International NGO Safety Organisation

Meet INSO

Anne

Function: Training Manager
Location: Niger
Nationality: French

What were you doing before working at INSO?

I have had a rollercoaster career. Firstly, I’m passionate about the Sahel and Sahara and have an academic background in human and social sciences. After my earlier experiences in the humanitarian sector, I went back to study for a specialisation in political science, and then worked on a research paper concerning the humanitarian space’s transformations in North-Tillabéri (Niger).

Just before my current position I also worked in SSR (Security Sector Reform) of Niger for a Swiss Foundation, in collaboration with civil and military authorities.

When did you start working at INSO?

My first experience with INSO was in Mali in 2014. I worked as Information Officer with various responsibilities. It was very interesting to be the interlocutor of our partners to facilitate their access to services, to pilot the training activities – before the internalisation of the service, to work on data such as coding data base of incidents and to look after monitoring and evaluation.

Before leaving Mali in 2016, I was the Assistant Director, and I developed the evaluation of Malian programme. After that I led the external evaluation of the INSO programme in the Central African Republic. During this work I had the opportunity to reflect about the results and the impact of INSO’s activities, which was really inspiring and I still carry this motivation with me today.

I began my current role as Training Manager in Niger in September 2020.

What’s your favourite thing about your job today?

One of my favourite things about this job as Training Manager is the contact with the humanitarian field workers. In our training, the workers speak from the heart about their daily security problems and also their fears and their feelings about humanitarian access.

Thanks to their trust we are able to support them in their analysis and practices. Each session is a very precious moment of exchanges and collective creativity. Furthermore, the participants are usually very happy about the quality and amazed about the methodology of INSO’s training: discussions, games, exercises, simulations and so on.

For someone who is interested about humanitarian security INSO is the only expert organisation in the world who propose reflexions and actions!

What’s your favourite thing about working at INSO?

My favourite thing about working at INSO is our humanitarian mandate. I’m sure that we can impact the security of humanitarians workers and their programmes with better practices rooted in the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence.

From an internal perspective, I’m impressed about the rapid growth of the organisation in few years: new countries. But also new departments (training, analysis) and new tools (CHDC, IPP)! It’s fun to feel that our organisation is often ahead of the game.

Please tell us about a time you felt you’d had a real impact whilst working for INSO?

As I mentioned, each session of training is a very precious moment to understand the importance of our work. Participants’ feedbacks are often very informative.

For example we know that some participant after the “Security management for NGOs” training have refreshed their risk assessment, or update their security standard operating practices.

Some partners previously had a very low level in security management and after training they have changed many of their practices and introduced new rules, a new understanding about acceptation strategy, or team briefings. This I feel has a real impact.