Wendy Fehr the Executive Director at CAUSE Canada shared how nonprofits should approach helping communities in different countries. Located in Calgary, Alberta they work in rural communities such as Sierra Leone, Honduras and Guatemala to help the communities advocate for or design their own systems to access education or health services.
Working in developing countries, they do face a lot of technical issues like not having internet or power to work with but the biggest challenge is ensuring the mental wellbeing of their staff. Wendy shared that it’s difficult for some of her staff to come home to Calgary after working with people in developing communities.
Wendy takes the mental health of her staff very seriously, when asked what she suggests people do in those situations she said It helps for them to talk about what they are feeling. "They feel guilty because we have so much here. It is something we talk about quite a bit in the Canadian office” she explains. "When they come back team members are challenged by access spending, especially around Christmas. They can’t reconcile that with extreme poverty”.
