How do you see yourself in ten years’ time?

Ten years from now I would like to be a qualified nurse. I have another four years of study at secondary school and then I would like to take an honours degree in nursing at university. That should take me four years to complete.

Then I would like to do some post-graduate practical training in a hospital, preferably specializing in a particular branch of nursing. As a matter of preference, I would like to specialize in pediatric nursing. By then I should be at the end of the ten-year period.

Having finished training as a nurse, I would then like to obtain a job working overseas as some kind of aid worker. I have not investigated the details of that yet, as such work for me is a long time in the future. There are quite a few organizations, such as the Red Cross, which provide aid to helpless people in disaster areas, war-torn areas and areas where extreme poverty is endemic.

My preference would be to work for an organization the main aim of which is to improve the lives of children. Possible organizations I can think of include Save the Children and UNICEF, both of which specialize in helping children. I am sure there are more.

Like so many other people, I have been appalled by the reports and photographs about the plight of children after disasters such as the Haitian earthquake of January 2010. It is estimated that tens of thousands of children lost their parents then. While their exact number may never be known, many of these orphans were forced to forage for food in the streets of what was already a poor country. The work of aid agencies is absolutely vital in such a situation to prevent more children from dying or leading impoverished, miserable lives.

However, that is not the only kind of fate children in such a situation need to be protected from. They also need to be shielded from the efforts of some of the people who try to help them. In many countries of the world there are couples who are desperate to have children, but who are unable, for one reason or another, to give birth to them. After disasters such as the earthquake in Haiti, many adoption agencies tried to collect children and send them overseas to be adopted. The children were then separated from any remaining members of their family and from their culture and way of life. Aid agencies can make efforts to stop this happening ever again.

Yet it is not only in times of natural disaster or war that children need help. In parts of Africa a great many babies die at birth. Many of those children who do not die at birth live only a few months or years. They may be born with AIDS, or they may get a disease that would be treatable elsewhere or avoidable by being given a vaccine. Tragically, many of those who do live may still die of malnutrition. Again, aid agencies can help to prevent this. They can more easily obtain funds and recruit aid workers to provide a better future for these children, although this is an ambitious but extremely difficult programme to undertake.

My response to the plight of such children is not just a sentimental one. I genuinely would like to help them. Of course, we can all make donations of money to support the work of the agencies, according to our means, but I feel the need to offer practical assistance.

I am thinking of taking a gap year between school and university to do some voluntary work overseas with an aid agency, if that is possible. I would then have more of an idea of the kind of work I want to be doing in ten years’ time.