If you’ve worked in the humanitarian sector, it’s likely you’ve supported refugee communities—either directly or indirectly. And with humanitarian emergencies growing around the world, it’s never been more important to discuss the families and communities who suffer most during crises. 

In this special episode of Humanitarian Conversations, Sally talks with RedR Australia roster members Ozlem and Greg about their journeys into the humanitarian sector and their experiences supporting refugees.  

Originally recorded as a webinar to mark World Refugee Day in June, these two experienced humanitarians share wisdom about working with refugee communities and why quality training is essential when operating in dangerous contexts—from civil wars to cyclones. 

You can join our conversations on LinkedIn and Facebook.

You can find out more about RedR Australia’s training courses here. 

Host: Sally Cunningham  

Guests: Ozlem and Greg 

Producer, engineer and composer: Jill Farrar

Transcript

SALLY: This Humanitarian Conversations podcast was recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, also known as Melbourne, Australia. We pay our respects to Elders past and present, and we acknowledge and seek to champion the continued connection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to land, waterways and skies. And we pay our respects to all First Nations people whose communities we work in across the world. Hello and welcome to Humanitarian Conversations, a RedR Australia podcast which explores what it means to be humanitarian in today's world. I'm Sally Cunningham. In this episode of Humanitarian Conversations, I’m chatting with two great RedR Australia roster members who have worked to support refugee populations in their roles. Originally recorded as a webinar for World Refugee Day in June, this event offered an opportunity to stand in solidarity with refugees by supporting their human rights and acknowledging their deep longing to return home. According to UNHCR, by the end of 2024 there were 123.2 million forcibly displaced people worldwide. This figure includes 43.7 million refugees, 73.5 million internally displaced persons, and 5.4 million asylum seekers. We are fortunate to have with us today two RedR Australia roster members who have first-hand experience supporting refugee communities around the world. Greg Blaze is a civil engineer by trade and has deployed three times with RedR Australia—once with WFP in Somalia for three months which turned into a 5-year role and then to UNRWA in Palestine and most recently a very different deployment to Samoa working in disaster preparedness with Samoa Fire. Ozlem has a depth of experience working with refugees, having deployed with RedR Australia twice through the Australia Assists Program, supporting OCHA Myanmar and most recently with UNFPA in Bangladesh. Before these two important roles, Ozlem had experience working in Greece and Cyprus with different grassroots organisations, again supporting asylum seekers. To kick off the conversation, I asked them how they started working in the humanitarian sector and supporting refugees. 

GREG: Thanks, Sally. Thanks very much. And I'd like to say hello to everybody out there. I was mostly a local government engineer, sometimes a consultant engineer. And I think it was about 2005 and I was watching the TV with my wife, and one of these refugee camp things came on in Africa on TV. And she looked at me and said, We should do something about that. And I thought, yeah, good. You can do something about it. I'm quite happy with my life, the way it's going on. But then in about 2007 I went to an engineering conference, and there was a a presentation there from a guy from RedR who did some work in Pakistan. And I thought, Oh, well, that looked interesting. So I thought I'd sign up and do the training, which I did in 2008. And then late 2008 a job came through. It was a three-month civil engineering job. I thought it was in Samoa. So, you know, beautiful island, sun, sand, surf, sounded fantastic. But I ended up in Somalia. So I was working for the World Food Programme, building a warehouse in wartorn Mogadishu for three months. That was my very first role, and led to much more, which I'm sure we'll unpack later. 

SALLY: Thanks Greg, nothing like the shove of a good woman. 

GREG: Absolutely. 

SALLY: Ozlem, can you give us a bit of insight into how you landed into this career path, and what was your first deployment to give you that experience? 

