Category Archives: Resources

Returning home from a mission? Not sure what to do next? Read this…

We’re really pleased to bring you this guest post from Jen McCanna, a leadership, career and team coach working with 1-1 and organisational clients within the charity and not-for-profit sectors.

Change is hard. Especially if you’re changing country, and job role, and aren’t sure what happens next.

Coming back to a country which isn’t the one you left behind is hard. If you’ve been working in international aid or development, trying to work out how the skills you had in the field apply to roles back home is hard. Do you suit a head office job, or do you go for something totally unrelated content wise but which focuses on the fast-paced problem solving nature of your past work? Continue reading →

Developing Monitoring & Evaluation Systems – Top Ten Tips

Here at Aid Works, we have extensive experience of reviewing and developing monitoring systems for a range of NGOs and donors. Here are our top ten tips for developing an effective monitoring and evaluation system: Continue reading →

Applying for an overseas job? Have you considered duty of care?

We’re really pleased to bring you this guest post from Christine Williamson, founder of Duty of Care International, which works with organisations globally to support and protect employees. In this post, Christine advises us of the top ten things you should consider when deciding whether to work for an aid organisation overseas.

We all want to work for organisations who take good care of their employees, but it is a two-way street. Employees need to be able to determine if a potential employer provides appropriate duty of care, know their own responsibilities under duty of care and know when to speak up if there’s a problem. Continue reading →

Evaluating DFID’s Ebola Emergency Response Fund in Sierra Leone

Aid Works recently evaluated DFID‘s Ebola Emergency Response Fund in Sierra Leone, as managed by GOAL. This effective and responsive fund filled critical gaps in the response at the height of the Ebola crisis. It provided patient facilities, training for health care workers, ambulances and food/non-food items for households under quarantine. To find out more about the fund, read our report or - if you’re short of time - listen to our podcast.

A mindfulness session for stressed aid workers

Aid work is stressful at the best of times, never mind in a sudden crisis. During our field work we’ve found mindfulness sessions really useful and often listen to them to take break from the day-to-day stresses. Envision Hypnotherapy has kindly made this session to help aid workers deal with the strain and work at their best. The session is 14 minutes long. Get yourself somewhere comfortable where you’re unlikely to be disturbed and give it a go.

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South Sudan Health Stats - Country Comparison

Aid Works has recently supported the development of the next DFID business case for integrated community case management in South Sudan. While doing so we’ve collected extensive secondary health data, which we thought would be useful to share more widely. To download a summary of the data, visit our Tools & Information page. Continue reading →

Making Training More Engaging - Top Ten Tips

Here at Aid Works, we spend a lot of time helping organisations to improve their training sessions. Training is an essential part of aid organisations’ work, whether it be for staff (both local and international), government workers or local communities. PowerPoint is the ‘go to’ choice for most trainers, but it’s hard to create really effective presentations - we’ve all experienced boring and confusing training sessions with jumbled slides containing too much information! Better learning leads to better project implementation and training is about so much more than just giving people information. Here are our Top Ten Tips for improving how you train others. Continue reading →

How do you write a persuasive funding proposal?

We’re really excited to bring you this guest post from Samm Short, a professional writer and the Director of Short Persuasion, an enterprise that aims to bring greater stability to charities through persuasive writing and project development. In this excerpt from the book Short Tips - Persuasive Writing for Charities (due for release later this year), Samm gives us some pointers on how to write exceptional funding proposals. Continue reading →

Chasing Misery Anthology Published on International Women’s Day

Aid Works is excited to announce the publication of Chasing Misery, an anthology of essays by women working in humanitarian responses. Mia was part of the editorial team for the anthology, and contributed an essay, Built To Carry Thirteen. Continue reading →