fall 2016 quarterly newsletter - university of denver · assistance related events to the josef...

u

[email protected] PAGE 1 www.du.edu/korbel/humanitarian-assistance

STAYING CONNECTED

MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR

Follow our tweets for the latest buzz in the humanitarian world and live-tweeting during HA events.

Fall 2016 Quarterly Newsletter

Greetings!

The Fall Quarter at the Josef Korbel School is coming to a close. A new group of Humanitarian Assistance students have begun the program, while returning students started their second year after their summer internships. In this edition, we introduce our new students, and highlight the work of several of our students in the Humanitarian Assistance Certificate Program and the Humanitarian Assistance Applied Research Group (HAARG).

We also provide a review of several events that the Humanitarian Assistance Program hosted during the quarter.

Enjoy,

Chen Reis

Twitter @DU_humanitarian

IN THIS ISSUE

The Humanitarian Assistance Certificate Program prepares students to work in the humanitarian field. The program provides students with the theoretical and practical underpinnings for humanitarian work which is technically sound, engages with affected communities, responds to the

diverse needs of affected populations and sets the stage for sustainable and inclusive recovery and development.

Be sure to “like” HA’s Facebook page and stay up to date with news both here at the Josef Korbel School and around the world.

Website

Check out our website at: http://www.du.edu/korbel/humanitarian-assistanceLearn more about the Humanitarian Assistance Program and our current students.

Instagram

Follow the Humanitarian Assistance Instagram page for pictures and updates on events and students.

Facebook www.facebook.com/du.haprog

Page 4-5 Internship Profiles

Page 3

Page 6-7 HAARG

Page 8-9 Alumni Profile

Page 2

Greeting

Speaker Reviews

New Student Profiles


Abigail RichardsMarylandI am interested in refugee studies and gender-based violence in West Africa.

Christine Colburn Washington D.C.My interests include humanitarian logistics and protection issues, particularly as they relate to people in conflict settings.

Natália Regina Colvero MaraschinBrazil My interests are humanitarian aid in regions in conflict, human rights and conflict resolution

Lucienne RosnerNew YorkI am interested in the intersection of education aid and humanitarian assistance.

Aliza VaccherOregonI am particularly interested in refugee studies, including refugee protection, IDP rights, the struggles of local integration and human rights in the context of refugee camps.

[email protected] https://portfolio.du.edu/haprog

Kushagra PokhrelNepalI am interested in in studying the intersection between migrant issues, human trafficking, armed conflict and security.

Daniel OdetolaNigeriaI am interested in refugee studies and development on the African continent.

Ridley (Sarah) Walters Michigan I am interested in working in disaster relief with particular interest in gender rights and equality within disaster response and recovery.

Ali Eren GuvenTurkeyI have a particular interest in the Post-Cold War developments and human security.

RaeAnne Deitlin MarylandI have an academic background in Japanese and Asian Studies, I remain especially interested in humanitarian work in this region.

NEW HA CERTIFICATE STUDENTS

HA welcomes 10 new certificate students to the certificate program!

PAGE 2

mailto:[email protected]

https://portfolio.du.edu/pc/port?portfolio=haprog


Speaker Review


Every Quarter, the Humanitarian Assistance Program strives to bring relevant guest speakers and other humanitarian assistance related events to the Josef Korbel School. See below for a recap of events from the Fall Quarter.

Emma Dunn Internship Talk

On October 18th, Emma Dunn spoke to students about her summer internship in Lebanon with Save the Children. Her talk covered details regarding how she applied for and received the internship, including the approximate time-line of applying and the methods she used to secure the internship. Emma also spoke about the experience of living in Lebanon and working for Save the Children.

For more information about Emma's internship, go to page 3.

