Working with Irish Aid in Sierra Leone

The Department of Foreign Affairs is seeking applicants for the Junior Professional Internship (JPI) scheme which was first launched by Irish Aid, the Government’s official overseas aid programme, in 2009. Applicants are now being sought for placement in 2015.

Emma Mulhern from Donegal town, whose Dad Gerry and brother Gary are cattle and sheep farmers, is currently working on the programme. Emma has a law degree and an LLM in economics, social and cultural rights from NUI Galway. She had been toying with the idea of doing the FE1s and becoming a solicitor, but after her undergrad she went travelling for six months.

While most people who travel are able to leave the inequities they see behind them, Emma found that the poverty she saw in south-east Asia, in particular, really struck a chord with her.

When she returned to Ireland, she did two unpaid, six-month internships. The first was with an NGO in Kathmandu in Nepal where her work was focused on situational analysis and human rights violations. She then worked with an NGO in Dublin – ECO-UNESCO. In 2012 she left Ireland again, embarking on a two-year stint to Zimbabwe on the UN youth volunteer programme on which she was initially funded by Irish Aid and then by a UN agency, UNFPA.

In Zimbabwe, Emma worked on programmes aimed at adolescents – providing information and access to services in the areas of sexual and reproductive health and HIV/aids.

Emma did an interview for the JPI programme in November 2013. In terms of academic qualifications, she was well equipped. Along with her third-level qualifications, Emma has also completed many certificates over the years in areas such as proposal writing and social media. She is also currently studying for a Masters of science in global health via distance learning with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The programme demands that candidates have a postgraduate qualification or similar qualification in international relations, development or many other academic disciplines which are listed on the website. Candidates must have held the qualification for at least two years, which means that most people have significant work experience coming into the programme.

In terms of the work experience required by those applying, interested candidates must have experience of working in the developing world or in community development at voluntary or professional level, or experience in a sector where candidates believe they can make a strong contribution to the goals of the aid programme.

Emma notes that everyone on the JPI is as experienced or more experienced than her and that at 28 she is one of the youngest on her intake.

Emma started the JPI in March 2014, spending one month at head office in Limerick. She was then deployed to Sierra Leone in April.

Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone was the subject matter of many newspaper headlines in 2014 due to ebola. Surely this made Emma apprehensive about going there?

“I personally wasn’t concerned about getting it,” she remarks, further noting that ebola mainly affected the very poor communities and those really at risk were frontline workers like doctors and nurses. She says her parents were very supportive and, given Emma is one of seven children, she says they have plenty of other children to busy themselves worrying about.

Emma was more concerned with how different things were going to be in Sierra Leone, and adapting to the tropical climate. Ebola, however, did affect her day-to-day work as it was an area that had to be prioritised by Irish Aid. However, despite that, there were other key programmes still ongoing. The primary focus of the Irish Aid programme in Sierra Leone is on nutrition and food security, but one of its focuses is a gender programme which is concerned with sexual and gender violence and works with providing female survivors access to medical and counselling services.

It also works to ensure the judiciary system there allows for justice. The International Rescue Committee is a partner of Irish Aid in Sierra Leone on a programme dealing with survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. “56% of women in Sierra Leone have experienced physical violence at some point since the age of 15,” explains Emma.

With such a statistic, does she ever feel that her work is just a drop in the ocean?

“There are days when it feels like that,” she says, “but you can’t have that attitude or you would go home. You have to be passionate about it in order not to get frustrated. Systems take a long time to adapt. Development takes time. If you can work towards making a change, in a generation you can see some impact. When I get to see the beneficiaries of the programme, it really makes it worthwhile.”

Emma attends a lot of meetings and takes a lot of notes, but going on monitoring visits is an aspect of the job she really enjoys as “you get to see the impact of your work”, which makes all the notes and meetings “worth it”.

So what’s the social life like in a west African country plagued by ebola?

“It’s very, very different. There’s lots of emergency restrictions because of ebola. But it’s starting to ease off,” says Emma.

“There is a social life. There are lots of other NGOs here and lots of other Irish people too. The whole city is on the beach and the beach is a good opportunity for socialising. I was at yoga last night. There’s lots of options for sport and exercise.”

While talking to Irish Country Living, Emma is looking out the window at palm trees and blues skies. The temperatures average 30oC to 33oC, although it’s very humid. “You definitely adapt to it. Air conditioning isn’t always an option.” She says there is a bad wet season in July and August.

In terms of career goals, Emma says she wants to be the first female general secretary of the UN (we don’t think she’s joking), but, for the moment, she wants to specialise more in the health side of her job. She says her work in gender will be very relevant in the long-term because “very often, women are the most vulnerable group”.

Furthermore, the fact she has been in Sierra Leone during the outbreak of ebola has put her in a unique position because she is seeing first-hand the work that has to be done in such a crisis situation and, unfortunately, the weaknesses of the global health network.

So how does she feel about the media attention ebola received?

“For any issue, the media have an opportunity to have a positive impact or a negative impact. They had a positive impact in the early days because they drew attention to the issue when nobody else was.”

However, by the same token, she feels the media have a lot to answer for in terms of the hysteria they created about the illness.

She notes that when she was home last August, “people almost take a physical step away from you and I have friends whose friends with children wouldn’t see them until the 21 days was up.”

What is Emma’s advice for those who would like to get a place on the JPI?

“Regardless of what your qualification is, if you’re interested in working in development and helping people, many academic backgrounds are relevant, such as engineering, accounting and communications. There is no one qualification that makes you right for this. You need to be a team player, you need to be adaptable and you need to be very independent.”

She also advises candidates not to be fooled by the word “internship” in the title.

“It is a paid internship but we all do very substantial work. You’re not going into an office and doing photocopying. I attend high-level meetings. It’s very substantial work – you really are contributing to the overall Irish Aid programme. It’s a lot more than an internship.”

JPI details