Former Indonesian President Remembered as Advocate for Tolerance, Democracy
New York, N.Y.I first met former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, affectionately known as Gus Dur, in a hotel room in Washington, D.C., in March 2002. Despite being blind, this remarkably tolerant Muslim cleric exuded wisdom and kindness. My friends and I sat at his feet, drawn to his profound insights. My connection to him came through his daughter, Yenny Wahid, who was then studying at Harvard. We also had the pleasure of meeting his charming and lovely wifeSinta, a political activist.
Gus Dur passed away this week and was laid to rest after a state funeral. In 1999, he became Indonesia’s first elected president following the fall of military strongman Suharto. Although his presidency was brief and tumultuous, he remains a key figure in Indonesia’s transition to democracy and the establishment of a national identity rooted in tolerance.
Thousands of mourners chanted Islamic prayers as Gus Dur was buried near his home in East Java on Thursday. He died on Wednesday at the age of 69 due to complications from diabetes and strokes.
Current President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono led the memorial service, praising Gus Dur as one of Indonesia’s finest sons and statesmen.
Gus Dur: The Authorized Biography of Abdurrahman Wahid
I have met the author Greg Bartonand read his book which I highly recommend. In October 1999, Abdurrahman Wahid, almost blind and recovering from a nearfatal stroke, was elected as Indonesia’s fourth president. Referred to as ‘Indonesia’s surprising new president’ by the Economist, the man who had commanded the highest respect of his fellow countrymen for his lifetime devotion to public service, liberal democracy and tolerant Islam, was impeached in humiliating and controversial circumstances less than two years later.
Wise to some, insolent to others, Abdurrahman’s mercurial style of leadership constantly confounded critics and ultimately caused him to be widely misunderstood by both domestic and international observers. For the first time, biographer Greg Barton delves beneath the surface and gives us a unique insight into the man and his world drawn from his long relationship with Gus Dur – including being at his side during the final extraordinary months of the presidency. Those interested in the drama of modern Indonesian politics will find this book provides a fascinating and invaluable account of the enigmatic Gus Dur.
Gus Dur rose to political prominence as the leader of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), one of Indonesia’s largest Islamic movements. A vocal critic of Suharto’s nearly three-decade rule, Gus Dur was chosen by parliament to be Indonesia’s fourth president following Suharto’s resignation in 1999.
Political commentator Wimar Witoelar, who served as Gus Dur’s chief presidential spokesman, highlighted the former president’s legacy of tolerance and equality, which continue to define Indonesia’s democracy. Witoelar emphasized, “The anti-corruption efforts, the reduced military role in politics, the equal treatment of Chinese and other minorities, and the religious pluralism we see today are all outcomes of Gus Dur’s breakthroughs.”
The author with a friend and Gus Dur in Washington, May 2002.
World leaders have extended their condolences to Gus Dur’s family and the people of Indonesia. U.S. President Barack Obama, who lived in Jakarta briefly as a child, commended Gus Dur for his commitment to democratic principles, inclusive politics, and religious tolerance.
Gus Dur sought dialogue with ethnic separatists in Aceh and Papua, visited East Timor to apologize for Indonesian atrocities, and attempted to establish a truth commission. He also took a firm stance against Islamist extremists after terrorist bombings in 2000. I remember walking through the carnage of the Bali nightclub bombing after the fires had died down, site left unsecured, and feeling the voices of those who perished.
As president, Gus Dur challenged traditional power structures, worked to diminish the military’s political influence, and aimed to decentralize power across Indonesia’s provinces. However, his administration faced criticism for unpredictable cabinet reshuffles and allegations of nepotism. He also alienated some Muslim supporters by advocating for diplomatic relations with Israel and lifting a ban on communism.
Gus Dur’s presidency ended in 2001 with his impeachment for alleged corruption, charges he denied. Despite attempts to remain in power by declaring a state of emergency, he eventually stepped down and was never tried on criminal charges. Witoelar noted that Gus Dur was ousted because he refused to compromise his political integrity.
