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Sarah Justine Packwood was a British humanitarian aid worker and our friend. She died at sea in June 2024. We, her friends and former coworkers in the humanitarian world, grieve for her loss. This is our reflection on her and her work and how important it was to her identity and an invitation to join us at her memorial on 1 December 2024.
There have been stories written about Sarah that focused on her sense of adventure, her passion for the environment, and her love story with her husband, Brett. Many now know about her around the world because the story of lovers who disappeared at sea only to have their bodies found weeks later, captured many people’s imagination. Sarah’s career as an aid worker is briefly mentioned in these stories but a better understanding of it helps shed more light about this warm, wonderful woman. Sarah was truly a humanitarian at heart and a pragmatic optimist. Sarah had great passion for life and connecting deeply with people. As one of her friends said on LinkedIn, Sarah cared about “the experience of life rather than the superficial needs for position or asset acquisition.”
Like many of us multitaskers, as Sarah set off to cross the Atlantic, she was also working as a freelance consultant, typing up reports for the United Nations and doing her part for humanitarian work and then tragedy struck. We don’t know what happened to her boat, but Sarah did not survive.
As an aid worker, Sarah specialized in protection - ensuring that persons with disabilities, older people, children and women who were vulnerable to violence received proper support and care and were shielded from further harm. Her warm and caring heart informed all the work she did. How did Sarah decide to become an aid worker? In her own words, “I took a gap year to learn how to apply myself. I did voluntary conservation work, a spell in retail, a stint at a youth hostel and volunteered. Throughout I learned the importance of serving others and working hard whatever the task.” She went on to get her masters degree in Rural Resource Management and conducted her thesis research in Kenya where she was confronted by the poverty of rural farming families there. “I was confronted by the challenges they faced every day just to survive, I experienced an epiphany. Africa captured my heart and I knew I had to return one day.”
And so she did, returning to Tanzania to work with Rwandan refugees living there in 1994 and then again and again in South Sudan, Namibia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as to emergencies around the world in Kosovo, Haiti, Myanmar, and other places. In the early millennium, Sarah returned to the UK and did a stint of humanitarian work where she infused her international experiences with the spirituality that was such an important part of her identity, and grounding herself in UK for a season. During this time, she worked for both the Shaftesbury Society and HelpAge. While at the Shaftesbury Society, she was an important part of a steering group with other faith-based NGOs and individuals that shaped a UK-wide Christian faith focused Refugee and Asylum Seeker welcome network. Her involvement saw activists from communities across the UK effectively welcoming asylum seekers and refugees into their communities. In many ways, this early work created the foundations for small refugee charities being established that we now see across the UK.
Sarah also worked with HelpAge International where she was a pivotal member of the disaster management unit, leading responses to support older people to live dignified lives after a disaster. Her work there responding to natural disasters like floods, cyclones, droughts and earthquakes lead to her lifelong desire to address climate change and live sustainably. Sarah spent time with the United Nations in Namibia and Papua New Guinea as a ProCap protection specialist incorporating persons with disabilities, older people, children, and women and girls in disaster preparedness initiatives. She returned to the UK to care for her mother in her final days, working with the British government at the Department for International Development again focusing on typhoon responses and supporting UN agencies alongside researching clean cookstoves for emergency relief distributions. It was that stint in London that found her walking home from work in the rain and encountering her future husband on the way to the bus! Her last consultancies conducted remotely as she and her husband Brett developed a sustainable home in Canada and sailed on their beloved ship, Theros, were in preparing communities for disasters and emergencies through work with UN agencies like OHCHR and UNHCR, The World Bank, ChildFund Australia and others.
Like many of us post-covid and in this time of localization, she was playing a role in humanitarian and development assistance by sharing her knowledge and skills and providing technical assistance from afar while stepping back from a frontline role. Ultimately, Sarah always worked best within a team, always in solidarity with seeking ways to limit the suffering amongst our fellow humans that have endured so much. Colleagues at HelpAge said Sarah was a joyful colleague to have, providing mentoring to younger colleagues from the UK and across the world. Her wise and measured advice has gone on to shape how many people work – and thus furthering her impact across the globe.
Sarah was prolifically creative and always writing, making art and music and applying her heart to problems that she saw in the world. She interviewed many of us for a book she had hoped to produce called the Intuitive Humanitarian. It was based on her thoughts, reflections, observations and experiences in the humanitarian sector over the last 20 years. It was about using a particular lens to look at the broken humanitarian system and re-imagine it, signposting other aid workers and social activists towards modelling something different to cause a shift to happen. We often had conversations about the importance of treating each other in an empathetic, peaceful, and loving way, particularly in our humanitarian community which can sometimes be a traumatized and angry place. Her kindness and compassion were always present in her work, in her art, in her life. She had a ready laugh and smile and a keen intelligence. She was always on the side of the vulnerable and thinking of others.
Our humanitarian world lost a kind and decent woman in that shipwreck and the world became a little less bright. But in her memory, we continue to try to provide comfort to the suffering in disasters and wars. We bear witness to their suffering and we aim to do our small part to help those less fortunate than ourselves.
If you knew her or would like to join us in her memorial which is taking place 1 December 2024 in Long Itchington UK, you can find out more information on the service and other events at https://sarah-j-packwood.muchloved.com/
All are welcome, just as Sarah would have liked it.
