a markedly higher percentage of ‘long in the tooth’ males responding: “I have been doing humanitarian aid work for ten or more years.” Male: 33%, Female 17%, with males having a higher percentage of respondents in all age groups from 36-40 on up.
The population is overwhelmingly “white” at 84%. The responses to the open-ended question related to self-identification have been fascinating, edifying and entertaining. Most of you we very mindful -thank you!-about what you wrote. Here are a couple intense responses:
I am Filipino-American. Colleagues in the Philippines treat me as a local/national with a foreign passport. I have similar experience in other countries within South East Asia. In West and East Africa, I am often perceived as Chinese. In the Middle East, my ethnicity is often associated with hired domestic help. I am extremely proud of my ethnic background and cultural heritage but there have been times in the field when I wanted to look like the typical expat aid worker – 6 feet tall, blond and very white. The color of one’s skin shouldn’t matter especially in this line of work, but who are we kidding?
I was adopted from Colombia as a baby, have grown up “white” but feel that to deny my “latina-ness” isn’t doing race discussions any favors either, so I am conflicted as to what to identify myself as, but in terms of privilege, opportunity, and perspective, I am white.
Vast majority of the sample -83%- self-identifying as working for or volunteering in a humanitarian aid organization, with the remaining 17% divided among UN System (3%), donor agency or charitable foundation (5%), consultant or contractor (9%).
Education
A very well educated lot, these humanitarian aid workers: 74% report having Masters level or more formal education. The open-ended question “How would you describe your non-institutional educational background?” has yielded some nuggets:
Good question. Extensive experience in the university of life perhaps? I’ve learned more from fieldwork and discussions with experienced colleges and ‘uneducated beneficiaries’ than all my degrees put together, but they help pad out my CV.
Took some courses here and there – e.g. evaluation, DRR, humanitarian practice, human trafficking.
Much hands on experience and self study in terms of humanitarian aid standards. Taken several workshops on a variety of topics as well as led workshops on a variety of topics. Community courses, through community centers of continuing education forums.
Being thrown in at the deep end in Somalia and going from there. You learn fast in the field when you get practical hands on experience, rather than all the theoretical drivel they teach us in university.
As a university professor who has taught classes on “global citizenship for the last few years this final one was my favorite.
Home?
The respondents thus far have reported “home” as predominantly the US, UK, Canada and Australia with a sizable number calling home various nations around the globe. To this point there have been 720 visits to this blog from all over the world, though the biggest lot is from the US. Here’s the blog cluster map indicating from where the blog was accessed.
Relationships Of those that responded (572), most are in a relationship -58%- though interestingly 26% reported being “Single and not dating.” The qualitative data indicates that this is very likely a life-style reality fore those in the aid world. The gender breakdown on this question is significant. While 71% of the males report being in a relationship that number drops to 51% for females. When we break down “single and not dating” the numbers look like this: 31% females and nearly half that number -16%- for males.
Though 35% of the respondents report being married, the gender disparity -50% male, 28% female- merits a closer look. Most (76%) have no children but a remarkable 4% reported having three or more.
Travel and work environment
This is a well traveled group, 53% report having traveled 11 or more times outside of their home nation for their work and over 65% reporting having been deployed for over a year (46% 2 years or more).
Most -80%- work in non-faith based organizations, 54% are in development (community development, long-term development, etc.), 28% doing relief work (disaster response, emergency response, etc.).
So, above is just the very tip of the data iceberg that we are only just beginning to explore. Please keep us on our toes with your Tweeted, Facebooked, emailed or otherwise transmitted comments and feedback.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
The humanitarian survey has been live for about two weeks, now, and so far we’re very pleased with the response. We’ve had over 500 respondents to-date, and yes, we know it’s not a statistically viable sample just yet, but nevertheless we’re seeing some fascinating trends already beginning to emerge.
At this point, though, we need to pause and answer what is apparently a burning question in the minds of many: Who should take this survey? Or, put another way, who do we want to hear from?
You’ve tweeted us, DM’d us, emailed us, Facebooked us, biting your bottom lips, voices wavering… wondering if… is it really… for you?!
Should I take the humanitarian worker survey?! (hint: yes)
Yep, we know. It says “humanitarian”, but you’ve always fancied yourself as a development worker. No short-term, all-output-no-impact, disaster zone adrenaline junkie shenanigans for you. The decades-long debates about “aid” and “development” begin to coalesce in your mind. Should you take the survey?
Yes. If you do now or have ever worked in the aid industry in any way, whether relief, development, advocacy, policy, shuffling papers, managing spreadsheets… aid industry? Yes? Then yes, we want to hear from you.
Or maybe you’re hung up on the fact that we appear to be asking about NGO staff only, and you’re a consultant or maybe you work for an institutional donor (we’ve updated a few of those questions, by the way). Should you take the survey?
My personal favorite (see my prior rants here and here) is when some of you worry aloud over the fact that you sit in a HQ, far from the action, providing passive “support,” while the alleged real work is being done by the alleged real aid workers far, far away. Should you take the survey?
Yes! If you do now, or have ever worked in the aid industry, whether in DC or Dhaka, Brussels or Bujumbura, Geneva or Genoa… Whether your job is something about shuffling papers, responding to donor information needs, making operational decisions, directly handing relief NFIs to survivors, attending meetings, attending really important and high-level meetings… Then yes, we want to hear from you.
