Let me preface all of this by saying that there are some genuinely wonderful people who work for FFP. Some of these folks are just there to pray for people and serve the "least of these."
However, those people do not work in the "creative" department. This is the department I worked for, and it was full (not entirely–you know who you are) of callous, backstabbing, cutthroat marketers, who will justify anything to keep the donations flowing.
By the grace of God, I survived my year there, but I wouldn't wish it on anyone else.
It's the most toxic environment I've ever worked in. It was a waking nightmare I lived every day from August 2015 to July 2016.
For starters, the Photographer job is NOT a photojournalism job. The senior photographer at the time did their best to reassure me this was an ethical job where I'd use my photojournalism skills to help the poor. I was lead to believe throughout the entire interview process that the job would be essentially this- telling the story of the poor in an ethical and unbiased way, and then connecting those stories with donors who could help them.
At best, it is a commercial photography/marketing job. At worst, it's child exploitation masquerading as authentic storytelling. Essentially, you and the creative team are tasked with marketing poor, sad, and often emaciated children.
This job is 4 days in a foreign country, usually once or twice a month. No time to get to know anyone or anything as you visit several homes a day looking for stories that fit FFP's preconceived narrative of the poor, or "The Formula" as it was explained to me.
This often includes trips to hospitals and homes where children (more often than not, babies) are literally dying. In the 30 minutes to an hour that you have with them, you ask the mother for permission to make what are essentially environmental portraits of her and her starving child.
I was told by my supervisors that in these situations, I would sometimes need to ask the mother to remove the child's shirt so the donors can better see the state of the starvation. I was even given tips on how to make them look skinnier by the head photographer. I was told to wait for the child to breathe in and then make the photograph, so as to accentuate the child's ribs and lead the donor to believe they were even skinnier.
On two separate trips in 2016, I photographed a child who died only days later. But there were many more whose fate I will never know.
They don't want the children to die, obviously, but they want the extreme emaciation and near-death "look." And they'll go to the literal ends of the earth to find it.
As an example, I once had to fly to Nicaragua on short notice two days before Christmas to photograph a malnourished 2-year-old girl with sores all over her body. I was with the family for an hour, and then we went back to the airport and flew home. The story was never published, and I was told it was essentially just a training exercise for me, to see if I could cut it. They knew we'd never use the pictures.
This doesn't even begin to describe the interpersonal issues in this office at FFP. From manipulation on several fronts to lies and verbal abuse, I am still reeling from this place. One person, in particular, lied so much, and so often, that I (and others, I came to find out) would describe it as pathological. I watched this person lie to the face of co-workers to get them to do something they wanted on so many occasions.
All of this was communicated to human resources and apparently totally ignored. All you have to do is Google "Food For The Poor" and "scandal," and sit back and read. From the top-down, this organization is built to mislead and manipulate, both the donors and the poor people they raise money off of.
Additionally, on a very basic employment level, there's no insurance for the first 90 days, no vacation days for your ENTIRE first year and absolutely no comp days ever... even after you've spent a week photographing dying children for them to raise money off of. I am ashamed to have ever worked in this place, and you would be wise to stay away.