Humanitarian & Mission Driven Opportunities

By John Evans

This book is for you if you are planning to make a significant change of career direction: one that will take you into a socially impactful role or a role in humanitarian development or aid.

You will not be alone: this desire for impact, for career significance, to crystallise and implement a life mission becomes a central focus for many people in early, mid or late career for all kinds of reasons. Mission driven, impactful roles in the humanitarian sector are not easy to find so this book identifies where the vacancies are advertised, reviews the various online job boards and recommends where to look depending upon your background experience.

A second valuable section provides a guide to the excellent preparatory (and largely free) education that is now available online for those in or aiming to join the sector.

Essential reading for those planning a mid-career pivot to these rewarding yet challenging and highly sought -after jobs that really make a difference.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781447717034

John Evans

Having a father who ran a shop selling model railways probably sealed the fate of John Evans as a railway enthusiast. Spending all his money - and rather too much of his time - amassing a collection of railway pictures, he fortunately stored them carefully away. 'My education was undertaken at Northampton engine shed,' he jokes. He now lives in West Yorkshire and still ventures regularly to the lineside.

Book preview

Humanitarian & Mission Driven Opportunities

Where to find vacancies and preparatory online education

John Evans

Humanitarian & Mission Driven Opportunities First Edition

Copyright © John Evans 2023 All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9781447717034

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Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?’ – Martin Luther King, Jr.

‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." — Jesus Christ

Introduction

You have 80,000 hours in your career: 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, for around 40 years. What you do with your career is probably one of the most important ethical decisions of your life.

This book is for you particularly if you are planning to make a significant change of career direction: one that will take you into a socially impactful role or a role in  humanitarian development or aid. You will not be alone: this desire for impact, for career significance, to crystallise and implement their life mission becomes a central focus for many people in early, mid or late career for all kinds of reasons. I sometimes refer to this realisation as the ‘career pivot springboard’.

Exactly how widespread this connection between work and mission has become is illustrated by McKinsey research from 2022 showing that 70% of employees say their personal sense of purpose is defined by their work. The same research shows that people believe that when their work feels meaningful, they perform better, are much more committed and are about half as likely to go looking for a new job. 

What do I mean by ‘humanitarian’?

The Cambridge Dictionary defines a humanitarian as a person who is involved in or connected with improving people’s lives and relieving suffering. ‘Humanitarianism’, according to Wikipedia, is an active belief in the value of human life, whereby humans practice benevolent treatment and provide assistance to other humans to reduce suffering and improve the conditions of humanity for moral, altruistic, and emotional reasons. One aspect involves voluntary emergency aid overlapping with human rights advocacy, actions taken by governments, development assistance, and domestic philanthropy. A practitioner is known as a humanitarian.

Practitioners in the vast field of humanitarianism target issues ranging from global health to emerging market investment opportunities, at scales ranging from village-based enterprises to country-wide financial and government infrastructures. Some practitioners, though not all, would be comfortable with a distinction between two sub-sectors: humanitarian development and humanitarian (emergency) relief.

Professional aid workers in both sub-sectors are typically employed by large humanitarian organisations with the infrastructure and resources to support their safe deployment to far-flung regions of the world. There are also  many well intentioned volunteer and amateur responders some of whom may lack the training and other skills required to be fully effective. However, it is generally accepted that a volunteer was responsible for what we have come to know as humanitarianism today.

The birth of humanitarianism dates to the mid-19th century, when Jean-Henri Dunant, a Calvinist Christian entrepreneur, founded the International