The same goes for all the other permutations, too. You retired years ago. You’re super angry. You’re super happy. You’re expat. You’re local. You’re too busy for blogs. You’re an expert in surveys and you have serious concerns about the assumptions being made by some of these questions. You’re in ‘transition’ work, and so neither really relief nor development. Your job is highly specialized. Your job is very general. You’re very senior in your organization. You’re very junior in your organization. Should you take the survey?
Yes. If you do now, or have ever worked in the aid industry….
J. is a full-time professional humanitarian worker with more than twenty years of experience in the aid industry. He currently holds a real aid world day job at a real humanitarian organization as a senior disaster response manager.
In a previous blogosphere life J. wrote a blog about aid work called Tales From the Hood, and was half owner/curator of the uber-awesome Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like.These days he occasionally blogs about serious topics at AidSpeak (aidspeak.wordpress.com).
J. has written several books, including the world's first humanitarian romance novel, Disastrous Passion, and a non-fiction book entitled Letters Left Unsent.
Follow J. on Twitter @evilgeniuspubs
Our survey of aid workers (read: anyone who’s ever somehow been part of the aid industry, ever) has been live for about one week, now. We’re seeing some interesting patterns begin to emerge out of the quantitative portions, and we’re getting some really interesting responses from you in the open-ended boxes. Thank you, and please keep those responses coming!
One piece of the picture of who you are (and me, too. I’m an aid worker), which I find particularly interesting, is what’s starting to emerge from multiple-choice questions #44 and #46, and “elaborate your thoughts” open-ended answer boxes which accompany them both. In their entirety, these two questions read:
Question 44: Many (most?) humanitarian aid workers will ultimately become ex-humanitarian aid workers. Excluding those few -but tragic- that will die in service, which below do you think is the *most* common reason why humanitarian aid workers choose to leave this line of work?
Question 46: Many (most?) humanitarian aid workers will ultimately become ex-humanitarian aid workers. Excluding the unlikely and tragic possibility that you will die in service, if you do so by choice which below do you think will be *your* reason for leaving this line of work?
So, basically, why do you think most people leave the aid industry? And then why do you think you will eventually leave?
Bear in mind that we’re not anywhere near closing the survey, so this obviously preliminary analysis could (and very possibly will) change before we’re all done. But one week in, here’s how you answered (screenshots directly from Survey Monkey):
Responses to why *others* are likely to leave the aid sector
responses to why *you* are likely to leave the aid sector.
My quick read-outs:
Retirement & Leave the Sector: It looks as if it’s fairly common to assume is that you will all eventually retire. There appear to be similarly strong assumptions around simply leaving the sector, say, for work in another industry. My (again, very initial) takeaway here is that this probably points to the reality that we increasingly see work in the aid sector as exactly that: work.
Maybe we work somewhere in the aid industry until we retire. This assumes that we will retire, which assumes some sort of retirement planning, which in turn assumes we’re somehow compensated enough to enable an actual retirement. There will come a time when we say, “okay, I’m done. I going to stop making the world better, and just play golf…”
Leaving the sector, while pretty broad and encompassing, also suggests that many of us see this all as “just another job.” Other studies have shown that it is common for people to shift industries several times over the course of an adult working lifetime. The aid industry is one of those industries, like many others, that people increasingly cycle through, as one option among many.
Termination: It was very interesting to see that almost none of you view termination (being fired) as much of a possibility, either for others (0.34%), or for yourselves (o.69%). Many elaborated this in the open-ended box following question #48 (“what do you think is the most common reason humanitarian workers are fired?”). In the words of one respondent, simply:
“Overall, I think you have to try pretty hard to get fired.”
Yep. This rings true, based on my experience. Outright termination is fairly rare.
Burnout & Disillusionment: The most interesting for me, personally, were the results that came out of Burnout and Disillusionment. Look at the tables above. Almost as many of you see disillusionment as almost as common a reason as retirement for others to leave the aid industry.
Tabulating views on “others” versus “you” were interesting as well. Based on results so far, many of you see others as more likely to leave because of disillusionment than you, yourself (others, 19.32%; self, 16.96%). This contrast is even more marked if we look at “burnout.” More of you chose burnout as the reason for others leaving the sector than any other option (27.8%), but “termination” was the only option with fewer choices than burnout as the reason why you would likely leave (9.69%).
My read: Basically we see others as burnt-out and disillusioned, or at least highly at-risk, while we still see ourselves as less so, or perhaps somehow immune. What does it mean? I’m not sure—still pondering. There’s a level at which it feels as if many of us have a generally negative view of our sector, yet remain basically optimistic (or maybe wishful) ourselves.
What do you think? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments thread below this post. You can also tweet to @tarcaro and @talesfromthhood with the hashtag #humsurvey. Be sure to follow my own snapshots of the #humsurvey results and discuss me and other respondents in more or less real time over on my Facebook page.
And of course, be sure to get as many as possible of your aid industry friends to take the survey.
J. is a full-time professional humanitarian worker with more than twenty years of experience in the aid industry. He currently holds a real aid world day job at a real humanitarian organization as a senior disaster response manager.
In a previous blogosphere life J. wrote a blog about aid work called Tales From the Hood, and was half owner/curator of the uber-awesome Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like.These days he occasionally blogs about serious topics at AidSpeak (aidspeak.wordpress.com).
J. has written several books, including the world's first humanitarian romance novel, Disastrous Passion, and a non-fiction book entitled Letters Left Unsent.
Follow J. on Twitter @evilgeniuspubs
Specifically we want to arrange open-ended interviews (via phone, Skype or otherwise) with aid workers who deal with identity management issues such as the above. If you are interested and/or have questions please send a message to me (Arcaro) with details of how you would prefer to be contacted.
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