While Gus Dur’s presidency was brief, his vision of Indonesia as a tolerant, pluralistic society remains influential. His enduring legacy continues to shape the values and democratic principles of modern Indonesia.
Image: “Azur and Asmar” is about boys from very different backgrounds who think of each other as brothers. Credit: Genius Products.
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Two children were raised by the same woman: Azur, blond, blue-eyed, son of the lord, and Asmar, dark-eyed, dark-skinned, son of the nurse. Brought up like brothers, the children are brutally separated. But Azur, haunted by the legend of the Djinn Fairy, will search for her beyond the seas. The two “brothers”, now grown-up, meet again and compete to find the fairy and free her. They will discover magical lands and face many dangers and wonders.
“Azur & Asmar: The Princes’ Quest” has a pretty decent concept for an animated film. In fact, it would be interesting to see what Disney or Pixar could do with this material.
Until then, we’ll have to settle for this so-so French import, which boasts some less-than-impressive animation work, especially in comparison to its first-rate American competition. (It’s on par with the digitally animated “VeggieTales” productions).
If that’s not bad enough, the voice talent is pretty uninspired — at least the ones in the English-language dubbed version. The voice actors give flat, emotionless performances that suggest they were there to collect a paycheck and nothing else.Report ad
The title characters are youngsters from very different backgrounds who think of each other as brothers. Azur is the son of a British nobleman. However, he has been raised by his wet-nurse, who has treated him the same as her own biological son, Asmar.
Upon reaching his teens, though, Azur is separated from Asmar and his beloved “Nanny.” And he’s been shipwrecked in an unknown land where the residents are suspicious of this blond-haired, blue-eyed newcomer.
As it turns out, this is “Nanny’s” homeland, and soon enough, Azur is reunited with her and Asmar, who’s become a member of the royal guard.
Asmar has also become obsessed with finding the Djinn-fairy — it’s a legend that the two heard when they were boys. And this quest may turn these nonbiological brothers into rivals.
Screenwriter/director Michel Ocelot and his team of animators clearly tried to give this feature a unique look, but because of the inexpressive characters and robotic movements the whole thing feels cold and aloof.
Also, the muddled, confusing conclusion certainly doesn’t end things on the right note.Report ad
“Azur & Asmar: The Princes’ Quest” is rated PG and features some strong animated violent content (sword play, stabbings and animal violence), some crude humor and references (including animal scatological humor), derogatory language and slurs based on race and ethnicity, and brief, partial female nudity (a breast-feeding sequence). Running time: 94 minutes.
Without a base, you are a liability to everyone. You can only help others if you are not in need of help yourself.
New York, N.Y. In Shel Silverstein’sThe Giving Tree, children are presented with a kindly tree who gives of its fruit, give of its branches, and eventually even gives of its trunk until there is nothing left except a stump.The children then have a place to sit, and the tree is happy and continues to give;
Reading this tale, I first thought it was a travesty. How stupid that a tree would be reduced to a stump and still feel worthy? Still, in my own life, building an international organization to help orphans around the world, I have had to make similar judgments at every step of the way:
Use frequent flier miles to take my mom on vacation, or to visit children living in a garbage dump in Bali?
Leave Wall Street?
Cash out my 401-K?
Max out my credit cards?
Pay my rent pay teachers for children in Haiti?
There is no guide. So I will attempt to write one. “Mathew’s Rule” is the foundation of Orphans International Worldwide, the organization that I founded in 1999. It states simply that each child in our care be treated the way we would treat our own children.
I now offer “Jim’s Rule” – how to know how much to give back to society. As humans we have basic and secondary needs that are vital to our life and happiness. Primarily, we must eat, sleep, have housing and clothing, and maintain our health.