OZLEM: Thanks Sally and hello everyone. So I'd always been interested in the humanitarian space, but didn't really know much about it. I remember attending a careers fair sometime in my early 20s and thinking, Oh, this sounds really interesting. But, you know, I didn't really know how to start and was kind of doing other things at the time. And then after a few years in the Australian public service, I actually went overseas and volunteered with a grassroots organisation in Greece. They were helping refugees in quite a big camp on the mainland. And after I did that, I thought, Yes, this is absolutely it for me, and I just needed to try and figure out how to turn this into a career. So I volunteered a few more times with various organisations, and got some good experience during the pandemic in Melbourne, doing community engagement, so a different type of emergency. And then on to the RedR roster, which set me up quite well for my first two deployments. 

SALLY: Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. So from these initial experiences, what did you learn or understand quickly that you weren't expecting? 

OZLEM: I like this question because it got me really thinking and reflecting on my previous experiences. I guess one of the main things was humanitarian assistance is not one sided. It often feels like that, and it's often set up like that, but it shouldn't be, and I guess that's also why I ended up in AAP—accountability to affected populations—because I realised pretty quickly that you need to collaborate with the people that you are serving. You need to actually ask them what they need and what they want, what their issues are, what their capacities are, and work together to actually try and find meaningful and durable solutions—not just coming in acting like you know exactly what's going on and what people need and want without having those conversations. And the other thing that struck me was how necessary it is to have these kinds of boundaries. I was really lucky to work at...the first organisation I worked with had really good policies in place, which meant that they were across everything around child protection and just really kind of being, you know...everything we did was done in an incredibly transparent and defensible way, whereas other organisations that were still starting out maybe had more flexible policies. And I realised, no we actually need these things for for safeguarding and for your own wellbeing as well. 

SALLY: I think that's a really good insight. Thank you for sharing that. And Greg, would you be able to share some insights from your experience about what you learned pretty quickly that you weren't expecting? 

GREG: Yeah, I think the for me, I guess the scale of the issues that needed to be overcome was a bit daunting in the first instance. Like, this is a camp in Somalia in Basa, where people are building a house out of sticks, and there's not too much vegetation around there so where they got the sticks from, I've got no idea. But the lack of resources in the country—the country's wracked by civil war and drought and the genuine call for assistance to get things done. So the initial shock for me was this is impossible to do anything. But then, after being there for a while, being able to work through these issues over time, achieving some solid outcomes in development of transport and warehousing infrastructure. But the initial shock was, yeah, this is all too big. 

SALLY: Yeah, I think that's fair, but nonetheless, we're still needed, aren't we? And yeah, thank you for that. So if I could extend on that, we know, Greg, that you're a civil engineer, but what other core skills do you think are critical for humanitarian engineering? 

GREG: So a lot of my work was in local government. So the communication skills that you get in local government talking to, you know, residents, people that you're actually working for, they have been very, very important. You need to listen and understand your surroundings and work within the boundaries of that, whatever organisation you come into. And as an engineer, you do need technical skills, but I'd have to say my technical skills are not that good. So if you can find somebody else who can assist you, which sometimes you can, just like at home. For me, the most important skills were managing people and money, particularly in contract and project development, and for me, the outcomes, particularly longer-term ones, as the need to be able to mentor local staff to take over when you leave, because they stay there. They live there. You're just a blow-in. 

SALLY: Yeah, I think that's really helpful, because it's not just like when you see a job ad, it's so much more. There's so many critical humanitarian and development skills that are acquired that are mainstreamed across all roles. So we all kind of agree that you need to have a particular openness and a particular temperament to be able to manage the context that you're going into, it's not just what you've been trained to do and what you're practiced in. So to go into a new place and expect to learn and adapt and to have those skills to adapt that will set you up for success. So I'll just shift now to Ozlem. How would you explain accountability to affected populations, to people who haven't come across it before, and how does it relate to the idea of localisation? 

