Thousands of executives seek to give meaning to their career by dreaming of going abroad. They are unaware that an entire sector supports vulnerable populations here.
Give meaning to career without going to the ends of the earth: local humanitarian work is recruiting, and no one talks about it.
Introduction
Every year, I receive messages from executives who are looking to restore meaning to their professional journey. The question comes up, almost always formulated in the same way: how to combine solid skills with real commitment? The collective response seems obvious: leave. Join an NGO abroad, work on the ground in a crisis zone, get away from anything that still resembles a meeting room.
This reflex is understandable. It is also, in many cases, a blind spot.
There is an entire sector – structured, professionalized, in permanent tension of recruitment – which supports populations in situations of serious vulnerability every day on French territory. I call this sector “proximity humanitarianism”. It remains almost invisible in discussions on reconversion professional, and it is precisely this silence that deserves to be examined.
I. A sector that we do not see because we do not try to see it
When we talk about humanitarian work, three images emerge: Gaza, Sudan, refugee camps in Sub-Saharan Africa. These realities exist. They are important. But they capture all the attention, to the detriment of a more discreet and equally demanding reality.
In France, the field of social, humanitarian and charitable action has 21,000 employer associations, for a budget of 25 billion euros. Add theaccommodation social and medico-social: together, these two areas represent more than 811,000 full-time equivalent jobs. It’s not a niche. It is one of the largest employer segments in the country.
The populations supported are diverse. First there are those who have migrated from countries at war or in crisis. They arrive with traumas accumulated on the road, without reference points, without networks, sometimes without language. But there are also people who have not migrated, and who find themselves in a situation of profound social exclusion right here, a few streets from a mall. Two different realities; the same need for structured, professional, human support.
The Federation of Solidarity Actors alone brings together 900 associations and 2,800 structures, welcoming 900,000 people in difficulty each year. Coallia, with its 5,000 employees and 100,000 people supported daily, is an employer in its own right, with HR policies, career paths, management positions. France Terre d’Asile supported more than 97,000 people exiled in 2023, with 1,300 employees and a training center which trains 3,500 professionals in the social sector per year.
This sector is recruiting. He communicates little about his needs outside his own networks. And those who could contribute to it often don’t know it.
II. Your skills belong here
What slows down many executives in their thinking about retraining in this sector is a stubborn belief: they would have to start all over again. Reform completely. Become a social worker or clinical psychologist so that one day you can contribute.
This is not what the sector is asking for.
Two families of profiles coexist in these organizations. The first brings together transversal skills found in any company: finance, human resources, information systems, communication, logisticsaccounting. These professions are carried out in a particular environment, with specific constraints, but the basic skills remain the same. An HR manager in a refugee reception structure does management, contractual management and social policy. The difference is what his work makes possible for the people he supports.
The second family brings together professions directly linked to the vulnerabilities of the public: mental health support, support towards housing, development of income-generating micro-projects, intercultural mediation. These positions require specific skills and, often, appropriate training.
Associations like Kodiko or Singa have built their model on this bridge between the two worlds: company employees who support refugees in their professional integration, in a structured framework, for a few hours per month. A way to test commitment before fully entering into it. The government program AGIR, present in each department since 2022, also relies on local associations to support beneficiaries of international protection towards employment and housing. In 2025, 23,100 people will have completed such a course, with a positive exit rate towards employment of 42%.
This industry needs skills that you may already have. The question is whether you are ready to exercise them in a radically different environment.
III. The hidden requirements of this sector
Working in local humanitarian work means accepting a double understanding: that of the social system and legal French – its systems, its actors, its blind spots – and that of the vulnerabilities specific to supported populations.
It’s not just applying your skills in a new context. It’s learning to read the same situation through two grids simultaneously.
The first difficulty that I observe among professionals who join this sector is cognitive. We arrive with a reassuring representation: in France, the rule of law protects, the social system covers, fundamental rights are guaranteed. We find ourselves faced with a more complex reality: theoretical rights that are difficult to access, deadlines that weaken, situations that professionals in the sector sometimes call, among themselves, “institutional violence”. This gap between the ideal and the real can be destabilizing. It also constitutes, if we accept it, a deep understanding of the real functioning of a society.
The second reality concerns what we call secondary trauma. By hearing the stories of people who have fled wars, crossed borders in extreme conditions, suffered violence that is difficult to imagine, the speaker can himself be affected. It’s not a weakness. It is a documented professional risk, still insufficiently taken into account in organizations. And it doesn’t disappear because we work twenty minutes from home.
It’s not because we don’t go far that we don’t have to know our limits.
Conclusion
Local humanitarian work is not a sub-sector of engagement. It’s also not an easy route for those hesitant to cross a border. It is a demanding professional field, which combines issues of technical skills, knowledge of local systems and personal strength.
For executives looking to give a different meaning to their career, without necessarily leaving everything behind, it offers something rare: the possibility of remaining themselves, professionally, while changing what their work produces in the world.
So the question is not: “am I ready to go?”
She is: “am I ready to look differently at what is happening here?”
