Emergency expertise to match the situation

I’m leaving Goma, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in two days. I’ll head first to Kinshasa and then back to London. After that I’m off to Niger.

I’m going from rainforest at the equator to desert near the tropic of cancer, from a balmy 20 degrees to a 40 degree oven, from years of conflict and risks to children’s protection to a massive food crisis and appalling levels of malnutrition. I’m going from the dry season to the rainy season, from mainly Christian to predominantly Muslim, from the seventh least-developed country in the world to the least developed of them all.

Responding to emergencies are at the very core of Save the Children’s work. They have to be – where else do children need saving more clearly than in an emergency? In the last year, Save the Children has responded to 30 emergencies, and every one has been different to the one before. Find out more in our five minute film: ‘It’s what we do‘.

Every time an emergency strikes there is the immediate, desperate needs of the affected people, and a whole new operating environment for the people responding. How do we manage that? By having a hugely diverse work force, so we can bring in the expertise to match the situation.

We can send Portuguese-speaking staff from Mozambique to help manage floods in Brazil, or we can move people from West Africa to share their skills in Haiti. My flatmates are from the USA, Kenya, and Guinea, and I share an office with people from France, Italy, and Cote d’Ivoire. It’s an amazing world to work in.