From Wealth to Health – Caroline’s Volunteer Journey

The beauty of RE:ACT is we welcome volunteers from all walks of life who are motivated to help others.

Caroline O’Callaghan may not fit the typical profile of a disaster responder. Her high-flying career in wealth management might seem an unlikely route to humanitarian work. But inspired by her son Matt - who completed his domestic and international operations courses in 2019 - Caroline decided to give it a go, and a few months later successfully graduated from the same two courses as her son.

“I was so impressed with RE:ACT’s mission to reach those most in need in the shortest time. I was keen to get involved and found the experience on the courses both challenging and rewarding,” explained Caroline.

Caroline loved meeting a wide range of people and learning new, valuable skills. She didn’t stop there either. Following on from international operations, she completed a further course in mountain safety with RE:ACT’s International Operations Manager Paul Taylor.

“As we finished the course, Hurricane Dorian struck the Bahamas. I immediately volunteered and, much to my surprise, was selected as a first responder,” added Caroline, who lives in Hampshire’s New Forest.

“The deployment used all the skills I had learned during training and was life-changing. Working with a talented and energised team to deliver immediate humanitarian aid was incredibly rewarding.”

Caroline was so inspired, that she has gone on to study for an MSc in Humanitarian Action and somehow has still found time to step forward for multiple RE:ACT deployments.

Her most recent mission was arguably her most challenging to date – working as a liaison officer in both Eastern Poland and Ukraine.

It was the first time she has been anywhere near an active conflict zone and she says it was a sobering experience.

“I was deployed initially to Rzeszow, in Eastern Poland where our partners the Ukrainian Education Platform (UEP) have a warehouse that receives aid from all over the world. My job as liaison officer was to gain situational awareness and start building working relationships with other NGOs and government bodies,” explained Caroline.

From there, the RE:ACT team moved to another warehouse close to the Ukraine border in Przemysl. Here they were tasked with ensuring 1000 hygiene kits donated by Water Aid and other essential humanitarian aid from partners such as Siobhan’s Trust and ConnectAid were prepared, packed, loaded and dispatched.

Caroline’s job was also to find a local source of electricity generators that RE:ACT could purchase and then send to Ukrainian services struggling with unreliable power supplies, prioritising hospitals and schools.

But it was the three days she spent with fellow volunteer James Crowley in Lviv, Ukraine, that had the biggest effect on Caroline.

“We travelled across the border and into Ukraine itself on a United Nations’ bus convoy. It was really quite surreal entering a country that was at war. Seeing sandbagged windows everywhere and hearing the alarming sound of air-raid sirens going off really brought it home to me,” she explained.

“Speaking to the UEP volunteers about how their lives had been completely shattered by the war was quite shocking. The director told me she had sent her children and parents to safety in Poland and her husband was fighting on the frontline. I have since been told that her husband was killed. How absolutely awful,” continued Caroline.

Shocking news such as this makes her even more determined to continue to volunteer for RE:ACT.

“It is so very worthwhile. We are really making a difference there and I will very happily go back again if I am asked.”