Our employee Erich Rudin can celebrate a special anniversary this year: he has been working for terre des hommes switzerland for 35 years. At the age of 28, he took up his position in 1988 and has been committed to the organization and its goals ever since. Today, around 30 people work for terre des hommes schweiz in Basel - at that time, Erich Rudin joined a small team of 13 people, all of whom were employed on a part-time basis.
After completing a banking apprenticeship, a trip through South America and a detour into the care sector, he began working in personnel administration at terre des hommes schweiz, but over the years he moved through various areas of the organization. He was responsible for the further development of the infrastructure, for IT, financial planning, sponsorship and donation administration, which is still his area of responsibility today. He is also responsible for the maintenance of donor data. He fondly remembers the two trips he made in the course of his work to a Sahrawi refugee camp in Algeria and to Vietnam.
At the beginning of his work, the technical working conditions were completely different from today: back then, there was only one Mac in the typing room, and all other information was recorded on index cards. "Back then, we worked a lot with volunteers who helped us with the administration of donations and the mailing of letters, the magazine, sponsorship and annual reports," he recalls. "On 80,000 index cards, the details of the donors* were noted down." Of course, administration has become much easier today due to the availability of IT, but on the other hand, the work steps were more directly visible and therefore more noticeable back then when everyone prepared a mailing together: "We used to print and mail all the reports ourselves, which was always very time-consuming," he recalls. "The magazine was addressed by hand, everything was prepared in-house for dispatch. During a week, dozens of volunteers were on duty back then."
Cooperation with the project partners in the twelve project countries at the time was also very different, as it was not possible to exchange information via e-mail or Internet platforms. Communication took place by telephone or airmail and was much slower for that reason alone. In some cases, people waited up to two weeks for a letter to arrive. At the end of the 1980s, two project officers in Basel were responsible for the twelve countries; there was only one coordination office in Nicaragua. Over the course of 35 years, the structure of terre des hommes switzerland has constantly evolved. In the beginning, there was no management, only a board and the team. Today, in addition to the members of the executive board, there are also divisional managers, several program coordinators, specialist units, theme managers and specialized communication and fundraising colleagues. "There has been a tremendous specialization," says Erich Rudin. "Our topics are more diverse and our work has become more difficult due to the often not easy political context in the project countries themselves as well as the emphasis on the urgency of international cooperation in Switzerland. But even if the environment has changed a lot, our philosophy has always remained the same."
Erich Rudin has spent more than half of his life with terres des hommes switzerland. During this time, he has often come into contact with donors, either on the phone or by e-mail. Although he is not a great fan of change, as he admits in conversation, he has always supported the considerable development of terre des hommes schweiz. After the organization was based in Basel's Gundeli district on Laufenstrasse for around 20 years, Erich Rudin now also works in the new, modern surroundings at kHaus am Rhein, where he feels very much at home. The 63-year-old says: "I am looking forward to more years with my colleagues and am very positive about the future of terre des hommes schweiz." terre des hommes schweiz thanks him for his great commitment to our organization over the past 35 years.