Secondarily, we need to share love – with parents, children, and life partners; Desires such as better food, nicer housing, more expensive clothes, going to the gym are on a third plane;
“Jim’s Rule” states that as long as our primary and secondary needs are met, sacrifices may be made on the third level to better our world;
As a result of my choices, unexpectedly, I meet regularly with heads of state and royalty, sip champagne and eat caviar. I also celebrate family birthdays at White Castle, own few clothes, and allow my friends to treat me to Broadway plays and buy me books for my birthday. The socks-and-underwear under the tree at Christmas that annoyed me in my youth now delight me;
It has been difficult for me to be comfortable being treated to dinner and theater – I’m used to treating. The feeling might be like being able to accept care one day from my own child.
Christians discuss being good stewards of one’s resources to better the world and to live with sacrifices, like Lent.
Jews debate the best way to repair the world.
Muslims sacrifice and fast for the month of Ramadan to experience an austere life, so they can better understand and respond to those who have less.
Buddhists and Hindus give to the less fortunate, mindful of karma;
Priests and nuns, like Buddhist monks or members of a kibbutz, give their all to the greater good, trusting in the institution of the church, temple, or collective to care for them.
“Jim’s Rule” applies when one without or with little institutional support thinks about how far they can go without a safety net. Globally, there is a safety net for do-gooders in family, neighbors, and one’s house of faith. But these often have limits that can be exhausted early.
Time is another precious asset.
How much time to work?
To relax?
To love?
To sleep?
Illustration from Shel Silverstein’s classic picture book The Giving Tree.
Our bodies’ needs vary greatly. I can go on five hours sleep per night for a month but then crash for a whole day.
To remain focused, I try to limit myself with Orphans International to twelve hours a day, six days a week. To flourish in a relationship and be a good father, is how I use the other 12 hours;
To be an asset to society, one must maintain one’s base. Without a base, you are a liability to everyone. You can only help others if you are not in need of help yourself. Like adults who must receive oxygen in an airplane emergency first, our children benefit when we are stable.
So how much is too much when it comes to giving your all? Learning from our children’s book, The Giving Tree, I propose Jim’s Rule:
Give of your fruit, your extra money and time. Perhaps give your branches, even more of your resources. But your trunk is your essence.
When Peter Paul Luce completed his three terms as a trustee, the son of Time Magazine founder Henry Luce was recognized by the Luce Foundation, which gave Cornell $1 million to fund and endow the Peter Paul Luce Gallery.
New York, N.Y. – A $1 million gift from Cornell College parent and life trustee Peter Paul Luce will expand and modernize Cornell College’s admission center.
Photo: Peter Paul Luce, son of Henry R. Luce, has had a life-long interest in aviation.
Luce, of Englewood, Colo., connected with Cornell when his daughter Lynn was drawn to Cornell’s One-Course-At-A-Time calendar. Luce served Cornell as a trustee when Lynn began at Cornell in 1989.
He became a life trustee in 2003, and received honorary alum status in 1995 with his wife, Betsy.
“I’ve always been an admirer of One-Course-At-A-Time,” said Luce. “It’s not only the best innovation in higher education in a long time, it’s the only one.”
Luce’s patronage of Cornell College has long created extraordinary opportunities for Cornell, its students and prospective students. Starting in the 1990s, Luce personally flew high school counselors to visit Cornell on his twin engine prop jet.
When Luce completed his three terms as a trustee, the son of Time Magazinefounder Henry R. Luce was recognized by the Henry Luce Foundation, which gave Cornell $1 million to fund and endow the Peter Paul Luce Gallery.
The Peter Paul Luce Gallery is a contemporary art gallery located on the campus of Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, IA. Its mission is to provide a platform for students to discover challenging and moving art and connect the Mt. Vernon community to a broader world of contemporary art.
“Mr. Luce has been a long-time supporter of the college’s student recruitment program,” said Vice President for Enrollment and Dean of Admission Jonathan Stroud. “He understands the importance of a professional and attractive facility for receiving prospective students and their families.”
Photo: The Peter Paul Luce Admission Center was built in 1884. Known as the Wade House, the college acquired the home in 1947 upon the death of Ruby Clare Wade, a French professor from 1917 to 1947. Credit: Cindy Hadish.
