You and Yours kick-started my career
"It was in the mid-1970s and I was at home with my two young sons contemplating a return to work, listening to You and Yours, as usual. An item about careers mentioned the Institute of Accounting Staff (now the .
It was a stepping-stone to a career in accountancy. I followed it up and enrolled. I took a correspondence course and was delighted to pass the exams first time with credit and started work as a trainee clerk with a local chartered accountant.
In 1980 we heard of an international school in Pakistan that needed a bookkeeper and a music teacher. As my husband was a music teacher, and it was a school that our sons could attend, we applied, were accepted, and spent three years working up in the Himalayan foothills.
Just as we were leaving the Himalayas, we were invited by the Bishop of Hyderbad to go to Sukkur in Sindh to nurture a newly founded hostel for disadvantaged boys.
In addition to the work at the hostel, I was asked by various institutions to visit and advise or audit their financial systems. As a result, I travelled throughout Pakistan, meeting some wonderful people along the way.
In 1989 we returned to the UK. I worked for Oxfam and added to my qualifications with a BSc from the and an MSc in Audit and Management Consultancy from what is now Birmingham City University. Working for Oxfam, I spent six months in Kabul, Afghanistan, at the time of the civil war when Kabul was being heavily bombarded, and a more relaxed six months in Mozambique. I also visited the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, and worked throughout the UK and Eire.
I am now retired having had a most enjoyable career, and with the help of a professional writer I am now writing a book about my adventures "Salaam Mrs Ellen". Thank you, You and Yours!
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