“I want to go to the field,” you’ve probably told yourself, “because I can’t imagine sitting behind a desk all day.”
And then, suddenly, there you are: a newly hired aid worker near the battlefields of Ukraine, in the baking heat of the Sahel, or nestled into a snow-clad valley of the Hindu Kush — sitting in an office. That’s the point of this article. It’s a public service announcement to aspiring aid workers: Attention! A great deal of humanitarian field work is, in fact, office work.
But why is that? Shouldn’t aid workers be outside under the sun, distributing food, water, and medicine?
It’s important to understand that turning the colossal wheels of the international aid bureaucracy generates a massive amount of two things: paperwork and meetings. There are project proposals, budget forecasts, quarterly reports, narrative reports, financial reports, assessment reports, mid-term evaluations, no-cost extensions, procurement request forms, vendor contracts, bills of quantity, memorandums of understanding, beneficiary lists, distribution lists, movement request forms, travel expense claims, and — big inhale — team meetings, coordination meetings, community leadership meetings, youth committee meetings, donor meetings, government meetings, country security meetings, working group meetings, cluster meetings, and of course, sub-cluster meetings.
And I didn’t even mention emails.