How Aid Works

Three Florence Nightingale Medal recipients reveal what it means to follow in the footsteps of the woman who inspired the international Red Cross Movement. Cath Salmon shares a story of binding shattered limbs in a war field hospital, Ruth Jebb cares for a man whose his wife was washed away in typhoon floods and Anne Carey talks about how local volunteers beat Ebola in West Africa.

The mission's over. Time to catch up with your mates and a season's worth of Game of Thrones. Except that people treat you differently after you've worked in an Ebola zone. And you'll never watch the news in the same way again. Aid work leaves its unique stamp on you.

Learn to manage risk, because someone will shoot at you. Stop being so damn idealistic. Sit back and listen. There are no heroes, least of all you. Our guests share advice they wish they'd heard when they started their careers in aid work.

What could possibly go wrong on a relief mission? Well… border disputes, power outages, strikes, random epidemics, natural disasters, insurgencies, rains shutting down roads and governments being overthrown. You'll see why aid work needs an indomitable spirit.

Listen up, Humanitarians of Tinder! It can be hard to maintain relationships with family, let alone find love, when you're going from mission to mission in high-security zones. We talk honestly about the birds, the bees and the precautions.

How do you feel watching families flee in an apocalyptic sea of people? How do you cope with an Ebola nightmare sweeping before your eyes? And what passes through your mind when you witness an exploding donkey amid drought and violence?

Sometimes you're faced with a carful of corpses. Sometimes you have to drive the body of a bomb victim home to her parents. Sometimes you have to treat an illness so contagious that other doctors have already died. We discover what it's like to be an emergency health worker… and why you should always pack a scarf in your travel bag.

Every minute is a matter of life or death when a disaster strikes or a conflict breaks out. Aid workers are in a race against time: whether to treat the ill and injured before it's too late or get relief supplies to inaccessible locations. Our guests explain how order emerges from chaos.

This week we look at your very first mission as an aid worker: whether it's Pakistan after an earthquake, a refugee camp in South Sudan or a tiny Tongan island. We reflect on how expectation differs from reality and how you see the world afterwards.

It's a job you can't wait to leave and can't wait to return to. We look at how to break into the field of humanitarian aid work, with an honest assessment of how to survive this terrifying, frustrating, addictive job.