Preparing for a field assignment

Humanitarian workers have jobs that are both enormously gratifying and filled with difficult challenges, painful choices, and uncomfortable stresses. No matter how resilient you may be, these challenges, choices and stresses can take a toll on you physically and emotionally and can affect your ability to continue to work effectively. This chapter focuses on actions you can take before you leave for your assignment that will increase the likelihood that your assignment will be productive and successful and that you will maintain a sense of emotional well-being.

Know yourself and what you are getting into

Before you find yourself in a situation that is not to your liking, some assessment is in order. The more you know about your own motives, personality characteristics and abilities, about the impact your assignment will have on your family and about your agency, the better prepared you will be, first, to decide if this is the right assignment for you and, second, assuming you decide the answer is 'yes,' to face the challenges ahead.

Assess your motives

You need to be strongly motivated to choose a difficult path such as humanitarian aid work or human rights work in the field. Why do you want to be a humanitarian worker – either in general or in the particular assignment you are about to begin? Different people have different motivations:

* a desire to help others

* a desire to 'make a difference'

* a desire to use your talents

* a desire to do something valuable with your life

* a religious vocation

* a desire to improve your skills and build a career

* a wish for adventure

* a desire to travel

* a need for money

* a wish for time away from home.

No single motivational factor is the 'correct' one to have, but some motivations may be more helpful in maintaining your commitment to humanitarian work than others. Your desire for travel to a warm climate may not suffice to keep you going in difficult and dangerous living conditions. And if your desire to help others is based on a need to feel wanted, experiencing ingratitude from some of the people you try to help may come as a shock. Thinking through what you want to get out of an assignment before you go may arm you against later surprises.

Assess your personality

Many different kinds of people work in humanitarian aid, human rights and development projects. There is no one personality type that is perfect for every situation. Some of the characteristics of people who are successful in maintaining their commitment and emotional well-being in field situations include the following.

* Perseverance, patience and a high toleration for frustration.

* A strong sense of responsibility.

* Good communication skills, including an ability to listen effectively, state your own opinions and needs clearly and express your feelings appropriately.

* The ability to work with others on a team: to be assertive yet to cooperate and make compromises when needed and to be able to admit mistakes when it is appropriate.

* The ability to solve problems and make decisions effectively. A good decision maker is thorough and open to considering alternatives, but able to make quick and firm decisions when necessary.

* A sense of adventure, an ability to get pleasure from a wide range of experience and to welcome change.

* Flexibility and resilience in the face of difficult working and living conditions, uncertainty, discomfort and sometimes danger.

* High tolerance for personal diversity, including tolerance for a range of habits, styles of communication, customs, religions, beliefs and cultures.

* Understanding the power of ethnic, religious and national identity and respecting the sensitivities of those whose identify differs from your own.

* Sensitivity to and respect for the distinct experiences and needs that reflect gender differences.

* The ability to relax.

* Empathy, caring and an ability to express and demonstrate support for colleagues and clients, coupled with an ability to maintain an appropriate sense of professional boundaries.

* A sense of being grounded in spiritual or ethical/philosophical beliefs. But consider: Do your beliefs create potential issues of conscience that would make it difficult to work in the situation you face (for example, corruption, working with people who may have participated in atrocities, working with people whose beliefs about violence or about gender or about religious tolerance are very different from yours)?

* A history of having been able to resolve major stressors and traumatic experiences, whether in personal life or in past experiences of humanitarian work.

* A sense of humor, used in a socially and culturally sensitive manner.

To help you think about your own characteristics, you might want to complete the following questionnaire.

Assess the effects that taking your assignment will have on others

Taking on an assignment affects not only you, but your family, friends and colleagues. In turn, their reactions will have an impact on your own sense of well-being.

If your family will be accompanying you, what effect will your taking on this assignment have on them? What will your spouse or partner be doing? What will the effect be on your children of being uprooted and transported to a culture that is foreign to them? What practical issues will arise with respect to schooling, healthcare and safety?

If your assignment will take you away from your family and close friends, what practical and emotional problems will your absence create for them? How will they feel about your absence? How will they cope with these problems and feelings? If your assignment will take you into potentially risky situations, what is your family's level of toleration of risk, as well as your own?

If you are taking a leave from your regular job, what effect will your absence have on your colleagues and on your career? At the most practical level, can you maintain your benefits, such as health insurance or life insurance or pension rights? Will your job still be waiting for you when you return? Beyond these, what will the impact be on your colleagues? Will your experience on your assignment or your absence affect your long term career goals?

Assess the organizational support you will have from your agency

While you are in the field, your work team and your agency assume the role of your family, your friends and your job, all rolled into one. They are, potentially, your strongest base of support, but they can also be a source of strain or of disappointment. Before you embark on an assignment, you want to be sure there is a good 'fit' between...