Have you ever dreamt of inspiring the masses with your Churchill–esque speeches? Have you ever considered yourself to be a heroic mix of James Cook and Isaac Newton? Do you exude a pitiful combination of hubris and feigned competence in all that you do? Yes? Then congratulations: you might just have what it takes to join this wince-inducing circus of middle-class douchebags, pseudointellectuals, and failed ROTC dilettantes operating under the delusion that they are the living embodiments of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’.
When HALO states that you don’t need to possess any knowledge of landmines because they’ll train you, this is only half true. You certainly don’t need any professional skills or specialist knowledge to patronize the national staff you’ll be managing, but the training you’ll be given generally consists of nothing more than poorly organised classroom lectures featuring half-baked PowerPoint presentations and monotonous exercises spent impersonating a field officer in order to prove that you are worthy of joining this strange cult of humanitarian cadets.
Upon completion of ‘training’, you can look forward to HALO’s idea of a generous salary - which is approximately half of what you’d make with any other NGO of a similar nature. If you started out as a member of their national staff before switching to international postings, you can expect to remain on a significantly lower wage than field officer trainees, and if you make it to the lofty heights of a programme manager, then salaries can differ by thousands of pounds depending on how much sensitive information you have to use as leverage.
As for the environment you’ll be working in, childlike competitiveness, jealousy, and tribalism are fostered by HALO’s pseudo-military structure, where the beneficial elements of such a design (e.g. rigorous, well-planned, useful training) are abandoned, and the negative elements (e.g. obsession with rank and sycophancy) are maintained through poor leadership and an apathetic HR department. This environment is not without its benefits: it allows HALO to identify and promote the most insecure individuals who are enamored of hierarchies and obsequious enough to endure whatever it takes to climb the ranks – including overlooking endemic bullying of both national and international staff, sexual harassment, and fraud.
In this regard, HALO functions rather like the Vatican, in that it is a hermetically sealed culture of corruption where the worst offenders are just quietly moved around, sheepishly popping up in obscure places to continue working ostensibly as ‘contractors’ for a while until another scandal takes the spotlight away from them. Safeguarding issues are an all-too-common reality, and HALO’s unwillingness to address them meaningfully is a sad testament to the fact that a supposedly humanitarian organisation favours workplace expediency over the protection of vulnerable men and women.
HALO Ambassadors and trustees would be wise to follow in the footsteps of Angelina Jolie and distance themselves from this organisation, and those thinking of joining should look for better opportunities elsewhere or, if truly desperate, endure the minimum amount of time needed to be able to transfer over to a better paid, less corrupt NGO that won’t place you in an unmarked minefield of recreant hypocrites, sociopaths, and useful idiots.
I've always had an interest in conflicts around the world, whether they were international wars or civil wars. I've always wanted to work in nonprofit work and decided to pursue an internship with The HALO Trust so that I could gain more insight into the world of nonprofit as well as to have the opportunity to work with such an amazing, well-established organization. I spent the summer of 2011 interning at their new office in San Francisco and it was such an amazing experience! Unlike other internships I've had where most of the work was administrative and clerical in nature, I felt like I really made an impact while interning with HALO and got to learn and develop so many new and important skills. I think the greatest taks I worked on were being able to research and develop grant proposals for landmine clearance operations all around the world. I even just found out yesterday that one of the grants was approved for funding landmine clearance in Kosovo! Amy and Claudia (the two lovely ladies who work full-time for HALO in the SF office) are absolutely amazing and taught me so much and let me take the lead on a lot of different tasks. I didn't even feel like I was an intern, I felt like I was actually part of the team, which was an amazing experience. For anyone who wants to learn more about how a great nonprofit works and wants to be able to undertake an internship or volunteer opportunity, I HIGHLY recommend HALO. You'll learn so much, feel like you're actually having an impact on the work being done, and you'll definitely come away from the experience very very pleased. Also, if you're looking for a charity to donate your money to, HALO is a great nonprofit that works in over 10 countries around the world that have experienced conflict to remove and destroy landmines, unexploded bombs, small arms, and ammunition. They're incredibly efficient and employ 8000 local staff in the countries they work in so that they empower locals to help their communities and to rebuild stability and safety. Yay HALO!