Interview with Joost Butenop

Joost Butenop, Medical Mission Institute Würzburg, Consultant.

Lecturer in Emergency Health

Berlin, 28.10.11

Interview by Lena Zimmer

You have been quoted with the statement addressing a class of NOHA students: “You  are NOHAs, so you will work in management positions, anyway...” However,  experience shows, that many graduates find it difficult to find a first position after graduation. There is a controversial discussion on the topic of certification of humanitarian professionalism. How well, do you think , does the NOHA program equip its students to work in humanitarian assistance? What are the most relevant skills demanded by employers?

When the NOHA-course was set up in the 1990s, there was a great need for this kind of program. It was designed to cater two purposes: (1) to give professionals, who had been working  in the humanitarian field for a number of years additional knowledge that would qualify them for management positions, and (2) to facilitate the career change of specialized professionals, who would like to work in humanitarian assistance. I am not sure, what causes the situation now: a saturation of the market ? Are there already too many NOHA  graduates? I can hardly imagine this, as the organizations still have difficulties to fill certain positions.

To  NGO-employers most relevant criteria for employment are firstly of course the specific qualification for the job. ,In addition,  previous field experience, social skills and flexibility are a precondition to be considered in the selection process.

While before the NOHA program was an add-on for people with field experience, nowadays many study the NOHA program who do not have field experience – There is even a bachelor program in Humanitarian Assistance being set today. May organizations rate field experience higher than a master degree, and for experienced people there are many positions. What used to make the NOHA program interesting are the   different backgrounds of students in terms of origin, culture, and profession.

But what does the NOHA program intend to train for, nowadays? I have read in the  brochures that important objectives of the program are to train the students for deployment in  EU and UN institutions,  and maybe the Red Cross movement. I don't see NGOs as the employers mainly targeted by the NOHA management. And for positions with international institutions, I think the curriculum is very relevant.

Can one study humanitarian assistance? What should be the 'disciplines' that NOHA's work in in practice, especially in entrance positions?

It is really a matter of choice for a program like NOHA: It can either provide a comprehensive overview of the complexity of humanitarian assistance, which makes it interesting, but is provided on the level of academia, and  by people who have partly not worked in humanitarian assistance themselves. This certainly qualifies for an administrative job in Brussels. And it is good, that among the persons administrating the humanitarian funds are persons with a NOHA background who have a broad knowledge of the field of humanitarian assistance. Field jobs, on the other hand, require practical skills. An alternative, for this reason, would be a combination of a general module comprising of six month theoretical training, and a practical module teaching practical disciplines, like administration, WatSan, logistics. Or a program comprising a one-year basic course,and a one year higher level course that allows a specialization in a particular 'discipline', for example  a ‘Master of Evaluation'.

NOHA's selection criteria for students demand prior work experience. However for the program it remains a constant challenge how strict it can follow these criteria, for example if most applicants have no experience. One can't discontinue the program for a year with the explanation that there weren't enough qualified applicants. The whole educational system is moving towards the Bachelor-Master model, and NOHA probably has to adapt to this system too. It would be worth giving a thought to the question, what other Bachelor and Master's Programs offered elsewhere qualify for the NOHA degree. There would be no harm in offering a 2-year Master of Science comprising one year general education and one year specific training, as opposed to the current, very academic, EU focussed approach. I think NOHA should continue to pursue the aim to be training the top brass  of a new generation of highly qualified humanitarian professionals. 

Do you think current NOHA students are sufficiently aware of the implications the applied humanitarian work brings at a personal level. Should this be more of a subject addressed within the program?

The problem is that this issue can not be appropriately addressed by talking alone. Helpful, however, would be to build into the curriculum a field exercise of several days, like Landsaid, the German Worker’s Samaritans, the summer School for Public Health and HHI in Boston already offer. It would be good to put up a scenario and to play it continuously, say, for one week -  It would be of great educational value to have people living through such situation, to train them to deal with stress situations, and to cope with tasks that they are not prepared for.

The HR responsible of DG ECHO recently formulated his current issue of concern: While he sees a great percentage of female NOHA-students, the persones he meets on the job, he says, are predominantly male. Do you share this observation, and if so, do you know the answer to his question: “Where are all the girls”?

Looking from an NGO perspective I do not entirely share this view, but rather note the tendency that in general there are more women in the business than men. However, men remain longer in the sector, so that it is them who occupy management positions to a large deal. In Pakistan, and Haiti, for example, there were many females among the ground staff, but the gender-ratio leveles out in higher positions, as an individual has to stay in the sector for several years to reach senior positions. The sector is indeed not familily friendly, and many women do not stay around long enough to reach the field management positions.