OZLEM: People seem to have only really started talking about it in the last few years, but something I did a lot of in my most recent deployment was kind of, you know, reassure people, no, it's not new. You're already doing it. You have been doing it, and you've been doing it really well for a long time. It's just that now there's this kind of concept and framework around it, and essentially it's putting people affected, people at the center of everything we do. So really, really considering them, their needs, their priorities, in a holistic manner. Right from before you arrive in a place. Like when you get there, when you're doing needs assessments, when you're trying to figure things out and talking to them, talking to other people on the ground, collaborating with them, when you're designing your projects and your programs. What do you need? What do you want, what is most appropriate for you, what language, what format, and so on, and then even continuing that process. So, you know, is this working? Are we doing the right thing? Can we change anything? Right through to the sort of evaluation stage. So not treating affected people like they're these passive recipients of humanitarian assistance, but collaborators, like people with strengths and skills and capacities and knowledge and information and resources that you can absolutely tap into. Yeah, sometimes I'd get colleagues kind of feel a bit uncertain about AAP, and think, Oh, it's a brand new thing. They have to learn, and it's all going to be technical and quite difficult. And it's really not. If you have established good, trusting relationships with people, then you're already on the right track, because it's just about recognising that power imbalance and doing what you can to manage it in a dignified and respectful way. 

SALLY: I think that's a really strong explanation. And my understanding of AAP as well is like it just resonates with the idea of what people perceive to be localisation, which, again, we know should be mainstreamed, but I guess, yeah, it is. It's putting the framework around it so we as the practitioners are held accountable. Thank you so much. So let's get down to the storytelling. Can you tell us about a really positive experience or outcome you saw or had reported back to you about your work or the project that you were working on during your deployment. Greg, I'm going to flick to you again. 

GREG: I was in a refugee camp in Bosaso. The project I was doing in Bosaso was dredging the port so that larger ships could get in, bringing food into the refugee population there and building a warehouse. Now, I visited the refugee camp with the Japanese ambassador for East Africa, and the Japanese were mostly funding the work that I was doing for World Food Programme. And of course, he had a lot of people around him, and everybody had a camera, and everyone's taking photos. We walked into this hospital and this little baby was lying on the table, and the mother was sitting in the corner. The mother had walked about 12 days with hardly any food and water carrying the baby. She was in shock. I remember her mouth was open, and there were flies around her face, and she couldn't even, didn't have the strength to even brush the flies away. There's a couple of little kids in the hospital, just running around the floor, and I was looking at this baby, and everyone's taking photos. And I thought, I am not taking a photo of this baby, because this baby is going to die. Anyway, I started talking to the doctor, who was there helping and treating and he said to me, Greg, he said, See in the baby's nose there? He said, we're putting Plumpy Nut, which is a peanut extract that they use for astronauts. He said, World Food Program, so the ships that you're bringing in bring this Plumpy Nut in, as well as other foods. We're putting it into this small child. And he said, in about three weeks time, this child will be running around the floor like these other kids. You know, the things that you do over there actually do have positive outcomes. And this is just one story—I stayed for five years in Somalia, in Kenya, and the reason I stayed there was because we were doing such good work and developing things to assist the population, which led to a high level of satisfaction. 

SALLY: Thank you. These are the sorts of stories that we don't...they don't really pop up in the news cycle. You suspect that it happens, but to hear that it's actually, the expectation is a really strong and positive result. So thank you for illustrating that one. Ozlem, are we able to switch to you? Are you able to share a story with us about a positive impact from something that you've worked on. 

OZLEM: Absolutely, one of the things that I focused on in my most recent deployment in Bangladesh was building the capacity of UNFPA implementing partners to better understand and implement AAP in their activities. Some of them had a pretty good understanding and were doing quite well and didn't need as much support. Others were very much at the beginning of that journey, so I worked quite closely with them to provide the sort of tailored support around what their specific needs were, you know, going out to see their facilities and talking to them about what they can do, what's going well, what's not working well, how we can fix it. And, you know, also putting together this big resource library so that even after I left, they would still have access to really easy materials and reference guides so that they could continue to integrate AAP into their work. And sometimes, when you're kind of at that level of—when your role is less frontline, less direct, sometimes you don't really know the impact of your work. But as I was preparing to leave and just kind of going through and saying goodbye to people, I was overwhelmed by this incredible feedback from every single implementing partner about how much of an impact this resource library and this work that we had done together had made and they shared really, really lovely feedback, and told me about some of the changes that they had already started to implement, and they could see the impact that that was having on affected people. So I think you know, the kind of higher up you go, it gets harder to see that direct impact, like comparing it to jobs I've had where you are directly giving food to a person or providing shelter or clothing, you see that immediate impact, but in other roles you don't see it. So it's really nice to get that feedback. And these jobs are all important. The person who is, you know, ticking along, doing an admin role that is absolutely contributing to this entire sector and this process, and it is just as important. Important as all of the other ones we get to see more of. 

