The Staff Member I Want : Sam Spurgeon Keeny 1951 / Tom McDermott

The Staff Member I Want - ‘Sam’ Spurgeon Keeny 

Apropos of our recent discussion on UNICEF’s lack of of staff skills in anthropology and cultural sensitivity, one wonders what we lost along the way. Especially so when reading what EAPRO Regional Director ‘Sam’ Keeny in 1951 sent to Hq at a time when the office was desperately in need of field officers.

“ Out of our experience to date in WHO / UNICEF projects, plus observations of the work of other agencies with similar problems, we tentatively offer the following tests of a good man (or woman) for the job out here:

He is free from color prejudice - not only in words, but in the way he lives...Putting this principle into practice means getting to know people in their homes, as well as in business and associating with them socially as well as officially.

He knows that one of the most important know-hows is how to get along with people of different background from his own.

He acts on the basis that whatever the custom is, it is the custom, and that local people do not like to have it laughed at.

He learns to enjoy food like the kind somebody else’s mother makes. It is monotonous and costly to live on imported tinned foods.

He recognizes that we work mostly in countries that are independent - sometimes fiercely so - and that we are their guests.

He accepts the fact that out here hot water is for making tea, not for bathing. He learns that one can wash under a shower, or with a dipper, as well as in an enamel tub.

He considers it bad form to discuss his financial difficulties with people who are earning perhaps a quarter as much as he is.

He represents not only the agency that employs him, but the United Nations as a whole. He knows that he has the privacy of a goldfish in a bowl, and acts accordingly.”