UK Recruitment Evening
Event: GOAL Recruitment Evening for Engineering Professionals
GOAL is an international aid agency established 30 years ago in Ireland.
GOAL ensures that the poorest of the poor and the most vulnerable in our world and those affected by humanitarian crises have access to the fundamental needs and rights of life: food, water, shelter, medical attention and literacy.
The recruitment evening was good. One of the speakers worked almost two years in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the tsunami (re)building 62 schools.
GOAL is one of very few development agencies that in willing to take on volunteers with relatively little professional experience (min. two years). This makes GOAL an ideal agency to get into the development sector.
I was rather annoyed by the amount of advertising/branding GOAL seems to be doing in their aid projects. However, I may simply be naive in thinking that this is unnecessary after all development/disaster relief agencies are well known to be quite territorial. GOAL collaborates with various other organisations including USAID whose packages are boldly labelled “USAID - from the American People”. So in comparison GOAL’s banners are discreet :-/
One of the highlights in GOAL’s marketing is that it has a very low administrative cost of under 5%. I am sceptical about that figure (creative accounting?) but even if it was several percent higher it would still compare favourably with various other charities. Keeping administrative costs down is important to make sure the highest possible amount of a donation goes to the actual cause. Nevertheless, I wonder whether slightly more money in an efficient administration couldn’t benefit the full organisation disproportionately.
Overall, I can very much imagine sending my CV to GOAL and spending a year or two with them in a few years time. In the mean time, initiatives like RedR or EWB will have to do.