The expansion and renovation of the Peter Paul Luce Admission Center will enhance the professional work environment for staff and will create a more inviting reception area for visitors. New offices will be built and the reception space will double in size to provide a more attractive and comfortable space for receiving visitors and interviewing students.
“Peter is a loyal friend of Cornell, and this gift is another demonstration of his support for the College and for our admission program,” said Cornell College President Les Garner. “We are extremely grateful for his commitment to this important project.”
Global Volunteers for Orphans International Worldwide
New York, N.Y. As founder of Orphans International, I have spent six years building homes and programs for orphaned children in far off places. Beginning this summer, twelve young leaders – from schools like Harvard, Princeton, and Yale – will be Global Volunteers for Orphans International Worldwide, following in my footsteps.
Each project sustains twelve children. In Haiti, they were orphaned by Hurricane Jeanne. In Sri Lanka their lives were uprooted by the Tsunami. In Indonesia, they were cast adrift by abject poverty and disease.
Our mission is Raising Global Citizens.
Our Global volunteers will teach English, French, Spanish, the arts, and computer skills. In every project, we set up classrooms, computer centers, and health clinics.
OI projects are required to adhere to the Orphans International Worldwide Global Standards. This lengthy list of Do’s and Dont’s is captured simply as “Mathew’s Rule”: each of our kids is treated as we treat our own.
In Indonesia our home is on a hill overlooking Manado Bay in North Sulawesi.
It is a minority Christian area, sitting next to the neighborhood mosque. Many children in this region have been orphaned by sectarian violence — angry Muslims burning down a church, then the angry Christians chasing them literally into the ocean.
Despite sectarian violence, Indonesia is a fantastic and beautiful nation, formed in 1949 from over 17,000 islands with more than 300 dialects, and five religions. This vast area has one national language to unite it all. In essence, Indonesia is the United States of the Pacific.
Haiti, the size of Connecticut, is a proud nation that quickly becomes a part of you.
The strength and dignity of the Haitian people, the first slaves to form a free state, continues to barely overcome the centuries of exploitation by French and Americans, as well as its own often corrupt leadership. Haitians live in widely divergent realities.
The slums of Cite de Soleil is where I saw the bridge where women overwhelmed by poverty are said to squat, giving birth into the sludge below.
The city of Gonaives, ravished by Hurricane Jeanne. More died there than in the Twin Towers. I witnessed both. In New York, the safety net held. In Haiti, it has never existed.
Jacmel, where our project is re-locating to. Here is the artistic center of Haiti. With beautiful beaches, an infrastructure built by the same French architects responsible for New Orleans, Jacmel seems paradise – far from the hells of Cite de Soleil and Gonaives.
Sri Lanka is truly wonderful.
Galle, in the south of Sri Lanka, is another colonial gem, complete with massive fort on the sea. It is surrounded by quaint and friendly villages, such as Unawatuna and Kathaluwa.
I confess that I am madly in love with all three cities, Manado, Jacmel, and Galle, and hope to retire one day to each of them. The people. The mountains. The bays and beaches. Most of all, the incredibly beautiful children who depend on us.
“Om Jim!” they shout in Indonesian. “Frè James!” in Creole. I am beginning to know our kids in Sri Lanka, “Ayyaa” is “Older Brother” in Sinhalese.
Colonialism has deep roots.
The imprint of the Dutch lies across the Indonesian archipelago, the French throughout Port-au-Prince and Jacmel, and the British — from tea time to cricket — across verdant Sri Lanka.
They overlay the Islamic traditions of Sulawesi, the Buddhist culture in Sri Lanka, the mostly misunderstood practices of West Africa known in Haiti as vodou. These cultural mosaics make my returns — and our projects — endlessly adventurous as well as deeply satisfying.
Violence and disease are more commonplace throughout the developing world than most Americans are comfortable with.
