Demining activities may be one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. But Helen Gray does not mind.
A native of Scotland, Gray works with the Hazardous Areas Life-Support Organization, or HALO Trust, a humanitarian demining agency. She led a 400-member demining team in Mozambique in 2009 and has worked in various countries to help remove mines.
“It gives me tremendous satisfaction. It is brilliant to be able to send deminers to an unsafe area to clear the land. That land then goes back to the local community and you can return in a few months and see maize growing or the houses and schools that have been built there. The landmine problem is gone—forever. You don’t get that sort of reward in many jobs,” Gray was quoted in an e-mail sent to Devex.
Gray joined the HALO Trust in 2004.
“Helen Gray and her dedicated team of locally recruited women and men deminers, undertake one the most dangerous jobs in the world: Each day, they work in deadly minefields locating and destroying landmines and other debris of war so that some of the poorest communities in Mozambique can plant their fields, graze their livestock and raise their families in safety,” Amy Currin, program officer at the HALO Trust, told Devex in an e-mail.
