Anna Fraine, 30, from Wirral, has said that spending time in war zones and witnessing the desperate situations people face has given her a "new perspective" on life.
After taking a year out to volunteer in Eswatini in southern Africa when she left school, Fraine studied in York and then Manchester, where she specialised in humanitarianism and conflict response. She began working with The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) as an aid worker before becoming a Programme Manager at the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), which has brought her face to face with people battling for survival in crisis zones worldwide.
Bomb shelter in Kyiv
While she has travelled the world through her humanitarian work, one of her most recent trips will stay with her for a long time. She told the ECHO: "I'll never forget having to go down to a bomb shelter in Ukraine when Kyiv was under a massive attack and speaking to people there about what the daily reality is like."
She added: "There were people who had to be completely evacuated from the front lines, and they literally just have moments to make a decision on if they're going to evacuate and essentially leave their homes behind. Then they're really at the mercy of there being humanitarian workers and responders able to support them with provision, providing shelter, somewhere for them to stay, provide hot meals, and somewhere that they can essentially get the protection that they need and that they want."
Daily destruction in Ukraine
Seeing the destruction of people's homes and livelihoods became a daily occurrence during her time in Ukraine. She said: "There was a woman that I came across who didn't have access to her medications, and I know how serious that really can be. So, through the coordination that we have, we just tried to identify where she could get her medicine. She was just trying to find healthcare, her life just had to go on really in the midst of this war."
While the scenes she witnessed in Ukraine reaffirmed her commitment to helping others, it was years before, when she travelled to South Sudan, that it truly hit her that this was what she wanted to do with her career.
South Sudan and a new perspective
She said: "I first arrived in South Sudan, and I think it's like one of the third poorest countries in the world. Just seeing the rate of development and the huge inequality across the country and in that region, it certainly was something, when communities or people don't even have access to clean water and we just take it completely for granted when water comes out the taps."
Looking back over her years working in humanitarian aid, she said it has given her a new perspective on life. She said: "There's a lot of instability now in the world. I have these opportunities to go and have a whole new perspective on my life really, and the fortune of having your basic necessities and safety and stability. But it's not like that at all in other parts of the world, and I think we are living our lives in a bit of a bubble."
Today marks the 60th anniversary since the Disasters Emergency Committee's first appeal in 1966. It was launched in response to the impact of the earthquake in Varto, Turkey, which killed 2,300 people. It saw £560,000 raised at the time, and since then over £2 billion has been raised for various other humanitarian crises.
