Northumbria University utilises expertise from across academic disciplines to tackle real-world problems that hinder worldwide equality.
One example is the work being carried out by Northumbria's Centre for International development, which has worked with the Swedish Red Cross to carry out the largest worldwide study of volunteering ever undertaken:
Representing the
invisible
During conflicts and emergencies where state services and
aid have broken down, volunteers are often the only people able to provide
first aid, food, water, medical care and comfort to those in need.
These volunteers regularly come from the very communities
which are in crisis and they are sometimes caught up in the conflict themselves,
risking their safety and emotional wellbeing, before returning to their lives
unacknowledged. These are the ‘Invisible Volunteers’. This phrase was coined
because, until recently, there was very little research taking place into their
lives and experiences. Northumbria’s
Centre for International Development and the Swedish Red Cross are helping to
change that.
Their joint Volunteering in Conflicts and
Emergencies Initiative (ViCE) was launched to give a voice to the
voiceless and a presence to the invisible.
“Volunteers can and do play critically important roles, but
there is an urgent need to recognise the costs that these roles can bring for
volunteers and their families,” Northumbria’s Professor Matt Baillie Smith
explains. “We need to consider how volunteer’s voices become part of the
decision-making processes in aid and humanitarian efforts, rather than local
volunteers largely being treated as a form of low-cost service delivery.”
Despite media attention around volunteers in the Syria
crisis, the contributions of volunteers to less well-known crises
over many decades has been ignored. Most research on volunteering focuses
on experiences in Europe and North America and on
international volunteering, emphasising volunteering as an act of
charity to the less fortunate. This means we know and hear very little
about the lives of local volunteers in conflicts and emergencies
whose volunteering does not fit these experiences and ideas. Without this
knowledge, researchers, practitioners, aid organisations and governments
cannot understand the challenges they face or support them.
Led in partnership between Northumbria’s Centre for International
Development - a globally recognised centre of expertise on volunteering in
humanitarian and development settings - and the Swedish Red Cross, the
initiative has brought together practitioners, volunteers and wider
stakeholders to co-design a research approach to understand the
lived experiences of volunteers in conflicts and emergencies and
jointly develop responses to the challenges they face.
Their approach has focused on listening to volunteers
in an open way, avoiding pre-determined questions or ideas, and
allowing participants to decide what is important to them – allowing
people to talk about those issues in whatever way they
choose. Through this, ViCE has created unique testimony of the
experiences of volunteering in conflicts and emergencies. Professor Baillie
Smith explains how the ViCe project is responding to a gap in existing research
and helping shape future policy and practice in contemporary humanitarian
thinking.
“Most research on volunteering has focused on affluent
volunteers helping the needy. The ViCE Initiative reveals how people are often
volunteers and victims at the same time, requiring new thinking about the ways
volunteers are recruited, deployed and supported, and the ways being a
volunteer can impact relationships with families and communities.
“Data from the project is raising important questions about
the ways volunteering in conflicts and emergencies is gendered, the emotional
impacts of volunteering and how volunteers try to implement humanitarian
principles on the ground in challenging and isolating circumstances.”
So far, the initiative has focused on telling the stories
and listening to voices of volunteers in six countries: Afghanistan; Honduras;
Myanmar; Sudan; South Sudan; Ukraine, working with the National Red Cross and
Red Crescent National Societies in those countries.
The ViCE Initiative is not just about research, it is about
action. The work of the project is helping to guide innovation and shape
policy and practice that strengthens the engagement, resilience, safety,
security and wellbeing of volunteers and communities during times of
armed conflict, violence and emergencies. Since the launch of the project, they
have showcased their findings through a unique interactive exhibition and have
also engaged global leaders and decision-makers in Brussels at AidEx - one of the world’s leading global platforms
focused on improving aid and humanitarian efforts.
“What we have learnt from the ViCE Initiative is that
volunteers rarely feel listened to, and yet lots of claims are made for their
roles and how they can enhance the effectiveness and legitimacy of humanitarian
and development interventions,” Professor Baillie Smith adds. “We need to pay
attention to their experiences, ideas and struggles, not just to say we have
listened, but to act on what we hear.”
A version of this
article originally appeared in the Northumbria University supplement produced with Times Higher Education.
