A leader in her field
Royal Roads University MA Human Security and Peacebuilding alumna Stephanie Perham stands with UNHCR colleagues in Dadaab, Kenya, where she helped ensure effective information sharing and co-ordination during the Horn of Africa Crisis, when as many as 1,500 Somali refugees were arriving in Dadaab each day.
When former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo was ousted last April, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) volunteer Stephanie Perham jumped at the opportunity to help on the ground.
“There hadn’t been any flights into the country in over a week and here I found myself on a half-full, tiny UN humanitarian air service flight,” recalls the Royal Roads University MA Human Security and Peacebuilding graduate.
Perham had just spent a month in Dakar, Senegal, deployed as the external relations officer for the UNHCR’s Emergency Response Team. Her work involved receiving information in French and English from the Ivory Coast, plus more than a dozen other countries affected by the Ivorian Crisis, producing reports and writing proposals to donor governments for funding for the operation.
“Unfortunately, the Ivory Coast operation did not receive adequate international attention, and continues to be underfunded,” she says from Gulu, Uganda. “There are still over 160,000 refugees in countries neighbouring Ivory Coast.” Despite the stress of working in a conflict zone, Perham was not discouraged and went on a third emergency mission, this time to Dadaab, Kenya.
Perham’s willingness to go on three international emergency missions in 2011, sometimes with fewer than 72 hours’ notice, while effectively managing her other volunteer work as an associate reporting/donor relations officer in Gulu, earned her the title of International UN Volunteer of the Year.
“It was quite a challenge, but very exciting,” Perham says of her year’s work. “I’m still new to the humanitarian work system and I’m going to do as much as I can given the opportunity. I’ve always felt that war is a bad thing. I definitely always wanted to find out what I could do to help and I think that the best step is to work for an agency that protects human beings. That’s what UNHCR does.”
The award was voted on by about 50 international UN volunteers and Perham says she is flattered to be selected by her peers, who are also dedicated workers.
“I work 12 or 14 hours a day because I really feel that I want to get that work done and help people and I’ve realized all my colleagues in Gulu are the same as me,” says the Carp, Ont. native who’s lived abroad for more than a decade. “We are workaholics, addicted to our work. We feel happy about our accomplishments.”
“Stephanie exemplifies all the values that we hold dear at Royal Roads, combining theoretical learning with applied practice,” says Kenneth Christie, Royal Roads professor and head of the Human Security and Peacebuilding program. “Her thesis (for which she won the Governor General’s Gold medal) was one of the best I have read and her work in the field has contributed greatly to improving the humanitarian situation in Northern Uganda. Stephanie is an inspirational leader in her field and a credit to the Human Security and Peacebuilding program.”
Stephanie Perham receives her award for International UN Volunteer of the Year alongside Jimmy Ogwang, National UN Volunteer of the Year, in Uganda in December.
Perham has been volunteering with UNHCR in Gulu since graduating from Royal Roads in 2009. She says the university prepared her well for her work, in more ways than you’d expect.
“You really get to co-ordinate with people who have different skill sets,” she says. “You really have to find everybody’s strengths and weaknesses and manage the workload and it’s the same thing here. You need to right away determine the strengths and weaknesses of your colleagues and just push through as fast as you can to get the best quality work out of a group.”
It was that intense working environment at Royal Roads that led to Perham’s lasting relationship with the university and her fellow students. When she was en route to Daadab, she stayed at the house owned by the Canadian High Commission, because the major who was living there was a fellow student.
“It’s like a tightly knit family that you develop because you had this special experience together and we’re all striving to achieve the same goal: to help people.”
Now, Perham is staying connected to Royal Roads by helping other students. Last year, she helped establish the partnership between Royal Roads and Caritas Gulu Archdiocese in Uganda for the AUCC Students for Development and was the university’s eyes on the ground for the first year. Between 2011 and 2014, 20 students from the Human Security and Peacebuilding program will go to Gulu for their internships. The program is undertaken with the financial support of the Government of Canada provided through the Canadian International Development Agency.
Caritas Gulu Archdiocese is the emergency relief and development wing of the Catholic church in the Archdiocese of Gulu. The students help the non-profit organization with monitoring and evaluation and reporting. To this end, they visit beneficiaries in the field and conduct interviews to determine the successes of the organization and then communicate these to funders. The students have also trained community leaders in conflict management and created peace groups at high schools.
Royal Roads research development co-ordinator Gwen Campden has been working with Perham on the Caritas Gulu Archdiocese project and says she has been invaluable.
She’s given me advice on how to encourage students to get development work outside of the university. The field experience she’s had has helped me do my job more effectively. I don’t know what I would have done without her,” Campden says.
“She’s extremely reliable and helpful. She’s the kind of person who puts everyone else first. This is ideal work for her.”
Written by Raina Delisle
Posted Feb. 9, 2012
