Women in Aid is pleased to introduce a Blog Series: Women in Aid Profiles. (#WiAProfiles)

We’ve repeatedly been told that the sharing of experiences from women across the humanitarian and development sector is valuable and needed. We listened to your requests and were pleased when approached by Associate Professor Grace Bahng of Azusa Pacific University.  She asked us to collaborate on a project for her undergraduate students in the class on humanitarian emergencies and assistance.

Together with Grace, we put out a call in our networks of women practioners, and rounded up some willing participants. They were paired with a student from the course who carried out a one hour interview with the women practioners. The students were given two topics to explore:

1) How and why they chose a career in humanitarian/development work?

2) What unique challenges and circumstances they face as a woman practitioners?

After interviewing their practitioner, students then wrote articles sharing their conversations and some reflections they had.  Students commented how much they enjoyed the project and felt fortunate to be able to chat with a current practitioner, especially as they considered their own futures and career paths.  Many of their articles will be shared in the upcoming series.

We are hugely thankful to the 17 women practioners who stepped forward and gave their time to talk to the students and review the pieces which will be published here with their permission.

We hope to keep the series alive and if you would like to share your story and help us create an archive of our collective experiences, please do send us an email (info@womeninaid.com) and we will be in touch to carry out an interview.

We hope you enjoy the series and please do engage on the pieces with comments, questions and suggestions. The more voices we can add, the better.

Fi and Zehra.