2connect-IT helps to enhance aid workers’ safety

Field workers employed by development aid organization Cordaid are mainly active in danger zones where communications infrastructures often fail. For their security they largely depend on satellite communications. As Meindert van der Werf, Cordaid’s Financial Officer Emergency Aid and Reconstruction puts it: “Without satellite communication we would not be able to do what we aim to do.”

Cordaid is mainly active in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. The development aid organization has branch offices in, among others, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Congo, Haiti and Sudan. In countries where Cordaid does not have its own office, the organisation cooperates closely with local partners.
“Our local presence is largely confined to areas that can at times be very unsafe”, Cordaid’s Meindert van der Werf sums up. “At the same time the communications infrastructures at those locations are often very rickety or managed by local governments that are not averse to pulling out a cable or plug from time to time. Satellite communications allows us to be largely independent from those local networks.”
“Although the actual number of systems we use is relatively limited, satellite communication has become indispensable for Cordaid”, Van der Werf continues. “To us the welfare and security of our workers are a prime concern. Satellite communications helps us to enhance that.”

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