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Fall 2018 Quarterly Newsletter

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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

Facebook www.facebook.com/du.haprog

Page 6 Internship Profiles

Page 3

Page 7 HAARG

Page 8 1 Alumni Profile

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@ _humanitarian


Sarah FiegelsonMy interests include Forced Labor and Human Trafficking as well as Refugees and Migration in the humanitarian context.

Jessica CheuvrontMy interests include humanitarian response to ethnic disputes and how women are affected.

Eva Neligh am interested in refugee rights and relief efforts during humanitarian crises in Europe and the United States.

Caroline HoldrenMy interests include civil-military coordination in humanitarian crises and security risk management of humanitarian operations.

Megan O'BrienI am interested in refugee and internally displaced populations, humanitarian disaster response, and program development, especially within the context of refugee camps.

Joshua CoakleyI am interested in researching and advising on the social, economic, and political factors of humanitarian crisis with a particular interest in Palestinian rights.

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

Amelia GrauerMy interest include the protection sector and Gender-Based Violence in East Africa.

Josie MudjitabaI am interested in anti-human trafficking and gender-based violence issues.

Devin ClarkI have a wide variety of interests and I hope school will focus some of my ideas.

Kate NollnerMy interests are in international health policy, specifically in the integration of mental health care for refugees and victims of humanitarian crises.

Rahmi Dian AgustinoMy interests include women’s rights, refugees and immigration, peacebuilding, and the Middle East

Ahrin Acheampong I am interested in studying vulnerable populations, especially refugees and how they can be targets of terrorist organizations.

NEW HA CERTIFICATE STUDENTS

HA welcomes 12 new cert icate students to the certificate program!

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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.

Noa and Sarah ended their talk with take-aways and advice for all the first year HA students. They suggested that students begin the internship search early, and be strategic and specific about the internships they are applying to. The last concept they really stressed was the importance of networking and understanding that connections are all around, personal or professional.

On Tuesday the 2nd of October, two second year Humanitarian Assistance Certificate students, Sarah Hanselin and Noa Shapira, spoke about their summer internship experiences. Sarah was a monitoring & evaluating intern at CARE Jordan in Amman and Noa worked as an intern for Jesuit Refugee Services in Dzaleka Refugee Camp, Malawi.

Both Sarah and Noa explained the application process, helpful courses they took here at Korbel, and funding. Both students believed that introductory courses to the humanitarian system and field operations, as well as specific regionally-focused classes really benefited their experience. They also spoke about how each internship is context-specific and what is learned is worthwhile, whether is affirmed a career trajectory that they were already working towards or whether it provided useful introspection in the humanitarian world.

Jeff Franklin is a Korbel alumnus with a 17-year history in international affairs and over 10 years of emergency leadership and development experience. He took the opportunity on Friday October 12th, 2018 to speak to students interested in a humanitarian career about his career path. Jeff began his humanitarian career with a leap of faith – he moved to Vietnam six months after graduate school. He had previously spent a majority of his time applying to jobs, with no avail and thus decided to move abroad in hopes that proximity would give him an added advantage on his resume. He was right. Shortly after moving to Vietnam, Jeff started volunteering with Care International and six weeks later, he was a staff member. Very quickly he moved from entry-level positions to managerial positions, revolving in-and-out of humanitarian organizations, such as Mercy Corps, Save the Children, and Norwegian Red Cross. After all the international travel and disaster response, Jeff has moved back to Denver working with as the Lead Technical Advisor for International Disaster Preparedness at the American Red Cross and he also teaches at Korbel as an adjunct instructor in the Humanitarian Assistance program.

Throughout Jeff’s career talk, he offered advice to students. The most relevant to graduating students is to not be picky for your first job, but apply for everything: the long-shots and the easy pickings. The first field job, Jeff mentions, is the most important- it will set your career trajectory. As a final note, Jeff discusses something all student have lingering in the back of their minds: student debt. Jeff says not to worry too much about this, as your first field job will generally be in a location that is quite cheap (often with no taxes) and most of your salary can be put into savings. The timeframe for paying off that student debt all depends on how you are living.

Jeff Franklin Career Path Talk



Speaker ReviewsEvery 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.

Alexandra Shaphren has been working in the humanitarian field since 2012. On Tuesday October 30th, 2018 she took the opportunity to speak to students in the humanitarian assistance program about her career. Ever since she was young, Alexandra has always enjoyed working with children and that translated to her career. She admitted that her internship with Save the Children in Washington D.C. wasn’t her favorite, but it did lead to her full time job in the field in newborn health. Alexandra said that she was lucky that her family could support her since D.C. is an expensive city which is why it can sometimes be hard to get experience if you don’t have the means.

