Interview with Susan van Duijl

Susan, you graduated from the NOHA programme in 2003. What have you been up to since ?

As a part of NOHA, I did a three month internship in Eritrea with Dutch Interchurch Aid (DIA, an ICCO field office) and ended up staying there for 2 ½ years. After my internship, I worked for DIA and one of their local partner NGOs on short term assignments and applied for more permanent jobs in Eritrea with other NGOs. The Eritrean government however made it increasingly difficult for NGOs to implement projects and hire international staff. Finally, I was more or less forced to leave because I couldn’t get a residence or work permit. More or less at this time, Pakistan was affected by a major earthquake and through one of my former short-term employers in Eritrea, I got a job there as a shelter programme manager with Catholic Relief Services (CRS). I lived in northern Pakistan until mid 2008, working for different INGOs in earthquake affected areas. Then I went to East Timor for four months, taking on interim responsibility for an IDP return and recovery programme in Dili. My last overseas assignment took place in Liberia where I spent 1 year, before returning to the Netherlands at the end of 2009 from where I have worked as independent consultant since.

Many aid workers, who love their work but want a better work life balance, seriously consider to work as consultants in the aid sector. You have done it: is it an easy transition?

Work life balance was certainly a reason for me to look into that option. In fact, I really wanted a break from field work because my last job in Liberia had been quite hard. I really wanted to live in the Netherlands for a while, but at the same time wanted to continue working in the aid sector. However, I could not see myself working at a head office of a Dutch NGO. So consulting seemed like a perfect option for me. I wouldn’t say transitioning to consulting was easy though, because it is very different from having the structure of regular working hours and security of a regular income. Particularly during my first year as a consultant, I spent a lot of time on acquisition, networking and administration, not knowing if and when I would get another assignment. When I am on assignments abroad, particularly on short evaluation missions, you often end up working all waking hours in a day and there is little time for taking your mind off the assignment. One thing I have really had to learn was to take enough time off between assignments, and not taking back-to-back assignments. I am still learning not to feel guilty if I am not working for a couple of days after finishing up an assignment. Also when I am not travelling on an assignment I work from home, which is nice because I don’t have to commute or dress up for work, but does make it hard sometimes to separate work and private.

In the end, I feel that this gives me better control over my work life balance and I certainly have more freedom to decide what I do in terms of type of work and workload. I also love it that when at home finishing up a report or doing acquisition or administration I can determine when I work on that, taking time off in between to visit family and friends or go for a run!

Working as a consultant: how different is it from working for an aid agency?

Working as a consultant is very different, both in terms of how you work and how people consider you. You are an outsider and present only for a short period of time. It can be good because it means the limited time you have helps to get things moving more quickly. You can also be more critical as an external stakeholder, though you need to present feedback in the right (constructive) way. With time you can also be more selective and select the assignments that you find interesting or useful.

On the other hand, you often don’t get to see the results of your work except in longer term projects. You also don’t get to really know people and sometimes need to judge a project based on a 5 day visit. Then there is of course the “economical side” of being a consultant: you need to know how to establish your pricing strategy. Initially, I found this quite difficult to establish and negotiate an acceptable daily rate for both parties. Now I have a bit more experience, it has become a bit easier to establish what is reasonable to ask and what your client can afford to pay. For example, for American NGOs, I am relatively expensive compared to American consultants, even though my rates for them are lower than for European clients. There is also a difference between what NGOs are willing to pay compared to for-profit contractors and consulting companies.

From your experience, what is the key to being a successful consultant?

If you want to be able to bring added value to your client, you definitely need experience in the sector, in humanitarian response. You should know how aid agencies work and be conversant with project management. Being able to establish professional credibility will make it easier for people to work with you and for stakeholders to take your recommendations seriously.

Another key success factor is specializing. I decided to focus on food security and emergencies, picking up 2-3 things which I enjoy working on and where I can demonstrate above average skills. This is much better than trying to pose as a generalist because people remember better what you do and are more likely to call you when they have a job related to what you do when you are very specific about your sector of expertise.

Where do you get your assignments and who are your clients?

As for many things, the toughest thing is to find the first assignment, so, if like many people, you can leave your employer but keep working for them as consultant, it can make the transition easier. For me, my first client was actually a coincidence. I had registered my CV on Devex and half waythrough 2009, when I hadn’t even shared with my network that I was going to work as a consultant, a consulting company approached me based on my 2-3 years old CV, for a tender for food security related monitoring contract. The company won the tender and I ended up doing 5 consultancies with them.

