Asking about “hopes” and “dreams” as a method of needs assessment in humanitarian assistance. Case study: Afro-Colombian IDPs in Cali

Abstract This thesis aims at contributing to the current knowledge about needs assessmentmethods in humanitarian assistance by proposing an innovative protocol ofinterview which is focused on the hopes and dreams of the people in need. The thesis is based on three months of field work in Cali (Colombia) between Juneand September 2017, in which social workers belonging to different organizationswere interviewed and the proposed method was tested on Afro-Colombian IDPs. The research found that the protocol was effective in gathering useful informationfrom hopes and dreams of the people underlining at the same time its limits andproblems. The protocol proved to …

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Humanitarian assistance: why I left

versione italiana After working for some years in Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the field of cooperation, many people asked me to tell and then write about my experience. For a long time I hesitated, because I did not want to talk about the specific organisations I worked with, and my conclusions, derived from first-hand experience, informal chats with colleagues, and from studies and books, encompass a much broader horizon than I was able to touch upon. This horizon, however broad it may be, is nevertheless limited. I was afraid of offering easily generalisable conclusions, thus …

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