As the humanitarian sector continues to grow and develop, we conducted a series of interviews with RedR UK Members to better understand the challenges currently faced by engineers in the humanitarian sector.
Through these interviews we identified several key trends, including the opportunity to work with national training organisations, the need for on-the-job support and mentoring, and the importance of ‘soft skills’, such as project management and leadership skills for engineers working in the field.
One practical example was given by an interviewee who described a company donating solar lighting for a village, without providing tarpaulins for the lighting to stand on. The ability of engineers to put their technical engineering expertise to good use depends to a large extent on the ability to carefully consider the broader context in which projects are carried out.
RedR UK is proud of its engineering heritage and remains dedicated to working with engineers in the humanitarian sector, responding to the evolving needs of the sector by providing both technical and soft skills training to national and international staff as well as running mentoring programmes and offering technical support through technical Q&A forum KnowledgePoint.