• Laura Ballester, Political and Administrations Sciences alumna, member of the Public Information Unit at the United Nations World Food Programme, that gained the Nobel Peace Prize  2020 (Lilongwe, Malawi)

By the time Laura Ballester Nieto earned her degree in Political and Administration Sciences (2012), she knew where she wanted to take her life and career. She supplemented her training with the Master of Science in Public Policy and Human Development (Risk and Vulnerability specialization) offered jointly by United Nations University and Maastricht University, and it opened the doors for her to embark on a career that would take her around the world.

‘I landed in Malawi (Africa) for the first time in April 2019, coming from East Timor, in South-East Asia, where I had been living and working. I did it to temporarily help my agency, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), respond to the humanitarian emergency due to the floods caused by Cyclone Idai in the south of the country. I was supposed to stay for five weeks and I ended up staying for three months. I returned to Timor to finish my contract and, in September, I moved back to Malawi, and I’m still here!’

Laura works in the Public Information Unit of the United Nations office in Lilongwe, the country’s capital. Her main task is to negotiate with the different donors and mobilize resources to implement the various ongoing programmes and deliver aid to people in need. ‘There are many people who still go hungry, unfortunately. The World Food Programme (WFP) provides support to the Malawi government to improve the situation for many poor people’, she explains.

This work is not limited to humanitarian emergencies and aid for the more than 40,000 refugees Malawi is currently hosting, but also includes providing free meals to school-age children, helping communities regularly affected by natural disasters and supporting small farmers to boost productivity, amongst other things. 

“Because of the pandemic, regular projects have had to be adjusted to the new conditions”

According to Laura, currently, because of the pandemic, the regular projects have had to be adjusted to accommodate government restrictions and existing conditions, so as not to put the beneficiaries or the organization’s staff at risk. Because of Covid-19, emergency programmes have also been launched to provide logistical support to the government, NGOs and international cooperation agencies.

At present, one of Laura’s main challenges is to learn to speak a little Chichewa, one of the official languages of Malawi, something she considers important to do when living in a foreign country. She travels to Barcelona a couple of times a year to see her family and friends, but she does not currently plan to return. ‘The truth is that I have the job I always dreamt of and it is allowing me to discover the world’, she says.

Photo gallery

Laura Ballester in her graduation; with farmers from Malawi; with colleagues from the East Timor office celebrating sixteen days of activism against gender violence (2017); with colleagues in Malawi, in a trip to the south of the country during the floods caused by cyclone Idai (April 2019), and with a colleague and Jose Ramos Horta, former President of East Timor and 1996 Nobel Peace Prize winner, for its work towards a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor (January 2019)