In the early 1980s, the office of the United Nations Children's Fund in Nairobi fell into the hands of radical feminists. This, at least, was the view of one long-time employee who later wrote in his memoirs: "I remember one young woman in particular who seemed to think all Kenyan women should become welders!"

He meant me. In my mid-twenties I worked as Unicef information officer for eastern and southern Africa, based in Nairobi. I have no recollection of trying to foist manual trades on the female populace, although it might have been more useful than what I did, which was to admire people's toilets. These were no ordinary conveniences, but Ventilated Improved Pit latrines (yes, VIP latrines), designed to avoid unpleasant odours and deter flies. They were admirable, but finding the right words for a promotional article was a challenge. (I later discovered that VIP latrines were based on a design by a Mr Blair in Zimbabwe, and were known popularly as "Blair toilets" - the cause of many jokes about our Prime Minister which are funny only if you live in southern Africa.)

Persuading women to weld was not, alas, in my brief. I had previously worked for Oxfam in central America, which had funded many radical and exciting projects, but Unicef's work consisted primarily of helping African governments improve healthcare for women and children. It was worthy and dull and the success rate was low, not least because Aids was taking root even as we battled malaria, TB and malnutrition. Policy documents, ten-year plans, annual reports - all passed across my desk. Health centres ran out of drugs, children died of preventable diseases such as measles and Unicef staff spent most of their time in meetings or "workshops" with staff from other Unicef offices. The main topic of conversation during breaks was "being rotated", the system of perpetual motion whereby staff were transferred from one country office to another.

I recall that some Swedes working for Unicef in Tanzania adopted a new, "grass-roots" approach. It required research - white Swedes in white Toyotas interrogating villagers - as they developed what they called "the conceptual framework": hundreds of pages of verbiage that probably ended up as someone's PhD thesis at Uppsala University. A diagram of concentric rectangles and arrows showed how world events were influencing national events, and so on, until we reached the village. The theory boiled down to a slogan above an office worker's desk: "Lord, grant me the courage to change what I can, accept what I cannot, and the wisdom to tell the difference."

The result of it all, predictably, was a plethora of small projects (sorry, "micro-projects") involving rabbit-keeping, chicken-rearing, clinics and - once again - VIP latrines.

So proud were the creators of this concept that they hauled a party of international development experts around Tanzania to admire the projects. At each village, the visitors would introduce themselves, a tall Sri Lankan man shouting: "My name is Kumar!" At this, the villagers would giggle uncontrollably, because in Kiswahili "kuma" means female genitalia. A Swede eventually took Mr Kumar to one side.

My three years at Unicef taught me a lot, most importantly that I was unsuited for a career in the UN. If I did anything useful it was by ignoring the system. In 1985 I found that the only way to find out about child soldiers in Uganda was to escape Unicef - the agency paged me at Nairobi airport to get me back: "If Lindsey Hilsum is here, will she please return to the Unicef office immediately!"

I still have friends who work at Unicef, struggling with the bureaucracy of both governments and the UN in a genuine attempt to help children. One had the job of trying to get the Romanian government to streamline policies towards orphans in the chaos after Ceausescu fell; another worked to keep Haitian children alive through anarchy and sanctions. Many people I know who worked for non-governmental organisations in the 1980s have ended up in UN agencies, because they find NGO work piecemeal and hope the UN can provide coherence. Long-term UN workers pine for NGO work (but not NGO salaries), because they know the bureaucracy cuts them off from the people they want to help.

I became disillusioned, feeling I had little impact. But you never know the effect you're having. A few years ago, I bumped into that memoir-writer in Nairobi. I asked how the female welders were doing. He looked at me thoughtfully. "You know, I did actually come across a women's welding project the other day," he said. "It was rather good."

Lindsey Hilsum is International editor for Channel 4 News

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