Karen Stewart Career Path Talk

On October 27th, Karen Stewart spoke to students about her career working in the humanitarian field. As a Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Specialist, Karen has over twenty-five years working in the fields of mental health, HIV/AIDS and addiction. For ten years, Karen Stewart worked with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)/Doctors Without Borders throughout Asia and Africa as a Mental Health Officer and Coach, and still works with them for short term projects. During this Career Path talk, Karen spoke about her work with MSF, including the wide range of challenges in the field as a mental health coach and as a manager. A large portion of Karen Stewart's job involved training MSF staff members who were new to the field. Karen's talk addressed many of the issues she saw in the field, such as staff attempting to manage from the office instead of monitoring in the field. She discussed how the largest issue in the field was a lack of appropriate management, as many experts on staff lacked the softer skills needed to properly organize a staff. She described the need for a work life balance, that was challenging for many to maintain. Karen also spoke about the positive aspects of the field, including the camaraderie among humanitarian workers. She described how the bonds created, and importance of the work were invaluable to her overall career and life experiences.


Student Internship Profiles


Emma Dunn

Learn more about the recent experiences of our Humanitarian Assistance Certificate Students!

Emma Dunn is a second year student at Josef Korbel. She is a M.A. Candidate in International Development with a certificate in Humanitarian Assistance and International Law.

What is your background? My background is mainly in forced migration issues in Latin America.

Where did you intern? I interned with Save the Children Lebanon in their Operations Department, working in the Syrian response.

Why did you choose this site /organization? I started at Korbel with an interest in forced migration issues and humanitarian assistance, specifically in the protection sector, and was very set on gaining field experience in a humanitarian organization. I also wanted to gain experience in the Middle East in order to practice and improve my Arabic, which is why I sought out positions in Lebanon or Jordan

How did you get the internship? I reached out to my professors, specifically Jerry Montgomery and Chen Reis, and asked for contacts in humanitarian organizations.

Then I worked with the Office for Career and Professional Development at Korbel to craft an internship proposition letter. I followed up multiple times with the various contacts and I eventually heard back from Save the Children in Lebanon. It took persistence and effort to receive the final internship offer and contract with the Operations Department and Child Protection sector.

What did you do?My main role consisted of supporting the North Office Area Manager in overseeing day-to-day program implementation, including revising and submitting donor reports, contributing to grant amendments, and addressing planning challenges. I also assisted with the Child Protection Situation Analysis report and conducted evaluations on two child protection grants.

How do you think it contributed to your humanitarian assistance and/or Korbel education? Interning with Save the Children Lebanon has complimented my education at the Josef Korbel School within the Humanitarian Assistance program. My time at the organization solidified lessons learned in classes like Intro to Humanitarian Systems and Field Operations in Humanitarian Assistance and helped clarify my personal career goals in the field.



Catie Fowler is a second-year MA candidate in International Human Rights with a Certificate in Humanitarian Assistance.

What is your background? I am an International Studies student in the Humanitarian Assistance certificate with a focus on human rights and gender in conflict. I came to the Joseph Korbel School of International Studies after graduating from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a BA in Anthropology, serving in the US Peace Corps in Rwanda, and living and working with predominantly Congolese refugees in Kyanwali Refugee Settlement, Western Uganda.

Where did you intern? Oxfam America in Boston

Why did you choose this site/organization? I chose this site because I agreed with Oxfam’s philosophy emphasizing a right to life with dignity and focusing on resilience and empowerment in humanitarian assistance, giving more agency to affected populations than to outside agencies.

How did you get the internship? I applied after receiving an email about the position through the HA certificate program and submitted a writing sample that was actually a part of my final for Introduction to Humanitarian Systems. I had a Skype interview with two of the people in my department and was given the position.

What did you do? I had a variety of large and small tasks that I completed for the organization. As one of my smaller tasks, I kept the Humanitarian Team up-to-date about recent humanitarian bulletins. A few of my larger tasks included researching humanitarian capacity-building trainings, examining case studies of local leadership in disaster response, and helping to examine the existing tools that Oxfam had for resiliency-specific programming.