Malaria, hepatitis A and B, typhoid, rabies, Japanese encephalitis, and polio exist in parts of the developing world. In Haiti, political violence led to the overthrow of once-golden Aristide, with many dying in the process. In Sri Lanka, the conflict in the north continues to spill into the south, with frequent innocent victims. In Indonesia, extremists have bombed from Bali to Jakarta.
Life at our projects is not life in New York. We don’t drink the local water. We don’t have hot showers. We don’t have air conditioning. But we do have incredible fresh fruits, unimaginable beaches, and often astonishing arts. Of course, we go to children who need nurturing. Our Global Volunteers must bring lots of love. Are volunteers are often surprised at how very much more they get back than they give.
What does it take to be an OI Global Volunteer?
The same qualities, it turns out, I have needed to build an international development agency from scratch: extreme patience, back-bending tolerance and flexibility, tenaciousness beyond reason, inventiveness in coping, and a rock solid belief that one person can change the world in spite of daily obstacles.
This year, in addition to our in-house, full care of twelve kids at each project, OI is expanding our vision to support orphaned children living with their own extended families. With OI Family Care, we hope to create a replicable model to lift all the boats in the harbor, not just our own.
As we expand, we look to Tanzania and the Dominican Republic. Our connections to both — there and here — are vast. Such connections make a solid bridge possible, uniting those who need with those who have.
Our Global Ambassadors are Global Volunteers Plus. Our ambassadors agree to sponsor a child and speak when they return to community groups about their experiences abroad.
I left Wall Street to do this, kicking in my mom’s estate and my own 401 K, rewarding decisions for me. Repairing the world is not cheap. Likewise, our Global Volunteers pay their own way and contribute about $100 a week just to help for however long they can stay – a week, a month, or sometimes even longer.
If you would like to join us, write me personally. We need you. I will share your dreams and desires with my dedicated team, and together we will begin to realize them. Today we have almost 150 people working with us across five continents. It all began with one person, me. The next chapter can begin with you.
It has been a banner week in my life. Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary hosted a benefit for Orphans International Worldwide (OIW), the U.N.-accredited organization I founded six years ago. Then, I was lauded by Congress as an “extraordinarily effective humanitarian, activist, and philanthropist.” Plus, on Nov. 12th my first article for the New York Times was published as the lead story in their annual Philanthropy Section. I’d like to rest on these laurels, but as any parent knows, there is no rest when there are kids in the house. We have kids all over the world.
New York, N.Y. Many, many challenges face OIW.org‘s vision as we continue to move poor orphaned children from warehouse conditions to small homes, beginning the move towards foster care in the developing world. In 2008 we will consolidate our projects in Sulawesi and Sumatera into a united and interfaith “Orphans International Indonesia.” We are searching for land to buy in Indonesia and Haiti to build permanent campuses for more children, with schools and jobs training for when they grow older. Acquiring land is a slow, expensive, and bureaucratic process.
We have been asked to address the needs of orphans–including AIDS orphans–in West Africa: from Nigeria and Togo to Ghana and Liberia. As always, we fund-raise constantly. Finally, we are expanding our low-cost office in Lima, Peru, staffed by dedicated global volunteers.
The challenges have never been greater to our mission of raising global citizens. Orphans International is spread across the globe, dealing with different languages, cultures, religions, and time zones. We share the same identical challenges that SOS Kinderdorf, Save the Children, and UNICEF face globally. We are newer, smaller, and still function with an all-volunteer international staff, paid from honorariums of $1 per year to actual stipends of $400 per month. The care for kids inside poor, distant countries is not that costly, but the infrastructure needed to sustain them–even with free space and volunteer labor–is expensive.. The needs of orphaned children are enormous.
Each OI child is directly supported by four different donors, each paying $600 per year. We are looking for additional child sponsors now. In addition, we must support out staffs’ expenses, and the overhead of this “business.” We run a project of 12 children on less than $50,000 per year almost anywhere in the world. We spend less than $50,000 annually on our New York office. We have been successful in stretching our contributions – with less than 8% spent on administration. We do not have the fancy jeeps, telecom systems, high salaries, or health benefits that other similar organizations routinely provide.
