I have been shocked and extremely sad to see this great organization completely collapse in just one year. Politics at the top, CARE USA’s greed, and one terrible hire forced out more than half of the best minds and most talented people at CARE USA and CARE International. Firstly, in a global climate of localization (moving decision making to the countries), CARE took over control of humanitarian operations globally and let go of dozens of brilliant minds who had dedicated years of service to CARE. The terrible new senior hire fired or pushed to quit 75% of her entire team, and alienated all the other senior leaders across CAREs in other countries. She lies incessantly and makes promises to staff that she cannot possibly keep. She makes racist comments about white people and even hisses at her staff when she wants their attention. Because of her, pregnant women, staff who will be deported back to war zones because their visa depended on employment at CARE were unceremoniously cast out. The rest quit because she tried to load up their job descriptions with the work of all the others she’d laid off. Things became so toxic with her, even for me and I barely had to work with her, that CARE International launched a formal investigation of her. Now the organization can’t fulfill its commitments to donors because there are so few people left, but CARE USA is taking zero steps to replace this woman.
I had really believed HR was on the side of staff because our team’s HR rep is great, but that team’s HR rep was downright cruel and incompetent. While all this was going on, she was totally unreachable for weeks, and no one was assigned to cover for her while she was out of office.
Lastly CARE is known for paying the lowest salaries amongst our competitors. That’s why the quality of the work is so poor and the turnover is so high.
I’m ready to move on even though I’ve been here forever!