How do you think it contributed to your humanitarian assistance and/or Korbel education? I felt I learned quite a bit about the general workings of a larger humanitarian organization being stationed at headquarters for a summer. I was able to get a good sense of the daily ins and outs of the organization, as well as sit down with humanitarians with a variety of experiences in the field. I also shaped quite a bit of my own personal opinions on the way humanitarian assistance should be implemented, and what I would like my role in the world of humanitarian assistance to be.

Student Internship Profiles

Catie Fowler


HAARG


Humanitarian Assistance Applied Research Group (HAARG) provides students with supervised opportunities to be involved in needs assessment, program evaluation and other forms of applied research with humanitarian organizations.

Sarah Allison is a second year International Human Rights candidate with a focus in nonprofit management, development, and evaluation and international food security.

What project(s) have you worked on with HAARG and what opportunities have stemmed from these projects? During my first year as a HAARG Research Assistant, I worked on a project with the International Rescue Committee assisting their Best Use of Resources Team in quality checking cost-efficiency analyses for their programs. This project provided me with experience and skills that, combined with supervisor connections made through HAARG, allowed me to secure a competitive resume and ultimately gained me an internship with the UN High Commissioner for Refugee’s Statelessness Unit in Malaysia. Since returning from my internship, I have begun working on two more HAARG projects. One as a fundraising assistant for Uduk Hope Inc. and one as a fundraising assistant for the UNHCR Private Sector Fundraising Service, largely thanks to the skills and experience I gained from working with UNHCR.

What challenges have you encountered while working on these projects?There is always a steep learning curve when beginning a new project with a new supervisor as a HAARG RA.

Specifically, when I began working with the International Rescue Committee, there was a steep learning curve in terms of excel skills as well as an understanding of the supervisor’s methodology and equations when developing their cost-efficiency models. Challenges such as understanding supervisor needs, gaining the skills necessary to complete a project to their satisfaction, and learning to communicate with supervisors about support you may need to be successful are all realities that I will likely face when I begin my career. Because of this, I am thankful for facing these challenges with the support network of HAARG behind me as I now know how to navigate them on my own in the future.

Do you think that HAARG has provided you with the necessary skills to be competitive in the humanitarian assistance job market? Absolutely, HAARG has been an excellent resource for me to gain concrete experiences and marketable skills in highly desirable areas, including monitoring and evaluation and fundraising. As an International Human Rights student, gaining these concrete job skills in combination with the theory and skills gained through my coursework has allowed me to develop a highly competitive resume which makes me desirable to future employers. I was recently told by a supervisor how impressed they were with the breadth of skills on my resume, many of which were gained through my work with HAARG.

What advice do you have for others interested in joining HAARG? I would advise potential HAARG RAs to be willing to take on projects that they may feel they are not fully qualified for; provided they are upfront with supervisors about their current skill sets. Working on HAARG projects has greatly improved my skills in areas that I never expected them to. If I had not been willing to apply for projects that were difficult or out of my current skillset I do not think I would have experienced the same level of professional growth that I have through HAARG.

Can you talk specifically about how your work with HAARG led to an internship opportunity?HAARG allows graduate students to find opportunities and make connections which they might not otherwise have had. My future UNHCR supervisor, the Protection Officer of the Malaysian Statelessness Unit, contacted Dr. Welton-Mitchell in search of an intern with a list of duties. Through this contact I was able to submit my CV directly to my future supervisor, complete an interview, and was selected to intern in Kuala Lumpur from April through July 2016. I strongly believe that in addition to the initial contact through HAARG, the skills and research experience I have gained as an RA contributed significantly to my receipt of the internship and my success during my time in Malaysia.

HAARG helps RAs Prepare for Careers in Humanitarian Research, Monitoring, and Evaluation

HAARG currently has 28 researchers and 24 projects. The current group is comprised primarily of current JKSIS students, although some DU alumni are also involved. At the start of the Fall quarter alone, 12 new researchers (RAs) were recruited, 11 of whom are first year students.