But apart from that, all my other assignments come through my network. I initially applied for consultancies through Reliefweb but didn’t have much success. I find public tendering to be resource intensive and because you compete with so many people, not very successful. I find that networking and personal regular contacts deliver more assignments.

In terms of clients, I have had different types of clients. I have done several mid-term reviews of projects, mostly through contractors who work for the donor that wants the project reviewed, but I have also done interim management and capacity building assignments directly for INGOs.

How important is it to have good Terms of Reference (ToRs)?

It depends a lot on the type of assignment and I have learned that it is important to really scrutinize ToRs. Sometimes, ToRs can be very short, rather unclear or expecting too much within the given timeframe. For mid term reviews, expectations are quite straight forward, so it’s okay to have a concise ToR. On the other hand, for more complex assignments or large projects such as capacity building or start-ups, it’s more important to know exactly what is expected and ensure expectations are reasonable and that there is mutual agreement on the way the assignment is executed.

One thing I find difficult is to discuss the ToRs once you have started, and usually questions start coming up after you start working, possibly requiring to rewrite the ToRs. With some clients, it’s easy to discuss them and they are open for changes, whereas with others it is more difficult. When I work on longer term projects, I try to stay in touch with the client to keep them informed, so they know what I’m doing, even if the ToR does not explicitly mentions reporting on milestones. I find that it is important for you to be proactive, keep your client informed, and realize you need to insist sometimes if you need input or answers. Don’t just assume that you have the same understanding.

After two years working as a consultant, what can you say about the quality of humanitarian programs you have been exposed to?

Somehow sadly, I have not seen many projects where PCM was done properly from assessmentto evaluation. Though everyone tends to have a logframe, they are often not done properly and not necessarily used as a basis for monitoring. For some of the mid-term reviews I have done, this resulted in having to spend a lot of time collecting data from different types of reports that are not easy to combine into an overview of progress or results. This also implies that most of the time, people actually don’t report against their objectives or use indicators in the report that don’t match with those in the log frame. I find this is often due to the fact that the person who wrote the proposal is not the one implementing the project. Also, project design templates can be too complicated, due sometimes to a disconnect between implementers and those who decide what needs to be measured. Add to that the challenges of different management layers when you work with local partners who can struggle to keep track of their activities and achievements, and we still have quite some improvements ahead ofus.

However, poor reporting doesn’t mean NGOs are not doing a good job. Many projects are of good quality on the ground, but it remains a huge challenge to report on this, be accountable for the results, not just to donors but to the people who are being supported through the project, and to stop reinventing the wheel.

Nearly 10 years working in the humanitarian sector, isn’t it depressing sometimes? Do you ever dream to do something totally different?

Yes, it is sometimes depressing because it’s hard to see the results of what you are doing, and the state of the world doesn’t always cheer you up. If you look at the famine in the Horn of Africa, it’s terrible and it shouldn’t happen, but it feels like there is not much I can personally do, whether I work in a drought emergency response or not. It feels frustrating that I cannot have a significant impact. At the same time, as a consultant, I’m a bit more detached, I have more distance, so maybe this makes it less difficult, and you can still see the small differences you make, appreciate that people learn with you, or even improve the way they work. This is what makes me love my work so I’m not dreaming to do something different.

How did the NOHA program support your work in the field and as consultant?

I have questioned the practical knowledge I got from NOHA, but on the other hand, the general knowledge of the humanitarian sector we got was really good. We touched upon many different things but often flying over an issue and never going very deep. At the same time, having a master’s degree in Humanitarian Assistance opens doors because it is more and more required in the aid sector to have a relevant master’s degree.

When I studied, I stayed in Groningen the whole program and chose food security as specialization, writing my thesis on this. Picking up a subject and going deeper has helped me a lot afterwards professionally.

In terms of people, I met quite a lot of NOHAs in the countries where I worked, especially in Pakistan and East Timor, although I am not meeting so many anymore since I started consulting. From my experience, most people that I worked with haven’t heard about NOHA before I tell them about it, however, this could partly be because I work a lot with Americans who are not so familiar with European master programmes and universities.