She has been working for sixteen years in the field of international cooperation with the humanitarian organisation CESVI: Isabella Garino is Regional Manager for East Africa and is in charge of coordinating development and humanitarian projects.
After a failed trip to Tibet, she lands at CESVI, receives a proposal for a mission in Somalia and accepts. This is between 2008 and 2009, and Isabella Garino has recently finished a master’s degree in international cooperation, which also touches on architecture and urban planning, fields familiar to her, who by training is an architect. She recalls the inexperienced apprehension she felt towards the trip to Somalia, but “I really enjoyed the first three months, I discovered a job that was fun, challenging, and also very technical. Then I was offered the opportunity to stay in Somaliland, and there my real journey begins.”
CESVI is one of the most important Italian Non-Governmental Organisations, founded in Bergamo in 1985. Since then it has been actively working in Italy and around the world, thanks to the action of hundreds of workers. Its name, a crasis of the words “Cooperation,” “Emergency” and “Development,” reflects the concepts underlying the Organisation’s code of ethics and mission. Isabella Garino’s story as a cooperator begins and takes shape precisely with CESVI, with which she immediately feels a “mutual enthusiasm.” In a sixteen-year journey, her position has transformed and experienced growth. She spent her first years on the field, in the field, moving from Somalia to South Sudan and then to Kenya. Today she lives in Nairobi, working within CESVI’s Regional Office and serving as Regional Manager for East Africa. “I saw different communities and contexts, I was living on the ground in development and humanitarian projects, at first it was a very technical role, where I was in direct contact with communities.” Now she is in charge of coordinating four countries, Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, and Ethiopia, in which, through a Country Office led by a Head of Mission and their team, various programmes, funded by donors, are implemented. Contact with the local community is a still and ever-present element: “these are often long projects, which aim to develop the resilience of the communities themselves. In the field or in the Offices, there is not a top-down approach but always contact work with the communities.” A large and important project she is currently working on, for example, is on combating malnutrition, is funded by UNICEF in Somalia, and aims to bring nutrition services for children and women.
“The job of a cooperator is very totalising,” she explains, “it takes resilience and adaptability, you are always active and on call,” and this is even more true when you are stable in the field, where everything is clearly more intense. From fieldwork she has learned above all humility, “when you are young you do a lot of fieldwork and at first you think you already know everything, instead with time you understand that there is so much to learn, it takes realism.” And then there is curiosity and patience, and a lot of study: these aspects have helped her over the years to do her job well.
I ask if she misses living in Italy and what it was like adjusting to such a different culture. “So far, no. I go back to see my family members about once a year. I feel my Italian identity, but with an expanded horizon and knowledge of different cultures. When I arrived in 2008, from this point of view it was difficult because it was a path, to enter a new culture. But I am comfortable here in Nairobi. It is a multicultural city and I feel part of this multiculturality.”