The Internet has made global volunteerism work for us.
We are fast, flexible, and connected to the needs of our staff and kids in each country we serve. We have become only the second global network of orphanages approved by the United Nations. The second, SOS Kinderdorf, is a multi-million dollar organization operating for over sixty years in more than sixty nations. It can be difficult to get people from diverse backgrounds together on the same page. Only by instant messaging, e-mail, and today with Skype, LinkedIn, and Facebook, can we do it at all. Today we are truly international, interfaith, interracial, intergenerational, and Internet-connected. The ten global officers of OI Worldwide help oversee our projects electronically and in person, all funded through the development efforts of OI America and its U.S. chapters.
I was raised by parents active in the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-War Movement of the late 1960s. These experiences have shaped who I am and the organization I have built. As a child, I walked with my mom in civil rights marches, and listened to my father speak out on the main square against out country’s involvement in Vietnam. Martin Luther King’s speech in Washington sends shivers down my spine to this day. Global citizens, I learned as a child, stand for tolerance and diversity, and against oppression and ignorance, in all of its forms – from misogyny and racism to homophobia and xenophobia.
At Peter Yarrow’s performance in his own home last week, I choked up sitting at his feet – as we raised money for our kids. He explained to the younger members of our audience–and reminded us older ones–how, when facing the police in mass demonstrations of civil disobedience, we must cross our arms over our chests, strongly holding hands together, standing against discrimination and illegal wars, from Vietnam to Iraq. Peter then attempted something I have not witnessed in thirty-five years: He led us all in singing-and understanding-“We Shall Overcome.”
To my shock and delight, our well-heeled Upper East Side audience responded.
With heart and voice, we sang “We shall overcome, We’ll walk hand in hand, We are not afraid.” Peter even added a stanza to honor Orphans International, “We can make a change.” We were all swept away by his passion and energy in that room.
Raising $45,000 with Peter Yarrow’s magic dragon “Puff” leading the way was wonderful – supplying roughly 10% of our annual budget in one night. But the dollars flew out immediately to Haiti, Peru, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia as fast as we bring them in.
With ongoing local support, especially from our friends on Roosevelt Island in New York City, where we are based, we have made the impossible possible. The energy of our all-volunteer staff and generous donors continues to move us forward. The effort is daunting. Yet, as Peter Yarrow sang to us last week: We are not afraid. With our many supporters, We’ll walk hand in hand. In keeping the dream of raising global citizens alive around the world–of battling ignorance and intolerance–We shall overcome.
New York, N.Y. Well, I know I choked up twice during the evening: first when I introduced Peter Yarrow [Luce Index™ Score: 99] and mentioned what an influence he and Peter, Paul & Mary had been to my childhood, and to the conceptualization of Orphans International: raising children as Global Citizens to embrace justice and diversity, and the second time just sitting at his feet as he had us embrace one another and sing We Shall Overcome – I remember that vividly in the churches and marches of my youth – I do not think I have seen that done successfully since 35 year…
Peter was everything we had hoped for and more. I was honored to receive a U.S. Congressional recognition initiated by Rep. Carolyn Maloney [Luce Index™ Score: 94], and Peter was delighted with his letter of support from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton [Luce Index™ Score: 94]. Peter auctioned off the autographed Peter, Paul & Mary guitars donated by Martin Guitars, and the Wynton Marsalis [Luce Index™ Score: 95]autographed trumpet donated by Sam Ash, Inc.
Our Board President Don Hoskins and his wife Carol Hoskins, founder of our Development Committee, received our 2007 Volunteer of the Year Award. Ethel Grodzins Romm[Luce Index™ Score: 89] attended. Mary Madrid and Beth Davenport both worked very hard to help us pull off this success evening. Thanks to Hubert Eteh-Benissan who handled the projections of our beautiful children.
We have already raised $40,000 from the benefit for our kids – with more checks coming in daily! Watch the Jewish Post for Gloria Starr Kin’s [Luce Index™ Score: 75] photographs, and expect coverage from The Main Street WIRE (available on-line) and editor Dick Lutz’s [Luce Index™ Score: 87] photos.