At a conference in Boston, she took a massive risk and applied to and became an Emergency Child Protection Manager with IRC in South Sudan. This role has enabled many more doors to open for her. In fact, Alexandra advises the students that she spoke with to take the hardest country or opportunity because it shows that you can handle yourself in tough situations and gives you some street credit in the humanitarian field. She also said that it can sometimes be easier to get the jobs in the more challenging countries since they aren’t as desired and many times if they having trouble filling the positions, they will accept those with less experience than is posted.

An important issue that Shaphren addressed with students was burnout and security. She said that burnout can be a real issue and that it is important to recognize what burnout look likes in yourself and then be honest with your supervisor about what you can and cannot complete. Additionally, she talked about security in these countries. She said that the number one piece of security is that the local people want you there because they will tell you where it is safe to go. It is also important to know the safety and security protocols of the country and organization. One thing to note about this is that while the NGOs may have resources, they can’t be there to protect, it’s the logo that does the protecting. Finally, she said that a responsible employer will set parameters about where you go based on who you are.

Alexandra Shaphren


Student Internship Profiles

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

Sarah Hanselin

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

I have a BA in Anthropology and History from the University of Northern Colorado. After undergrad I pursued a career in education, teaching for 3 years in Egypt to a mostly refugee population. It was there that I grew passionate about the humanitarian realm and wanted to focus on refugee rights.

I interned at CARE Jordan in Amman, Jordan..

Why did you choose this organization?CARE offers invaluable experience in gendered issues and is a leading organization in working on urban refugee issues in Amman. The location was also perfect as I was wanting to focus on the Middle East as my region.

How did you find this internship?Through connections from a professor, I came to him with my interests and asked if he knew anyone in the region that he could connect me with. My supervisor was his classmate when he went to Korbel!

I was an M&E intern, so a bulk of my time at first was spent in the country office working on aspects of donor reports. I also was given the opportunity to create the TOR for an assessment consultancy project and worked on larger CARE International reporting mechanisms and assessments. I also assisted in writing out a new proposal for a sustainable job development project through a new donor to CARE Jordan. I also had the time to work with other departments like sustainable development and helped out with beneficiary intake, so had the pleasure to visit most community centers offered by CARE in Jordan and assisted in interviewing folks new to CARE and evaluating what services they qualified for through CARE.

I received

such a hands-on and practical introduction to the M&E world, specifically in the mechanisms that this organization utilizes but also in the larger M&E structures between HQ and other NGOs. I also deeply appreciated seeing how gender issues were at the heart of everything they did, this left a lasting impression with me and I hope to always seamlessly incorporate gender into future positions I obtain. This office also had a strong emphasis on working on the transition of humanitarian assistance to sustainable development, recognizing that in an 8 year emergency response to the Syrian Crisis, that people are best served in not just aid but in also education and opportunities to develop a life in their displacement. It was enriching for me to witness how this organization was working on the dual front of providing services for urgent needs but also addressing the long-term needs of a changing community. And to work in the field, learning and connecting with beneficiaries and staff, and see how an INGO like CARE makes personal and lasting connections with the community was an amazing example of how an organization can humanely change lives in the midst of a crisis.

Sarah Hanselin is a second year student pursuing a M.A. in International Human Rights and a Certificatein Humanitarian Assistance.


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

My undergraduate degree was a dual degree in political science and the interdisciplinary program in humanities, with a focus on gender studies. This interest and focus on gender and conflict continued to inform to my choice of course at Korbel. Apart from everything I learned in my current degree program (human rights and the humanitarian assistance certificate) - I have project design and management experience through volunteering in different frameworks. In addition, in 2016 I interned with UNHCR in Israel for six months, where I advised and worked with refugees, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan. I learned to recognize vulnerabilities, wrote country condition reports and conducted research that taught me much about international and local legislation regarding refugees. Lastly, I am a certified group facilitator, a skill that helped me much more than anticipated in my internship in Malawi.

I interned with Jesuit Refugee Service in Malawi, and worked at Dzaleka refugee camp, as part of the NAWEZA project, which aims to support girls’ education and empowerment.

Why did you choose this organization?Out of all the options I ended up having, this was the most relevant one, focused on sexual and gender-based violence and working with refugees. I was also very interested in working in and learning about the work in a refugee camp setting. In addition, two students from Korbel interned with JRS the year before, so I had a lot of prior information regarding what to expect.

