The Effect of Meaning-Making on Resilience Among Aid Workers: A Phenomenological Analysis

Resilience is important to work performance and personal contentment, yet internalizing resilience strategies may be difficult for aid workers directly serving beneficiaries in complex geopolitical settings. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to address the gap in literature about the resilience of aid workers by exploring the lived experiences of worldwide aid workers and their resilience strategies. Park's meaning-making schemata served as the theoretical underpinning for studying the role of meaning-making in the resilience of aid workers. A sample of 10 aid personnel with a minimum of 4 years of work in remote or dangerous duty stations related their perceptions on the meaning of their professional efforts, the link between that meaning and their resilience in terms of personal and professional satisfaction, and their relationship with their respective organizations. Data were collected of the individualized textural descriptions, were subsequently member checked, and then arranged by clustering and thematizing the core themes of the collective experience. Results of the investigation confirmed the complexity of the resilience construct and suggested the importance of helping others, having direct contact with beneficiaries, and maintaining social sustenance as motivating principles. Social change was supported by illuminating how resilience might be sustained within this occupational cohort. Discernment of how aid workers maintain resilience may help reinforce organizational policies that support personal and professional satisfaction, consequently allowing for an increase in the performance of aid workers. Aid workers whose performance is sustained may, in turn, help relieve the human suffering of those in need of aid.