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Northside people, 18th April 2007
 AN increasing number of young people are volunteering to work with charity aid agencies to help out in some of the poorest countries in the world. It gives volunteers the chance to put whatever skills they have to good use, while at the same time sampling some wonderful travel experiences.
Donaghmede nurse Sinead O'Reilly has been doing just that for the past four years with aid agency GOAL and she outlined to Northside People the importance and enjoyment she attaches to her work.
According to Sinead, many people are often interested in aid work but they usually don't see how their skills can be of use.
GOAL will be hosting an information open day in the city centre at the end of this month, and the organisation is hoping to attract such people to come on board.
Sinead's first foray into the voluntary sector was a trip to conflict-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) after she had completed a postgraduate course in Public Health in the Developing World.
Sinead wanted to use the knowledge she'd learned to help those who needed it most.
"However, there was another reason I wanted to join GOAL and that was to see the world," she admitted.
Sinead's post in DRC was a rural one and she was there to improve the capacity of the staff, as there was a huge need for that at the time.
"We covered a large area and had very little trained field staff, so training and upskilling staff was a big part of my job," she explained.
"GOAL had 30 clinics in the area and I was responsible for 10 of those.
"I spent my time training staff; writing reports; supervising programmes; responding to outbreaks of disease like measles; as well as working on community health; teaching the local people about healthy eating habits; and good sanitation processes."
Sinead believes that GOAL'S open day will be a great opportunity for people to hear about what overseas work actually entails, and to ask questions about the agency's experiences in different developing countries.
"GOAL gives you the autonomy to try out ideas, and there is plenty of room for people to move from direct implementation to programme management and design," Sinead said.
"A role in medicine is not just about providing healthcare directly. It would involve managing health programmes and training local medical staff to the point that we will not be needed any longer,"
Many professionals are attracted by the aid agency's hands-on reputation for getting the job done, and also the fact that they've kept administration costs low -'at less than five per cent over a 30-year period.
In July 2005, GOAL was one of the first agencies to distribute much-needed emergency food supplies to the most vulnerable in Niger, where as a result of drought and locust infestation, over 3.6 million of the 11.5 million population faced critical food shortages.
Sinead travelled as part of GOAL'S emergency response team to the famine-ravaged region to supplement a feeding programme that GOAL was running,
"I worked in a rural area where a lot of children under two-years-of-age were dying of malnutrition," she stated.
"We also carried out research to ascertain what the underlying causes of malnutrition were – bad sanitation practices and a lack of clean drinking water."
GOAL currently provides family food rations to more than 220,000 people per month.
The organisation has repaired and refurnished primary schools; distributed soap, mosquito nets, basic medicines, livestock, seeds and tools; and carried out the repair of over 400 pumps and 27 wells which means that 400,000 people now have clean water. "**
Every month, GOAL feeds 2,500 children under the age of five who are severely malnourished with special high-energy food.
"Working with GOAL is a great experience and you get to see parts of the world that you wouldn't otherwise," Sinead added.
The Northsids nurse now works as a health advisor for programmes in the field from GOAL'S headquarters in Dun Laoghaire, and she is responsible for all of GOAL'S health programmes worldwide.
Sinead's job includes writing reports, reviewing health reports, and analysing strategies for individual countries.
"In terms of personal and professional development, you couldn't do anything better than join an organisation like GOAL," she said,
"Time in the field provides such a broad range of experience."
If you are interested in volunteering for a year in the developing world where your skills will be put to the best possible use, visit GOAL'S drop-in information day on Saturday, April 28, in Dublin's Holiday Inn, Pearse Street.
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