New Program Officer “Ludovic Blanco”

My humanitarian experience start soon after my high school but it wasn’t so obvious. I started the school to be a fireman (officer). But really fast I realized that this profession is not for me and that it will close many opportunities. So I decided to focus on water management, first of all for public health in order to reach the best water quality to avoid contamination in the public health centre where patient are weak. At this time I had the chance to spend 4 months in Romania for my training. After 4 months I had the opportunity to follow a course in the United Kingdom in water supply and sanitation where I could specialize my technical knowledge in management in relief context and developing countries. At this point I made my thesis in India in the poorest state (Uttar Pradesh). My task was to assess the possibility to implement household water treatment.

Those overseas experiences were for me the first. As I am from a little island calls Reunion lost in the middle of the Indian Ocean, old French colony now a French territory, I did not have the opportunity to travel like this. When I left my family and my small land I decided to take all chance to open my mind and meet people with different point of view, knowledge, culture…

Straight after my study I went in Burundi with a French NGO specialized in WASH. I was the program manager of the project. I spend 18 months there were I could put in place my knowledge, and had my first real professional experience. I manage 3 programs in total in Burundi. The first one was to manage water, sanitation and hygiene promotion in a Congolese camp (with 6500 refugees). My second and third projects were to establish water network, provide hygiene awareness, and train water committee and to train the public utility to manage in a proper way their networks.

After that I had a break of 1 year and half in France, where I could work for a public service in household waste water treatment.

After this period it was the time to go back to the field. I work one more time for a French NGO in Jordan in response to the Syria Crisis. We were the first NGO work in WASH in the first refugee camps. I spend 8 months there. My main duties were to provide water and manage waste water in 4 small camps, and provide hygiene awareness and distribute diapers in a camp of 50-60 000 refugees in add to the 4 small camps.

I finally joined JEN in March in Haiti. The program is similar to those I did in Burundi. I have joined JEN first by a meet of one person in Jordan.

Beside that I like to practice sport, extreme sport when I have the opportunity.