Burnout is the term used to describe the physical, emotional and mental exhaustion felt by any ‘human service’ professionals – carers, doctors, teachers. There is little written about burnout among development and NGO workers. My aim is to bridge this gap in an accessible way and hopefully generate some discussion around what we as development workers mean by burnout. 

There is much analysis and debate about the development sector – whether it is effective; whether it is actually more…

When people ask me what job I do, I always struggle to find the appropriate response. It tends to differ according to who is asking me, and will range from ‘development/aid/humanitarian/human rights worker’ to ‘advocacy/policy/programmes officer’. This linguistic difficulty is not only due to needing to second guess whether the person I’m talking to will actually understand what any of these terms mean; it’s also because I myself am not sure what I am. Maybe the blanket term is ‘activist’ –…