Our employee Erich Rudin can celebrate a special anniversary this year: he has been working at terre des hommes schweiz for 35 years. He took up his position in 1988 at the age of 28 and has been committed to the organization and its goals ever since. Today, around 30 people work at terre des hommes schweiz in Basel – back then, Erich Rudin joined a small team of 13 people, all of whom were employed part-time.
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 has worked in various areas of the organization. He was responsible for the further development of the infrastructure, IT, financial planning, sponsorship and donation administration, which is still his area of responsibility today. He is also responsible for maintaining donor data. He fondly remembers the two trips he made to a Saharawis refugee camp in Algeria and to Vietnam during the course of his work.
At the beginning of his career, the technical working conditions were completely different to today: back then, there was only one Mac in the typing pool 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 sending out letters, the magazine, sponsorship and annual reports,” he recalls. “The donors’ details were noted on 80,000 index cards.” Of course, administration has become much easier today thanks to the availability of IT, but back then the work steps were more directly visible and therefore more noticeable when everyone prepared a mailing together: “We used to print and send out all the reports ourselves, which was very time-consuming,” he recalls. “The magazine was addressed by hand and everything was prepared in-house for dispatch. Back then, dozens of volunteers were on duty for a week.”
Collaboration 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 email or internet platforms. Communication took place by telephone or airmail and was much slower for this reason alone. It sometimes took up to two weeks for a letter to arrive. At the end of the 1980s, two project managers 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 schweiz has constantly evolved. At the beginning, there was no management, just a board and the team. Today, in addition to the members of the Executive Board, there are also divisional managers, several programme coordinators, specialist units, topic managers and specialized communication and fundraising colleagues. “There has been enormous specialization,” says Erich Rudin. “Our topics are more diverse and our work has become more difficult due to the often difficult political context in the project countries themselves and the emphasis on the urgency of international cooperation in Switzerland. But even though the environment has changed considerably, our philosophy has always remained the same.”
Erich Rudin has spent more than half of his life with terre des hommes schweiz. During this time, he has often come into contact with donors, either on the phone or by email. Although he is not really a big fan of change, as he admits in conversation, he has always supported and contributed to the considerable development of terre des hommes schweiz. After the organization was based in Basel’s Gundeli on Laufenstrasse for around 20 years, Erich Rudin now also works in the new, modern environment at kHaus am Rhein, where he feels very much at home. The 63-year-old says: “I am looking forward to many 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.
