During his nearly four years with Oxfam, Victor de la Torre Sans devoted much of his time to questioning and confirming what was going on with his projects in South Sudan and Somalia. His concern wasn’t traceable to an out-of-the-ordinary number of challenges — although there were many — but to the simple fact that he wasn’t actually on the ground to see and speak to stakeholders himself.
In both countries, Oxfam had decided that de la Torre Sans would operate the programs from afar — from Nairobi, Kenya. He helped build a remote management system for Somalia that “paid off largely once al-Shaabab expelled all international nongovernmental organizations in 2008,” he said, and did the same later for South Sudan.
Managing humanitarian aid effort is a challenge in itself, but remote management ushers in an entirely new set of uncertainties and questions about what’s happening on the ground — and from a managerial perspective, it raises questions of what type of manager might be a good fit for the job.
About the author
Kelli Rogers@kellierin
Kelli Rogers has worked as an Associate Editor and Southeast Asia Correspondent for Devex, with a particular focus on gender. Prior to that, she reported on social and environmental issues from Nairobi, Kenya. Kelli holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, and has reported from more than 20 countries.