Sarah Allison


HAARG


Michelle Munsey

Humanitarian Assistance Applied Research Group (HAARG) provides students with supervised opportunities to be involved in needs assessment, program evaluation and other forms of applied research with humanitarian organizations.

How do you think working with HAARG will affect your career path? Well, I just accepted a job as a Program Evaluator with a private consulting firm based out of Augusta, Maine doing evaluations of domestically-based public health initiatives. In my interview, the interviewers were extremely interested in learning more about the work I did on my HAARG projects and mentioned that they were quite impressed by the application of my analysis and evaluation skills. I think my work with HAARG was integral in helping me get this position. Additionally, I plan to continue working on my HAARG projects and maintaining close relationships with my supervisors for networking purposes. In a few years, if I'm looking to change jobs, I'll have a few people I can reach out to for advice and guidance, which I think it quite valuable. For me, the most important take-away from HAARG is the real-world, applied skill-building.

Can you talk about your Stop Hunger Now project, and how it led to a paid consultancy? So, as stated above, SHN brought me on to analyze their survey data to get a snapshot of what food security, poverty and WASH conditions looked like in the Artibonite and Nord administrative departments of Haiti. But, initially when I was brought on to the project, I was going to be doing the analysis of the survey, creating graphics and graphics, and reporting back to my supervisors. They were then going to use my analysis to guide their final report. After I completed much of the analysis, they asked if I would be interested in helping them to write the report and, when I expressed interest, they offered to pay me. I think both of my supervisors were stretched very thin and were working on lots of projects at once, so they decided to turn my volunteer work into a short-term, paid consultancy in order to give me more responsibility. So at this time, I'm responsible to writing the Findings section of the final report, in which I will detail all of the pertinent findings from my analysis. My supervisors will be writing on the background information, as well as the data collection methodology. It's been a somewhat frustrating process, but also really great because I get the opportunity to co-author a technically-guided report and it's always exciting to be paid for your work!

Michelle Munsey is a June 2016 graduate of the International Development program with concentrations in International Project Management and Monitoring & Evaluation.

What projects have you worked on with HAARG, and what opportunities have these projects created? Through HAARG, I've worked on two projects; one with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the other with Stop Hunger Now. With IRC, I worked with one of the organization's Research and Evaluation Advisors to do a secondary evaluation of a community-driven reconstruction (CDR) program in post-conflict Liberia. For this project, I worked closely with my supervisor to perform quantitative analyses using STATA to answer various research questions about the impact of the CDR model on inter-ethnicity relations and and community development in a post-conflict environment. With Stop Hunger Now, I worked with a Josef Korbel School alum and former HAARG RA, along with her colleague, to analyze baseline survey data collected in Haiti. The organization wanted to get a snapshot of the current food security, poverty and WASH conditions in the Artibonite and Nord departments of Haiti so they brought me on to conduct the quantitative analysis of their survey data.

Aside from building great relationships with supervisors and colleagues for networking purposes, these projects have provided immense experience in data analysis, STATA, report writing, and professional communication. In addition, I've gotten to learn a great deal about various international intervention models, proxy measures for food security and household-level poverty, and how to work with the best data/information available to you, even if it's not always of high quality.


Alumni Profile

[email protected] PAGE 8

Andrea DeGaetani-Buttram

See what the Josef Korbel School graduates are doing now, how they feel their education contributed to their career development and what advice they offer to upcoming grads looking to enter the humanitarian field.

Andrea DeGaetani-Buttram is the Deputy Director for Programs for the International Rescue Committee Ethiopia Program

What is your career background? Following Peace Corps service and some internships and volunteer stints with organizations supporting refugees and asylum seekers, I took on some writing and editing assignments for social change and human rights projects, and then worked in housing rights in Washington DC where I mobilized and supported low-income, at-risk residents to prevent displacement from their homes. From there, it was on to Ethiopia where, staying on the track of working with displaced and underserved populations, I began working with the International Rescue Committee (IRC). IRC’s Ethiopia program is large and complex, providing multi-sector assistance in refugee camps, emergency response to internally displaced and crisis affected communities, and longer-term development programs. I got my foot in the door working with the grants department supporting program design, proposal development, project monitoring and reporting, and donor relations. Since then – nearly seven years ago – I have worked with the country program in several capacities, and am currently the Deputy Director for Programs.

