Getting to Know Duncan Harvey Country Director Nigeria Country Office

 Who is Duncan?                                                                         

 I have been working with Save the Children for more than 20 years now. So I qualified as a teacher originally and my first job at Save the Children was as an education advisor in Sudan then after several years in different locations, I moved into the management side of things I was a deputy country director; I was then a country director since 2012. So Nigeria is now my eighth different country that I've worked in with Save the Children and I feel as passionately about what Save the Children is trying to achieve as ever before, I think we have a fantastic mandate and it's been wonderful for me to come to Nigeria and join the team here.

Can you share a bit about your professional journey?

So at university, I studied languages, I then went on and did marketing research and private sector work for several years after university then I went back and retrained as a teacher. So for all of my 20s, I really was on a very different career path and I say to all of my colleagues in Save the Children, if you are 30 years old and you're already in an officer level or coordinator level position within Save the Children, then you're doing better than me because it took me a long time to find the route that I wanted to take and actually then, when I was 28, I went to Eritrea in Northeast Africa as a volunteer teacher and trainer and that was the career-changing time for me because I suddenly was living and working in a small village in Eritrea teaching wonderful students who were living in very difficult circumstances, who were walking sort of eight or 10 kilometers to school every day, seeing how passionate they were about education and how important it was to them to complete their education to try to transform the lives they were living that was the career changing moment for me and immediately after Eritrea I did my masters in development and project planning and then came back overseas.  I've been overseas more or less ever since and joined Save the Children like I said about 23 years ago now.

What do you like most about working in Nigeria?

I've spent a lot of time in East and Southern Africa and my last five years I was in Asia, but this is my first job in and my first opportunity to be in West Africa, so yeah Nigeria is new and it's exciting to be in a new country right, to learn about the culture and the people and the program that we have here. So for me, moving to a new place is always something that I've enjoyed, my wife always comes with me to new positions as well. Our son is now grown up but I think both of us, we love to throw ourselves into the culture of a new place, to try out the food, to travel around the country as much as possible and to get to know people. So that's a really important part of the role for me.

You mentioned food, what is your favourite Nigerian food at the moment? 

I like Jolloff rice and BBQ Suya. But there are, I mean there are lots of restaurants around Abuja as well. 

Has anything changed since moving to Nigeria? What’s a typical day like for you now?

 I think as you go from country to country you have to adapt to the local situation, so I've been trying to find things to do, social things in Abuja, I've joined some walking clubs. There is a gym that I've just joined last week, there’s different social groupings of country directors and embassy people just to link up to. That's not always the case, sometimes you live in a big city and you don't have the chance to have those groups to link into, but I'm pleased to say I’m keeping busy and keeping active socially. I think the big change for me, I mean coming into Nigeria, it's taken a bit of time for me to get my visa status sorted out so that I can actually freely travel around the country. So I'm really enjoying now traveling to the 12 different office locations that we have around the country and in the last few weeks I've visited Katsina and Adamawa. Kaduna and before that Lagos and Maiduguri just all in the last month. So it's been a busy schedule, but for me that's again really a great opportunity to meet our staff, to meet our partners, to see Save the Children's programming in the field and to really learn for myself about our programming for children across the country. 

What excites you about being the Country Director at Save the Children Nigeria?

I think what excites me and what motivates me it's the same now as it's always been in every country that I've worked in here and just seeing the commitment that the education of our own staff as Save the Children's staff and the fantastic impact that we're having on children's lives. It was really humbling a few weeks ago to go to Maiduguri very soon after the flash floods to see our staff already on the ground working till late at night to distribute food, to distribute water, and being committed to working all through the weekend and every day to help people in need and to do everything that we could to protect children. That to me is the biggest motivation and the biggest inspiration, is just seeing such dedication from our own teams and the impact that that has on children. So that, yeah, really motivates me to do what I can do to raise more funds for the programs, to speak to donors, to speak to our members and make sure that we are also trying to make life as simple as possible and not letting bureaucratic measures get in the way of the important life-saving work that they're doing. 

What was your childhood experience like, any childhood ambitions and are you pursuing them now?

 I had a great childhood, I was fortunate to grow up in the southeast of England with my brother, my sister,  my parents. I think the thing that I was lacking was a real direction, like I said, it took me a long time to really work out the career direction I wanted to go into. So at one time I was thinking about journalism, at one time I was thinking about marketing research, I tried a number of different things before going back to teaching and teacher training. I think if I had been a better teacher, I would never have got into NGO work. But actually I did enough of teaching to have enormous respect for teachers and the work that they do, but eventually, I'm pleased to say I sort of found my niche. But it took me a long while. 

What’s one surprising/interesting fact about you?

I like to do adventurous things. I've done parachute jumping, I've done paragliding, I've done micro lighting and a number of different things. I do like that adrenaline rush of trying different sports in different locations, so I lived in Tanzania for several years and did a lot of scuba diving while I was there and so yeah adventure sports I guess is something I really like to do.

What is recreation for you? What are your hobbies outside of work?

Recreation, I think it changes from country to country that I live and work in and I guess I'm getting older now as well so I don't play. I used to play a lot of rugby and football and now that I'm a bit older, I'm trying to take sports that are less, contact, less physical so I do like say hiking and walking now, used to do a lot of cycling as well, but not so much anymore travel is what I really like to do, and just getting out and seeing different cultures and seeing different communities. I hope now that I'm in West Africa to be able to see more of Nigeria through the work that we're doing, but also visit some of the neighboring countries here.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?

Well, just to really thank everyone for the work that they do in the Nigeria country office. When I had the opportunity to come to Nigeria, I was extremely excited because I knew this is a large and complex country and Save the Children is doing enormously important work here, whether it's on the humanitarian side or the development side, we're doing some fantastic work with children on child Led advocacy, which I think is a model to the rest of the organization. Again, these are all aspects of the work that really inspire me and it’s Save the Children staff everywhere who really motivate me to do my job well. 

Thanks for the chance to discuss with you today.