Angelina works for World Vision in South Sudan. She is a tall, powerful, yet gently spoken young woman. As a Gender Based Violence (GBV) trainer she organises events and activities to teach people about the dangers of early and forced marriage and other gender challenges facing the community. The first time I meet her she arrives in a cloud of dust, riding a dirt-bike. She immediately drags all the attention, like it or not, to herself, although she doesn’t notice it.
During a discussion with a group of women in the program one points at Angelina and says, “I want my daughter to ride a motor-bike too.” But it’s not just the bike-riding she’s referring to it’s the fact that in Angelina these Mum’s see a strong, independent, educated young woman – that’s what they want for their daughters.
In Uganda I met another woman who is a force to be reckoned with. Stella is responsible for a food distribution program that, on the day we met her, will feed 9,000 people. There are people in every corner, under tents, in the shade, scooping grains, pouring oil and carrying sacks. Motorbikes and hand carts thread their way through people and piles of 50kg bags of wheat. The place might look like chaos, but it is a well-run, organised, machine. Everyone knows what their job is and who is in charge. I ask Stella what happens if at the end of the day they find more people than food: she looks at me as if I have just slapped her and says, “that doesn’t happen. I have calculated it all out, and it is right. We don’t have left overs and we don’t have too little”. I certainly wasn’t going to argue with her.
As I finish my tour of duty through East Africa I meet up with Berhanu and his team in Ethiopia. Berhanu manages the area currently hosting over one million internally displaced people in the southern region of Gedeo. Like many of his team (and other staff around the world) Berhanu lives away from his family to work for World Vision. As I meet with government officials and community leaders in the region I hear them say with a huge smile; “Berhanu, he is one of us. We know him.” I have rarely heard such glowing reports of the work of World Vision has done and is doing, and the personal relationship of our staff as I hear in Dilla. This speaks to the integrity and the hard work of a good man and his team.
I have no doubt that the people World Vision serves are in safe hands when I meet these staff and many like them. It’s been an honour to walk beside them for this short time and to remember them as I go home.