Please describe your job and what you find most challenging. As Deputy Director for Programs, I am responsible for overall leadership and management of IRC Ethiopia’s program portfolio, providing strategic direction and oversight to ensure quality program planning and implementation. I engage in donor and government relations, represent the IRC at various internal and external stakeholder forums, and work closely with others in senior management to maintain an overall effective operation in the country. The most challenging aspect of this work is that there are a million moving pieces with countless priorities on a given day. With this you have to prioritize and make often difficult decisions on addressing things that directly impact peoples’ lives. Juggling resource mobilization, budget constraints, logistical challenges, and sometimes conflicting stakeholder needs and interests is a tireless task on a daily basis. That said, it is also this complexity and urgency that makes the work interesting and rewarding.

How did your time at Korbel contribute to your career development?I enrolled at Korbel in 2005, then called the Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS), and my professors and coursework there galvanized my career interests, setting me on the path to where I am now, which is essentially my dream job. Courses focused on applied field methods, non-profit management, project management and analysis, and international organizations and the refugee system, for example, I found to be extremely practical in my career path so far. Courses that gave attention to the human side of international humanitarian work really struck a chord and instilled in me approaches that I strive to bring to my job every day.

What other experiences have contributed to your career development?I would say Peace Corps served as the trail head to how got to where I am now. I had an extremely positive experience through which I connected to people and their needs and potential in a way I never had, opening my mind and spirit further to a career in supporting others to have those needs met and seize their potential. Another valuable experience was mentoring resettled refugee families as they adjusted to life in the United States. I brought the understanding of the complex circumstances of displacement I gained through that experience – and through my time at Korbel – to my work with refugees in the Horn and East Africaand others

yi


Alumni Profile (Cont.)


Andrea DeGaetani-Buttram

See what the Josef Korbel School graduates are doing now, how they feel their education contributed to their career development and what advice they offer to upcoming grads looking to enter the humanitarian field.

What other experiences have contributed to your career development?I would say Peace Corps served as the trail head to how got to where I am now. I had an extremely positive experience through which I connected to people and their needs and potential in a way I never had, opening my mind and spirit further to a career in supporting others to have those needs met and seize their potential. Another valuable experience was mentoring resettled refugee families as they adjusted to life in the United States. I brought the understanding of the complex circumstances of displacement I gained through that experience – and through my time at Korbel – to my work with refugees in the Horn and East Africa and others in Ethiopia affected by crises.

Do you have any words of wisdom for Korbel students who want to pursue a career in humanitarian assistance?Be humble, show your worth, and remember what it is for. As you enter the job market post-grad school, be willing to take jobs that may not be in the exact field or specialization you see yourself in in five or ten years. Some of you will get the exact jobs in the fields you want right out of school, but others will not. Recognize that it is competitive out there, and sometimes there is a door open where you might not have been looking. If there is an organization you really want to work for, or a country you really want to work in, seek out various options to get yourself in there and show them what you have got. Make yourself invaluable. When you land that job and it becomes hard to strike a good work-life balance, find that balance, but also remind yourself what it is all about – why you are doing it. However far you get down that path, or up that ladder, go to the field. That is where you see your work in action, and get to the heart of what – and who – it is all for.

Book Release

Humanitarian Assistance Program Director, Chen Reis co-authored a book, Becoming an International Humanitarian Aid Worker with Tania Bernath. The book details useful information for those looking to pursue a career in the humanitarian field, including information about the field itself, job postings over a 9-month period and strategies to become, or remain, competitive in the humanitarian job market. The book can be ordered from the publisher Elsavier http://bit.ly/2fe9fbD or through Amazon.com

fall 2016 quarterly newsletter - university of denver · assistance related events to the josef...

Documents