It was a combination of working with OCPD and getting a connection to JRS international headquarters in Rome through Professor Micheline Ishay.

I worked with a project called NAWEZA (meaning I can in Swahili). Apart from taking part in non-food items distributions (sanitary kits), I took part in educational interventions that aimed to address the vulnerabilities that lead girls to drop out of school. I took part in community mobilization, conducted a needs assent, designed and implemented interventions in the field of SGBV prevention and mitigation. The successful intervention was integrated into the high school at the camp, and is still running. I also facilitate trainings for community members and other stakeholders in the camp on women’s rights, human rights, gender, LGBTI, vulnerability and SGBV. Finally, I took part in capacity building of the project team, community social workers and community leaders in the fields of gender sensitive response, facilitation and handling of SGBV cases. I also took part in M&E to the projects I was involved in.

this internship was a great opportunity to see and feel the difference between the theories learned in a classroom and the actual work in the field, that many times is much less organized and driven in a reactionary way to everyday events, with less time to think and plan. Among other lessons, I learned how important it is to truly be a professional in this field, and realized the magnitude of the harm potential.

Student Internship Pro iles

Noa Shapira is a second year student pursuing a M.A. in International Human Rights and a Certificate in Humanitarian Assistance.

Noa Shapira

Fall 8 a l l

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.

The Fall 2018 Quarter & New Recruits

Authors: Courtney Welton-Mitchell, cofounder and HAARG Director (2014-2018) and Steven Reed, HAARG administration.

New RAsHAARG started the academic year strong with 19 research assistants (RAs). At this moment, nearly all RAs have projects, with some working on more than one at a time. In recent weeks HAARG has been working with UNICEF, International Rescue Committee (IRC), Center for Victims of Torture (CVT), Women’s Refugee Commission, Mercy Corps, UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Fortify Rights, Save the Children, USAID, Hand in Hand for Syria (HiHFAD) and more. We highlight of few of these projects below.

Recent projectsKushagra Pokhrel recently completed a project with Fortify Rights in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh. He coded qualitative data for a project examining human rights violations and mental health among Rohingya refugees.

Cecily Bacon is currently working with HIHFAD, providing data analysis for an impact evaluation focused on assistance to Syrian war survivors with injuries.

Ally Walker is currently working with IRC providing data analysis using STATA for a project examining whether community-based interventions in Democratic Republic of Congo can improve intergroup relations. Ally is also working with CVT on a gender-based violence literature review.

Devin Clark and Catherine Galley have recently started working on a project with a Senior Research Advisor at USAID. They are reviewing recent evaluations and learning documents, helping to synthesize information for USAID’s learning agenda related to education in conflict.

Guest speakersThis month we will have a remote guest lecture from Betsy Laird, International Rescue Committee, Violence Prevention and Response Measurement Specialist. Betsy will share information about - typical monitoring and evaluation-related tasks with IRC, experience required for her position, and how IRC views assessments, feasibility studies, program evaluations and other applied research. She will also touch on ethical issues encountered in her work. Of note, there is an open internship working with Betsy at IRC: Violence Prevention and Response Monitoring and Evaluation Intern, see details here: https://rescue.csod.com/ats/careersite/JobDetails.aspx?site=1&id=2901

Administrative transitionsOn a final note, as of January 1st, 2019 I/Courtney will be handing over my HAARG responsibilities to Humanitarian Assistance Program Director Chen Reis. Steven Reed will stay on as the HAARG administrator. It has been my pleasure to work with the students at Korbel through HAARG over these past few years.

Join HAARGWe are recruiting more RAs! For those of you interested in joining HAARG, please contact Steven Reed, HAARG administrator, at: [email protected]


Alumni Profile

[email protected]

Thayer

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.

y Thayer the Emergency Coordinator in South Sudan for Humanity and Inclusion

What is your career background?Working in the humanitarian field is actually my second career. Prior to this I was an outdoor educator (teaching 5th and 6th grade students about the natural environment in a camp setting) and wilderness guide (taking people of all ages and abilities, including people with disabilities, on kayaking, canoeing, and hiking adventures across North America). It was while I was in the Peace Corps that I realized I was ready to make a career change to do humanitarian work. After Peace Corps ended I arrived at Korbel in 2013 to begin my transformation into a humanitarian! During my time at Korbel I had three internships: one with the American Red Cross in Denver coordinating disaster responses, another internship with UNHCR evaluating livelihood programs in Zambia, and a final internship with UNFPA in Palestine focusing on GBV. After graduating Korbel in 2015, I went to Liberia where I served as the Country Director for a small INGO based in Philadelphia working towards the empowerment of women. In 2017 I then moved to South Sudan where I was hired as the Operational Coordinator for Humanity and Inclusion (the new name for Handicap International), tasked with coordinating the HI development programs. After serving in this role for 10 months, I was hired as the HI Emergency Coordinator to coordinate the emergency programs, basically staying in the same office just moving my desk! I have found that there are many similarities between my former outdoor life and my current humanitarian one. These include working to ensure a diverse team of people from different backgrounds work together towards common goals, breaking down disability stigma, and coordinating efforts, especially in times of crisis.