SALLY: Absolutely, I think that's a really fair insight as well, depending on where you're placed in an organisation, but you are part of that whole system that needs to support such a challenging context. Thank you for sharing that one as well. So that's some good news, but we know it's not all good news, so I'm hoping now that you can share a bit of the reality. What is a very challenging situation you've faced while on deployment. 

OZLEM: Something that I found kind of quite hard to navigate was the high staff turnover, and I know I'm often part of that issue as well. And you have people coming in on quite short contracts and then moving on, or sometimes you know funding runs out in an organisation, and then half the staff are gone, and the knowledge and the experience and the information that gets lost can be really, really hard to manage, because, you know, other people around them then end up having to start from scratch or try and figure out what was going on, and you're losing really great people as well. So, you know, it's not a very exciting challenge, but I think it's something that affects all levels of the sector, and it can be really, really challenging. Another thing that I think it's important to mention here is as humanitarians, we work in some pretty wild and difficult places, and we really, really need to be looking after ourselves and our own well being, because if we're not okay, then we are essentially useless. So I've worked in some wonderful places, some really nice, easy places, but I've also worked in some pretty rough places, and in those situations, you have to be extra mindful to look after yourself, because you're there to do this work, and it's important that you're able to be productive and compassionate and still be okay. 

SALLY: Yeah, that makes sense. That's completely fair. Greg, can I switch to you now and ask you that same question? Can you talk us through a challenging situation you've faced while being on deployment? 

GREG: Yeah, certainly, like you mentioned, there's real-life danger, moral dilemmas and logistical hurdles, certainly all of those apply in a war zone, which Somalia was and still is in many ways. So there's the danger elements—guns, mortars, potential kidnapping, which are all pretty real. But I worked for the World Food Programme, and the security departments in that area are exceptional. Not so good in Palestine, I almost got kidnapped there. But there's those risks for people that are very different to what I experienced in my little village in Old Bar. The moral dilemmas—they're dealing with unknowns. So you're dealing with local players and subcontractors and contractors, and their systems are often built on corruption. Certainly working for the UN is very mindful of corruption. But it's a reality. Security payments, wandering around Somalia with protection, sometimes child soldiers. I did dredging work in both Mogadishu and Bosaso. So there are environmental outcomes that you could only think of yourself, because Somalia has not signed up to any agreements with anybody at that time. So it's really about determining yourself—what is the appropriate thing to do when dredging harbours that have got all sorts of contaminants in them and logistical hurdles was...they were massive at the time. So I was there 2009 to 2013 and Somali pirates were, they were the big deal. So often times you wouldn't be able to get materials through because the pirates had stole your ship, dealing with warlords. Al Shabab in the background there—are they terrorists or freedom fighters? Depends on what side of the fence you're on, but they certainly made things difficult, particularly when it came to kidnapping and lack of resources. When you get to a place that has been at war for 20 or 30 years, you find that most of the educated people have left. They've all gone. So, you know, most of those people were living in America or Sweden or even Australia. There's a lack of people skills, there's a lack of materials, lack of machinery. So all of those things need to be overcome if, like we were, you're actually building infrastructure. So, yeah, serious problems. But as I mentioned before, it made it all the more satisfying when things were able to be achieved. 

SALLY: Yeah, that's quite a journey. So how do you both stay motivated when working in such difficult and heartbreaking situations? Greg, do you want to start with that one? 

