Stories and Humanitarian Action

Megan Culhane Galbraith is a writer, visual artist, and an adoptee. She’s the founder of the Never Hush Workshops for Adoptees. Her debut hybrid memoir-in-essays, The Guild of the Infant Saviour: An Adopted Child’s Memory Book, was published by Mad Creek Books/Ohio State University Press in May 2021. Her work was Notable in Best American Essays 2021 and 2017, and she is the Director...

Maisarah Faisal is the Special Assistant to the Executive Director at Sunway Center for Planetary Health, Sunway University in Malaysia. She's a graduate of International Relations with Mandarin from the University of Nottingham, Malaysia. She has experience in research and analysis, new media communications and youth engagement, in both the public and private sector. She's also a youth activist....

Episode 30 Exploring Humanity Through Storytelling With Danuta Hinc Danuta Hinc is a Polish American novelist, short story writer and essayist. She holds an MA in Philology from the University of Gdańsk where she won the Polish National Competition for best dissertation is the Humanities. She received an M.F.A. in Writing and Literature from Bennington College, where she was awarded the Barry Hann...

Hawa Sabriye works for UNICEF Somalia as an Education Specialist. She has over 7 years of experience in education/teaching, humanitarian aid and international development. She holds a BA in English Literature and Human Geography, a BA and MA in Education, and Graduate Diplomas in Refugee and Migration Studies and Post-Secondary Education: Community, Culture, and Policy. Hawa is also a doctorate ca...

Doug Mercado has worked in the field of international humanitarian assistance and post-disaster recovery over the past 32 years on assignments with the United Nations, USAID, OAS & NGOs. He currently holds the position of visiting lecturer at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. He says, “ Works of fiction have their part in helping the world to understand what’s...

Ms April Pham is a Senior Gender Advisor and the Head of Gender Unit in the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. She has over 25 years of experience in social justice, human rights, gender equality, and the prevention and response to violence against women/gender-based violence in development and humanitarian settings. Twitter: @MynameisApes She says, “People need to make visi...

Matteo Fraschini Koffi is a freelance journalist who writes, photographs and produces documentaries for radio and TV. He works for Italian and foreign media focusing exclusively on Sub-Saharan Africa. He has won the Premiolino award and published a book-diary, “Fields of red gold,"   about his experience in the ghetto of Rignano (Apulia), and his autobiography, "The black elephant calling , c...

SAHAPOD DELPHINE Delphine Vakunta is a Cameroonian-American communication and public relations professional in the international humanitarian and development affairs field. Her work spans the African Development Bank, the United Nations, NGOs, and the private sector. She says , “We should all strive to prevent humanitarian crises by thinking about what we can individually do at our respective leve...

Aida Mengistu is the Deputy Head of the Inter Agency Standing Committee’s Peer-to-Peer Support Project which provides targeted support to humanitarian leaders in country operations. She is a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a mother of three kids. She says, "It’s important to understand the day-to-day life of people caught up in these difficult situations. With fiction, you...

Sébastien Trives is a French national currently working for the NGO ACTED in Paris. He for the Humanitarian Advisory Team to the Famine Relief Fund, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, UNRWA, UNAMA and OSCE. He holds a M.A. in international relations, a B.A. in international affairs and history, and a diploma in European studies.   He says, “ 99 Years in Logar , describes...

Ani Kazarian is a writer and professional development coach, both of which, she believes, come down to clarifying our vision and following our intuition. Her publications include book reviews, essays, and short stories that have been featured in Consequence Magazine, Agni Online, Sampsonia Way, Aster (ix) Journal, and the Tishman Review. She says, the conversations that take place because of liter...

Samir Elhawary is an Egyptian-British national and expert on conflict, humanitarian action, and war-to-peace transitions, with a particular focus on the Middle East and Latin America region. Currently, he is the Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator and Head of UN-OCHA in Caracas, Venezuela. He says, “Don’t be indifferent to human suffering. When you see human suffering try to find out more about what i...

“A poem can change you; A powerful short story can literally change your brain chemistry. At the individual level, the teaching of compassion, of love of community, these are the ways that I think literature probably moves us most effectively, but they're very hard to discern, I think. And you never know what that kind of reading experience is going to result in, what sort of emotional capacity it...

In this episode, Anna Macdonald, a Communications and Campaigns consultant and currently Human Rights Practitioner in Residence at Columbia Law School says, “ In humanitarian work, there's a tendency to think that because it's a serious subject, we have to start with data, statistics, facts , and figures. These are important to provide the evidence, however , they're rarely the thing that gets you...

In this episode, I speak to François Batalingaya United Nations Resident Coordinator in Comoros. He says, let’s use the story of these women, Chika and the unnamed Hausa Woman, Halima’s mother, in A Private Experience, and say to ourselves, the other person out there isn’t an enemy, not at all, and you don't know when you may end up in a situation where you'll need each other. Trust the person, an...

In this Episode, I speak to Askold Melnyczuk, an American writer whose publications include novels, essays, poems, memoir, and translations. Among his works are the novels, What Is Told , and Ambassador of the Dead , House of Widows and Excerpt from Smedley’s Secret Guide to World Literature . In his essay, Why My Favorite Characters to Write Are Often Unsympathetic and Unforgivable , he says, “I’...

SAHA EP 16 Raksha Vasudevan In this episode,Raksha Vasudevan, an Economist, Writer and former Aid Worker whose essays and reporting have appeared in The New York Times, VICE, Guernica, and I,discuss The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam . She says, “The best way for me to answer this question is thinking about it in terms of contribution rather than attribution. I haven’t been able to...

SAHA EP15 ALISON AUDIO Ruth Mukwana In this episode, I spoke with Alison Turner about her essay, The Autological Archive: Appraisal, Institutional Motives, and Essentializing Identity in Refugee and Asylum Seekers Narratives, In and Out of Fiction where she argues that fiction can expose parts of archival/application processes that impact who is and who is not granted asylum in the United States....

Episode 14 Black Eyed Women

Episode 13 Jamie McGoldrock

Episode 12 Daphne Kalotay

Adrienne Ghaly

Episode 10 The HIstory of Girls

Episode 9 Maaza Mengiste

Episode 8 Deserted