Connecting the dots between an Ebola outbreak, a hurricane, a typhoon, and a wildfire isn’t hard. No matter where or when, people like Sandra Damota provide the support that’s necessary for recovery.
When Sandra was a kid, she had a second grade teacher who she adored. When she heard her teacher was leaving her school to teach in Papua New Guinea, she was crushed. But when her teacher returned for a visit and shared about her experience, Sandra knew she wanted to do something like that: “I knew I would spend the rest of my life traveling the world, doing something good.”
After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans hard, Sandra had the opportunity for her first aid work mission. Working with a local grassroots organization, she helped start a shelter for women and children in New Orleans’ Upper Ninth Ward.
Sandra is now a psychosocial support aid worker with the Canadian Red Cross. When disasters and emergencies strike, the obvious stuff – damaged homes, destroyed infrastructure, injured people – sometimes makes it easy to overlook the damage that’s invisible. We can be impacted by disaster and emergency in many ways and can experience deep trauma that doesn’t simply go away once physical damage is addressed. Recovering from these events requires emotional care just as much as it requires physical care.
That’s where psychosocial support (PSS) comes into play.
Deployed four times with the Red Cross, Sandra describes each response as incredibly different.
In 2012, Hurricane Sandy struck New Jersey. Sandra spent three weeks working along the coastline, providing mental health support to residents. As part of this role, Sandra and other team members would visit homes in the damaged area, looking for individuals who did not evacuate and trying to persuade them to go to safer locations.
When Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines in November 2013, Sandra was part of the
first rotation of Red Cross aid workers. This meant that the first thing that happened upon arrival was building the field hospital that the Canadian Red Cross would operate until February, 2014. Sandra was responsible for creating a safe space within the hospital for children. In this space, play activities like dancing, singing, storytelling and colouring helped children recover from the trauma of the typhoon and its impact on their communities. During her one-month deployment, Sandra also worked closely with members of the Philippine Red Cross, providing PSS training and working alongside them to provide support within the hospital and in impacted communities.
In 2015, one year after the deadliest outbreak of the Ebola virus in history began, Sandra was deployed to Sierra Leone to work in the Ebola Treatment Centre in Kenema. Sandra’s role within the treatment centre was to coordinate PSS operations as well as providing support to patients and to local staff and volunteers – many of whom had loved ones who were ill or who had died as a result of the outbreak. The psychosocial team also worked to re-integrate patients who had survived the virus, as many faced significant stigma on their return to their communities. Another PSS responsibility was providing dignified burials, with graves that were properly marked with as much information as was available.
Most recently, Sandra was deployed within Canada following the Alberta wildfires. The evacuation of Fort McMurray and surrounding communities meant that local Red Cross offices had to put their regular operations on hold. Sandra helped to provide support at the Edmonton and Grande Prairie locations, working with evacuees, which also helped free up local Red Cross staff to continue with normal community operations. In Alberta, Sandra and her team members provided PSS assessments, issued aid and helped evacuees check-in.
When you think of the kind of places Sandra has been and the things she’s seen, it’s easy to assume that deployments are a grim thing. “There’s nothing glamourous about the work we do,” Sandra said when asked about common misconceptions people have about aid work, “But people back home don’t always see the beautiful, powerful moments that just blow you away. There are so many incredible things that keep you going.”
Moments like a church in New Jersey declaring that on Thanksgiving they would be entirely neutral, opening their doors to absolutely everyone who wanted to share a meal after Hurricane Sandy; or a tradition at the Ebola Treatment Centre when staff and volunteers would rush outside when they heard a helicopter flying overhead to wave to colleagues whose deployment had ended.
It’s not easy work. And challenges are not always due to the work itself. One of the biggest difficulties for Sandra is that she knows she’s leaving worried family and friends back home when she is deployed. “We run into places people are running away from. We have to be prepared, but our loved ones didn’t choose this life.” Sandra recalled her deployment to the Philippines, when the team arrived communications were entirely down. With three young boys at home, Sandra said it’s impossible to shut down worries that your family is afraid for you. In the days before they were able to establish communications, the Red Cross team needed to work together to help support each other through the stress.
So what is Sandra’s advice for the aspiring aid worker? “The biggest piece of advice I can offer is volunteer locally first. Build the skills you will need to pursue this kind of work internationally. You don’t want to be in the field and find out this type of work is not for you, so volunteering locally helps you make an informed decision.”
When she’s not deployed, Sandra is a community development officer for the City of Toronto’s Community Crisis Response Program.
Learn more about Canada's humanitarian story and the work of Canadian aid workers through Faces of Humanity.