GREG: Yep. So working with the World Food Programme, we ended up with a small operation with two engineers, myself and an Irish fellow, and a couple of other people, couple of locals. And the satisfaction for me was, was seeing things built, building the warehouses. Mogadishu, the port, I don't know if people remember the Black Hawk Down movie, in 1993 I think it was, they sunk four vessels in the harbour which took up half of the harbour. So one of the jobs that we did over there was to salvage the four sunken vessels, which, of course, I'd never done anything like that in my life, but that opened up the harbor to an extra 50% of shipping that they could use. So for us doing those things, and nobody else was doing any infrastructure work in the country at the time. So to be able to do that, achieve results, get the funding bodies, which was mainly Japanese at that time, to look at the results and think, you know what, we're going to give you more money to do more things. So there was a strong level of satisfaction to do that. But the other thing for me was the great relationships that you develop with your work colleagues, both local and international, good mentoring opportunities, realising that you're not going to be there long term. Like for me, I guess it's the most satisfactory career role that I've had, and I've had quite a few. But the other great thing for me is really support from home. Support from family is absolutely critical to be able to continue doing these things. 

SALLY: Ozlem, how do you cope and support yourself to get through some really challenging contexts? 

OZLEM: I mean, echoing everything Greg said, it's so important to keep connected with friends and family and structural supports if you need them. But I love this. I think it's absolutely necessary. And I can't really imagine being in a career where I'm not trying to make things better. And sometimes you feel a bit useless, or you're not, you know, achieving the outcomes you want to. But we're still trying. We're still doing our best to try and improve either a small situation or a big situation. And I think if you're in a position of privilege and power, you almost have a duty to do something about it. Why? Why wouldn't you? So, yeah, I think on the days where it doesn't feel like you're getting anywhere, someone once said to me, and it stuck with me, sometimes just bearing witness, just being there, just being empathetic to a person, and both of you acknowledging the frustrations and the limitations, sometimes that can be enough, because if you're not there trying, then they would be there on their own, and that would be awful. So yeah, it's absolutely crucial, and I wish more people were involved in this type of work. 

SALLY: Yeah, thank you. That's really nice personal replies from you guys. Thank you. So I'm going to advocate a little for RedR Australia. Now so we know that last year was the deadliest on record for humanitarian and aid workers in the world, preceded by 2023. So when we think about how do we prevent the casualties that come along with this and the risks involved with this work, what comes to mind is training and preparedness. So at RedR Australia, we're obviously keen advocates for humanitarian and development training or training for anyone entering into conflict or crisis or emergency response zones. Can you tell us how training prepares you for keeping yourself safe during a deployment, and what other preparedness techniques do you use before you head out? 

OZLEM: So I'm pretty lucky. I had a chance to do nearly every single RedR training, so I was pretty well equipped beforehand. But what I loved about the training was that it was so practical and realistic. It wasn't just theory that I would forget about. But I remember when I was working with OCHA Myanmar and they had Cyclone Mocha, and the kind of craziness of the first few days, I thought, Oh, this totally reminds me of when we had the simulation during EH. And the way it all played out, it was almost as if I was just redoing the simulation. And I thought, yeah, that was clearly very good training, because I'm so much more prepared for this than I would have been without the training. With the Hostile Environment Awareness Training, I often find myself just taking a moment to be aware of my surroundings, you know, thinking about if something did go wrong, what would I do? And so on. So, yeah, really good training. Very lucky that I had a chance to experience them, and would absolutely recommend. And you just have to go—I mean, there's so much you don't know until you get there, but the more you can do beforehand—so connect with people who've either worked in that space or people who are already working there. Perhaps there's another RedR deploy that you can connect with? Doing your own research, trying to understand the context, because nobody wants this person to come in with no idea and start telling everyone what to do. You really need to be on the receiving end of information in the first stages, so being mindful of the information and knowledge of local colleagues and people who have that experience, for sure. 

SALLY: Thank you. It's so nice to have it reinforced that the training stays with you and the chaos is worth it. Greg, what would you suggest about preparedness and training as well from your experience? 