We appreciated the presence of Ambassador Erasmo Lara-Peña of the Dominican Republic and Ambassador Nathaniel Barnes of Liberia, Jean–Jacques de Saint Andrieu representing our corporate sponsor,Air France, and good friends from BASF such as Douglas Reid-Green. I didn’t realize it at the time, but we also had representatives from Parenting Magazine, USA Today, the Huffington Post, and NPR... expect a story in the New York Timesin two weeks!
The Buzz
Hon. Nathaniel & Dawn Barnes (Ambassador of Liberia): Congratulations on your wonderful work with ORPHANS INTERNATIONAL and thank you very much for including us. We were truly inspired and we identify completely with your mission. Please do not hesitate to call on either of us if there is any way in which you feel we can help. Peter was incredible. His songs brought back so many fond memories from our youth. My husband Nat, in particular, is a huge fan of Peter, Paul and Mary. gain, many thanks and our heartiest congratulations and pledge of support.
Michael Bass (Grand-Parents Salute Foundation): The evening spent with Peter was a rejuvenating experience… for that brief period that we all gathered from around the world… it gave me the feeling of “If the world was exactly like the time we spent together… there would truly be hope for all.” I have attended many events, but spending the evening with Peter and the wonderful people of Orphans International… who believe… and I mean really believe… that we can save orphaned children… Thank you so much for the enlightening, tireless work that OI does. You all truly have hearts of gold.
Sharon Flynn (Rotary International): Your Sixth Annual Benefit evening was spectacular! If your late mother is looking down on your life, I’m sure she is very, very proud of you. She would be proud of how effective you are and how you handle the adversity that comes along occasionally. Peter was great, wasn’t he? I will recommend his unique auction style for some of Rotary’s functions. People were on a “high” from the evening and were walking and talking together along Broadway. It was a nice wrap up to a beautiful evening. Well, next year he’ll be a tough act to follow!
Dharmapala Gyatso (Artist): It is always a pleasure to participate with people who are contributing to the improvement of our great planet. Peter is a star example of someone who uses his influence for the right cause. We would be so lucky if more musicians and celebrities would follow his example and use their talents in not only furthering the expression of their art but also moving the world towards a brighter age.
Bruce Kluger (Columnist, USA Today and Parenting Magazine): In an funny way, Peter’s Puff the Magic Dragon was the perfect anthem for the whole evening. Like the song itself, the mission of Orphans International is at once timeless, hopeful, and straight from the heart. Thanks, Jim, for reminding us of the collective power of humanity, and of the nobility in helping to provide safety and love for the children of the world. There is no greater cause.
Hon. Erasmo & Elizabeth Lara (Ambassador of the Dominican Republic): Jim, It was great. It is quite amazing that even somebody like me, raised in another country, could related so well to what peter represents. Of course, I knew Peter’s songs, they are part of not only the USA’s cultural heritage but also part of our collective memory in Latin-America. Thank you for including us. I know quite well your dreams, and how you bring to reality those dreams. We are holding hands will you!
Laura Tyson Li (Writer): Like generations of American kids, Puff the Magic Dragon was one of the first songs I learned, and to hear the song’s creator sing it in person was an amazing experience. I wish my kids could have been there to see it. Peter Yarrow hosted a memorable and moving event, and the tunes have been in my head since.
Dick Lutz (Managing Editor, Main Street WIRE): Marvelous evening, and a perfect fit. Just as Orphans International represents everything that’s right about American motives when reasonably and properly expressed in the wider world, Peter Yarrow and Peter, Paul & Mary represent everything that’s right about American folk music, and American generosity. What an ideal match for OI!
Ellen Polivy (Social Worker/Geriatric Care Manager): We all had a great time. Mom was ecstatic. She said it was an 84th birthday to remember!