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Alumni Profile (Cont.)


Thayer


Please describe your current job and what you find most challenging about it.I am currently the Emergency Coordinator for HI based in Juba, South Sudan. With two emergency projects and two development projects, and with no one to replace my old Operational Coordinator position, in reality I am more like the Head of Programs for a program of around four million dollars. It is my responsibility to ensure that all projects are running on time and within budget through the direct supervision of all project managers. This also entails coordinating with project, logistics, and administrative staff on a regular basis to ensure that procurement procedures are followed, activities are implemented, and budgets are being spent and tracked in multiple currencies. Though I directly manage the four expat project managers, through their projects I indirectly manage around 50 national staff, and 4 additional expats. In addition to staff and project management, I am also responsible for HI’s coordination with other organizations in times of crisis. For example, the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) recently relocated 3500 internally displaced persons (IDPs) from an IDP site in Juba to an informal site in Juba over the course of 3 days due to safety concerns. It was my responsibility to ensure that HI activities were set up to meet the immediate needs of the beneficiaries affected by the crisis and that the HI response was coordinated with that of the other protection and Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) actors through liaising with the cluster leads, camp management, and UNHCR staff. On a

daily basis I also coordinate HI’s cluster presence in the Protection, Health, GBV SC, Child Protection, Education, and FSL clusters. I work to build the relationships between HI and the other humanitarian organizations as well as participate in cluster meetings as an advocate for the needs of vulnerable groups, and especially for people with disabilities. After leading an assessment on the Accessibility of Services in Bentiu POC site and with my disability inclusion background, I was also asked to join the IASC Task Team for creating the Guidelines for Disability in Humanitarian Action (to be published in 2018!). Finally, I am regularly involved in proposal development and when the Country Director is out of the country, I step in as Acting Country Director.

With so many tasks on my desk at any one time, I find it most challenging to maintain my work-life balance. Living and working in the same compound, a curfew of 9pm, and only being allowed to move by NGO/UN vehicles, it is much easier for me to stay in my office to do work rather than join afterwork and/or weekend social events. I have to make a conscious effort to close the laptop at 5:30 and go out of the compound to workout, join a social event, or meet friends for dinner.

How did your time at Korbel contribute to your career development?My time at Korbel not only provided me with the knowledge base necessary to navigate the humanitarian system (of which I had no previous knowledge), it also provided me with practical experiences to hone my humanitarian and project management skills through simulations, relevant classwork, and through providing me with the skills necessary to gain relevant and useful internships in my field of interest. It was also at Korbel that I gained valuable career seeking skills including: resume/cover letter writing, effective interviewing, and networking.




Thayer


Was there a specific class (or classes) or experience(s) that were part of the HA Program that you considered important for your work (please describe what and how)Field Ops was definitely a course that was important for a number of reasons. It provided us with important considerations when entering the field as well as provided us with a multi-faceted scenario that included both political and environmental challenges. To resolve these challenges, we had to decipher competing priorities, work with a diverse team of people, and work with people who had competing ideas about what problem to address and how to address them. This is pretty much what happens whenever we have a crisis here in South Sudan. It takes understanding the viewpoints of all involved and quickly coming to consensus to resolve the issues.

Of course the annual simulation was extremely helpful as it was my first time (and definitely not my last!) interviewing IDPs and NGOs and writing a Common Humanitarian Fund (CHF) proposal overnight. Last February my team in Juba was actually up until 2 am the night before the CHF (SSHF is what it is called in South Sudan) was due and I kept thinking how similar this was to the HA simulation. This made the task easier as I had already experienced it. The simulation also provided us with real-life drama which personalized and humanized a crisis situation and forced us to reconsider our actions as directly impacting real people. It was a far cry from the two-dimensional research, case studies, and theories we examined in the classroom, yet it allowed us to use that information to respond in real time to those in need.

