Katy Grant: has been working since the mid 1990s in conflict and post-conflict countries in advocacy and programme delivery for human rights and refugee protection. She has worked in several repatriation operations, including bringing refugees home to Cambodia after the end of the Khmer Rouge, and to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. More recently, she has worked in child protection in emergencies. She has also worked in the areas of political and electoral rights, and gender. She is a development and humanitarian assistance specialist (MSc), holds a certificate of law, and speaks French and Khmer. She has three children and lives in Kenya.

“Working in contexts of recovery and transition, we have to find the people on the ground with real integrity, vision and energy, and invest in their entrepreneurial spirit with the technical and financial resources they deserve. Only then can we contribute to reducing inequity and promoting lasting change.”


Chris Horwood: Started his aid career in the slums of Delhi teaching carpentry to young men and has spent the last 20 years involved in emergency relief, community development and working to clear landmines in over 15 developing countries. He has worked with the United Nations, various non-government organizations and for national governments. He recently left the UN as a senior humanitarian analyst and is qualified as a development specialist (M.Sc), a secondary school teacher and boatbuilder. He speaks French and Spanish and currently lives in Kenya.

“seeing palpable changes in the lives of the very poor surely has to be the litmus test of any assistance. Without some evidence of transformation it becomes meaningless and self serving”.

Edward Rackley: Evacuated during Zaire’s collapse in 1991 after three years with the Peace Corps, Ed joined Doctors without Borders to help establish an emergency surgery ward and feeding centers in southern Somalia. Emergency relief work in Sudan’s civil war and the Rwandan genocide filled the next two years. Ed then started a PhD in philosophy in New York, finishing in Germany. He has since worked in dozens of conflicts and early recovery contexts on four continents across a wide variety of sectors, including the set-up and evaluation of large-scale emergency relief and reconstruction projects; demobilizing and reintegrating child soldiers, establishing human rights monitoring and reporting systems for the United Nations. Ed publishes regular articles on these issues in academic and popular journals; he speaks French, Kikongo and Lingala and lives in Washington, DC.

“A Senegalese proverb runs, 'The hand that gives is always above the hand that receives'. In my experience, traditional charity is just that. It does nothing to change the imbalance of power between donor and recipient”.