GREG: Yeah, well, I did both the RedR courses in 2008 and I must say, absolutely loved them. I thought they were a lot of fun, sort of like boys own adventure for me, but it was absolutely essential. When you go into a place where there are a lot of risks, then the training that I did with RedR actually helped me in in understanding some of those risks. Helped me to look at things that I wouldn't normally have looked at because I've never been in those situations before. I also did B Safe training with the UN prior to going into Somalia. It was funny because that training was quite similar to the RedR stuff, except that training—they had real knives, real guns and real bombs, so it was even heightened more. But the the cultural training that we did through RedR was also very essential to understanding that you're actually in a country where things are quite different to what you have here. I did the B Safe training in Palestine as well. And again, it's good to understand how the locals work, how the locals think what is or isn't appropriate in any of those circumstances. Again, very, very different to what we experience here in Australia. So very good to understand those things. The other thing I would be mindful of, I did observe, particularly working in Somalia—working for the UN was no drama, because the security was fantastic. But working, I did observe quite a few NGOs there that...I looked at them and thought they're very, very risky in those particular circumstances. So training absolutely essential—and fun.  

SALLY: Thank you. Brownie points to both of you for plugging our training. We appreciate that. But we do know that it just—I find the training is useful for people who are thinking about entering the sector. It gives them that—it's a teaser to understand that that type of chaos is normal. It is expected, and like what you're talking about, Ozlem, going into Cyclone Mocha and feeling that it's representative of your training. So this is normal, this chaos is normal, and we're just trying to get through. So they're really good endorsements and examples of why training and preparedness are a good combination before you decide to do this or before you go and deploy. I just wanted to ask you, in brief, what would you like more people to understand about the situation that refugee communities are in? And from what you've learned on your deployment.  

GREG: My observation is that the plight of the refugee is a dire one. They don't have control of their own lives, and they need assistance to come back to some sense of normality, whatever that is for them and their families. And for me, it's an actual privilege to be able to assist them to do that. The deployments that I undertook in Palestine and more recently in Samoa, were very, very different. And I think if I was to give some advice to myself at the start of my humanitarian engineering journey, it'd be—if you want to affect long-term positive change in the community, you need to resource and empower the locals to meet their own challenges. That's easy to say, particularly if you look at the Somali situation, which they need a lot more than that.  

SALLY: Thank you. Ozlem, what would you like more people to understand about the refugee situation?

OZLEM: Yeah, it's getting worse. It's not getting better. And there are new situations emerging, but the old ones are still going on, and people are forgetting about them because the news cycle, because of, you know, politics or interests or whatever. And I think sometimes people feel really overwhelmed and helpless, but there are things that they can do. If they have time, offer time. If you have money, offer money. If you have platform, you know, advocate. There are so many things that different people can do to try and keep this information in the news space. Keep people aware, have these conversations, and maybe there's something small that you can do in your community. Of course, not everyone can just get on a plane and go to Ukraine or Sudan or wherever, but there are other things you can do, and you don't have to feel so helpless and so overwhelmed. We can't forget about this. It's just getting worse and worse and worse, and maybe it doesn't affect us directly right now, but it might soon. 

SALLY: Yeah, that's right. Things keep changing. I'm very conscious that things don't stay in the news cycle that are of great need, and that's why we have to keep talking about this and advocating. So thank you to Greg and Ozlem, thanks for your time and your knowledge sharing, and thank you for the work that you've been doing and continue to do. You haven't shied away from the challenges, because you've deployed multiple times into challenging environments, and we really genuinely appreciate it. You’ve been listening to Humanitarian Conversations, a podcast by RedR Australia. You can learn more about our work at redr.org.au and we invite you to join our conversations on LinkedIn and Facebook. If you’d like to see the photo that Jess mentioned in this episode, you can find the link to it in the episode’s show notes. If you enjoyed this episode of Humanitarian Conversations, I encourage you to rate, review, subscribe and share it with your friends, family and colleagues. This podcast episode was produced and engineered by Jill Farrar. I’m Sally Cunningham. Thanks for listening.