Lucy Butler, emergency finance and HR co-ordinator for Médecins sans frontières, returned home for her first Christmas in New Zealand in four years. Photo / Warren Buckland
Lucy Butler, emergency finance and HR co-ordinator for Médecins sans frontières, returned home for her first Christmas in New Zealand in four years. Photo / Warren Buckland
A Hawke’s Bay woman returned home to enjoy her summer and Christmas in New Zealand for the first time in four years after helping humanitarian causes across the world.
Lucy Butler works as a human resource and finance co-ordinator with the emergency team for Médecins sans frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF)in countries like Ukraine, north-west Nigeria and, most recently, Uganda, tackling health issues like malnutrition, ebola and cholera.
MSF is an international, independent humanitarian organisation that delivers emergency medical aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, exclusion from healthcare and natural disasters.
Butler is one of 120 Australians and New Zealanders that go on assignment with MSF annually to work as doctors, midwives, psychologists, laboratory technicians, human resource/finance co-ordinators, pharmacists, mental health specialists and logisticians.
“In a mission we have projects, and then we have a co-ordinator who oversees all of the projects at a country level, so I am responsible for the finance and HR; the technical side like the procedures, processes and adherence for all of the projects in the country that we are working in,” Butler said.
She has visited home during autumn and winter occasionally, but she has had to miss Christmas in New Zealand for the last four years. Fortunately, she was finally able to come back for it at the end of 2022.
Butler has worked in Uganda as part of the Ebola response, in North-west Nigeria as part of the malnutrition response, and in Ukraine and will soon be travelling to Malawi to help with a large cholera response. Photo / Warren Buckland
“My first two missions were stable missions, so I was in Kenya and then in Pakistan, but then, obviously, Covid hit, so I was in Pakistan for Covid, and then last year I was supposed to come home, but obviously with Covid, it was virtually impossible,” she said.
“It has been wonderful to be able to catch up with friends and family and spend Christmas together.”
She said she had spent her summer holidays in Christchurch, Taranaki and Hawke’s Bay.
“I did a lot of reading, a lot of sleeping and [spent a lot of time] with Mum’s dog, Mum and Dad.”
She said decided to work for MSF while in working health with the former DHB and after spending time in Africa and enjoying herself there about 10 years ago.
“I have a passion for health and supporting organisations to improve health outcomes for patients,” she said.
“I started looking into organisations that could combine the two, and I came across MSF, did some research, and I think it was their values that stood out to me.”
She began in 2020 as a finance and HR co-ordinator before joining the emergency team.
She said one of the highlights of her experience working for MSF has been helping them tackle the malnutrition crisis in Nigeria.
“To be there and be supporting something that is saving hundreds and thousands of lives, it was really, really cool.”
She said the hardest part was often leaving countries after the people became friends and were interacting like a family, and not being sure when you might return.
“I remember messaging some friends when I first started and saying, ‘This is going to be hard because you always arrive, then you have to settle in, and then you have to leave a country or culture or people that have really just become friends and family’.”
Butler will be travelling to Malawi on Thursday to help with a large-scale cholera response for her next mission with MSF.
MSF has 65,000 staff members of 169 nationalities working in more than 70 countries.