Other useful classes involved the skills classes such as Information Management and NGO Financial Management. I find myself performing needs assessments (one was recently published on Reliefweb!) and supervising managers doing assessments, on a regular basis. I use the skills from the information management class to ensure that the surveys we implement are well designed, that they ask the appropriate questions, and that they can be used to gain useful qualitative and quantitative data. Of course the financial management class was also extremely useful as I regularly navigate my way through endless donor financial reporting and monthly budget monitoring in multiple currencies.

What courses/experiences/skills would you recommend that Korbel students interested in humanitarian work take/acquire/develop while studying for their Master's?No matter what, do the annual simulation. This has so many elements of what you will likely encounter in the field, including: confusion, not knowing where to start in a response, working with people you may have only met that morning, and working in a context you may not be wholly familiar with or that changes hourly. In addition to that though, learn the hard skills (assessments, project management, procurement), learn to love logframes! (I’ll come back to this….), and know how to manage a budget. It also helps if you want to work in GBV for example, to not only get GBV experience and knowledge but also to get general protection experience and knowledge. More and more, organizations want staff who can specialize, but who can also look at the bigger picture with a holistic lens to provide insight into how that specialization can fit into a larger response. Having a macro, as well as micro, lens will also make you a more dynamic candidate in the job search. You also never know how your varied experience (and various specializations) will help you get the job you want. For example, it was my experience guiding trips for people with disabilities that made me stand out as a candidate for my job as the Operational Coordinator, before I became the Emergency Coordinator, here in South Sudan. Though I concentrated in gender and refugees at Korbel, I found my disability background allowed me to get my foot in the door with HI. While we primarily serve people with disabilities, we also serve GBV survivors and I am the main HI focal person for the GBV Sub Cluster because of the GBV background I developed at Korbel. Thus, I’m using my GBV background from Korbel in my current job and developing more protection experience, though I don’t have a GBV specific position.




Thayer


Of course also develop those networking skills! It is through networking, LinkedIn, etc. that jobs can open up to you. It was actually over a beer at the Pio thinking that I would never find an internship when I found out a fellow classmate had a mom working at UNHCR. When I asked if she could get me an internship she said she would see what she could do. My classmate then spoke to her mom and I ended up spending the summer working for UNHCR in Zambia! Internships. Do them. Love them. They provide valuable experience and skills development, and can often lead to jobs or at least to greater opportunities down the road.

If you could go back in time and redo grad school, what would you do differently (if anything)?I would have taken at least one project management class. I didn’t know I was going into project management after graduation but now I understand that knowing the project management cycle and logframes would have been useful, regardless of what job I was offered. (As it was I had to google “logframe” before my test with HI for the Operational Coordinator position so I could pass the test to get hired!) Logframes are pretty much the most important tools used for project management here in South Sudan and are required by every donor when writing proposals. You really can’t have a project without a proper logframe. It’s the road map for what you aim to achieve, how you will achieve it, and what risks you may face along the way. Even if you don’t plan to get into direct project management, taking a class in project management is important to get an overall sense of how programs work and what role each actor plays, as programming is at the core of humanitarian assistance.I also should have started reading the job descriptions on Reliefweb of the types of jobs I was going to be applying for post-graduation. I knew I wanted to do GBV but I never thought about doing protection in general, or what I would exactly do within the field of GBV. Knowing the requirements on the job descriptions would have been useful so that I could have tailored my classes to ensure I gained the skills and proficiency’s required of me to be a successful candidate when applying for jobs.

Do you have any additional words of wisdom for Korbel students who want to pursue a career in humanitarian assistance?Humanitarian work can be rewarding, exhausting, exhilarating, and frustrating. Take time for yourself and develop your self-care skills. Know that the first job you’ll land likely won’t be your dream job. It may not even be close, but it will be a step. Learn everything you can and figure out how to turn each job into transferrable skills on your resume. It may take time to find a job you love, it will likely take a lot of time to find your first job after graduation! In the meantime, learn how to take care of yourself as once you are in the field you will face many demands. Know your limits. It can be hard to say no when your boss is asking you to do additional tasks, even if you really want to do them and you are just starting your career. Especially in my first couple of years after graduation, I found myself often working longer hours than I ever did as a student because I wanted to gain every experience I possibly could. This only leads to burn out. Pace yourself, go to the parties, get enough sleep, you will not get fired for setting boundaries or making mistakes.

Finally, don’t forget to include beneficiaries from all representative groups in every stage of the project cycle. After all, they know best what their needs and wants are. Beneficiaries are your greatest source of wisdom for project design and monitoring. Listen to them, believe them, and dance with them. It’s the little moments of smiles, dancing, and sharing a story or a meal that make it all worth it.

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