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No frontiers for Irish girl on Darfur mission

Friday, 20 June 2008

A young Foxrock girl is on her way to one of the world's hot spots in a bid to help the local population.
Jane-Ann McKenna – a 25-year-old accountant – is heading to Darfur, Sudan, with Nobel Peace Prize-winning aid agency, Médecins San Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
Jane-Ann recently signed up through the MSF Ireland office for her first overseas mission with the medical, humanitarian, emergency aid agency.
She will spend the next 12 months in a conflict zone working as a financial controller for MSF in Nyala, the capital of south Darfur.
Speaking before her flight from Dublin onto Darfur, she said: “This is my first MSF ‘mission’ and I’m both nervous and excited. I’ve wanted to do this for so long. I’ve bored my friends and family to tears talking about how I was going to do this some day, so now it’s hard to believe that I’m actually going and will be in Sudan until June 2009.”
Jane-Ann acknowledged that even though she had been briefed by MSF about her role and the situation in Darfur, she couldn’t really know what to expect until she got there.
“I know that insecurity and displacement continue in the region and that thousands lack access to even the most basic healthcare,” she said. “Despite the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement in 2006, more then two million people remain in camps for the displaced and large areas of the region remain inaccessible for aid workers.”
As MSF takes staff security very seriously, life for Jane-Ann will be quite restricted.
Travel
“I’ll have a 10pm curfew every single day,” she revealed. “Darfur consists of three separate states – North, South and West Darfur - and I’ll be based in South Darfur, in it’s capital Nyala. I’ll always need to travel with an MSF driver whenever I need to go to the office in Nyala or to visit our medical projects in the field, as it won’t be possible to walk anywhere. I’ll need to make sure that I cover myself from elbow to ankle, as Islamic Sharia Law operates in the area. This also means that there won’t be any alcohol for the next 12 months. It will be quite different to anything I’ve been used to. But I’m looking forward to the newness of it all – and to the challenge.”
Jane-Ann attended secondary school and university in Dublin, completing a Masters in International Business in UCD in 2005. She then worked in AIB Corporate Banking for three years, during which time she also qualified as an accountant. Though MSF is a medical humanitarian organisation, the aid agency also recruits people with a non-medical background to fill a variety of support and coordinator roles. These non-medical staff – such as Jane-Anne - make up about 40 per cent of all MSF international departures for their projects on the ground.
“I’ve always been interested in doing humanitarian work,” Jane-Ann added. “After first year in college I volunteered in a Romanian orphanage for a summer and felt this type of work was something I wanted to continue with throughout my life – but in a practical, strategic way. Last year I attended an MSF information evening in Dublin and after that I knew that I wanted to work with them. Accountability is important to me. I guess I’m a real accountant! So is making sure that money goes to those who need it most. As an organisation based on medical ethics, which is independent, impartial and neutral, this means that MSF is free from political, economic or religious powers. To me this matters. It means donations go where they are needed most, not where powerful groups think they should go.”
As a financial co-ordinator Jane-Ann will be responsible for managing the staff and finances of MSF’s medical aid projects in South Darfur.
Conflict
MSF has a long history of working in Sudan – where it has been running projects to respond to conflict and to combat endemic and epidemic diseases since 1979. MSF runs several large projects in Darfur and has more than 2,000 international and national staff working in the region.
If you are interested in working overseas with MSF, the agency organises regular ‘Information Evenings’ in Dublin, where you can hear a returned aid-workers speak about their own experiences working in an MSF project. To find out more about the work of MSF, the situation in Darfur, or the date of the next MSF ‘Information Evening’ in Dublin, visit www.msf.ie

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