By Allegra N. LeGrande, Ph.D. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, New York
The children served by Orphans International Worldwide predominantly live in poor, tropical countries. These countries are already experiencing climate change – the tropics had about 0.4°C (0.72°F) of warming since 1950 – compared to 0.6°C (1.08°F) worldwide. The wealth of different regions will influence ability of each to deal with changes – since poorer areas of the world are more dependent on local resources and have less free capital to mobilize in the case of hardship, they are particularly vulnerable to climate change.
Areas in the tropics, in particular, will likely have more negative impacts as a result of climate change than positive. The stresses placed on these nations will certainly affect these children, as well. I will summarize a few points on climate change of particular importance to the tropics.
Greenhouse gas emissions are likely to cause between 1.5 and 4.5°C (2.7-8.1°F) of warming over the next century according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 4th Assessment Report (IPCC AR4). Initially, the warming will continue at a rate of around 0.2°C (0.35°F) each decade.
Climate is the foundation that sets the stage for the weather we experience every day. Individual extreme weather events cannot be directly tied to climate change. However, extremes are by definition, phenomena that are beyond the norm. Climate change will alter the ‘normal’ for each region. Future human-induced climate change is likely to occur at a rate that exceeds many regions ability to adapt. Many countries in the developing world have a smaller adaptive capability than wealthy nations, making it even more difficult for them to address the effects of climate change.
Media attention has focused on two issues: intense tropical storms and sea level rise. Researchers are still investigating exactly how great the link is between these two phenomena and climate change.
Hurricanes: Briefly, it is not possible to link any particular extreme tropical storm to climate change; however, empirical evidence suggests that when conditions are right for the formation of a tropical storm, it will likely to achieve greater intensity as a result of climate change. These storms will have greater higher wind speeds, storm surges, and amounts of precipitation, and thus be capable of causing greater damage.
Sea level: Sea level rise over the next century will be at least 10-59 cm (4-23 in) according to the latest IPCC report. Sea level rise at this pace (10 cm or 4 in per decade) could be devastating to low-lying coastal areas not only because of land loss, but also because of salinization of low-lying freshwater resources. Coastal erosion may also accelerate (not only because of climate changes, but also because of land use changes). Besides these two widely reported affects, the developing world will almost certainly have many other impacts from climate change.
Rainfall: The water-cycle (hydrologic cycle) is likely to intensify meaning greater frequency of drought and flood events. These extremes of drought and flood are likely to cause problems to much of the developing world. Semi-arid regions are particularly at risk for drought which will likely cause lower crop yields and greater likelihood of malnutrition. Areas already very moist will likely have even greater rainfall, and perhaps flooding.
Temperature: Temperature extremes will affect not only people, but also their crops and livestock. Heat waves become more common, and these can directly lead to deaths. Heat waves may also cause decreased crop yields in areas that are already warm, as well as increased fire likelihood. Areas that rely on freshwater from the melting of snow (e.g., Asian communities whose rivers are fed by Himalayan snow-melt or South American communities whose rivers are fed by Andean snow-melt, etc.) are likely to see flood events as the snow melts too quickly early in the season, then drought and shortage as less water (snow pack) remains later in the season.
Climate change is a very serious issue in the developing world. We can take two tracks to addressing it. First, in the developed world, we must reduce our greenhouse gas emissions – this will entail investment for the development of new carbon-neutral technologies and techniques. Second, we can educate the children of developing countries so that as their countries progress, they adopt better, more sustainable technologies and become part of the solution for preventing problematic future climate change.
The above appeared in the April edition of the Orphans International Worldwide InterNews (vol. 4., no. 4) and was been condensed due to space limitations.
Photo: Mark Zuckerberg is Keynote speaker at F8, 2018. Credit: Anthony Quintano/Flickr.
Facebook Founder Deemed New Role Model for Children
New York, N.Y.Orphans International Worldwide (OIW) has added Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of the social-networking site facebook.com, to their list of Global Heroes and Role Models. This list includes such notables as Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King, the Rt. Rev. Desmond Tutu, Mother Teresa, Yitzchak Rabin, Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein, Elie Wiesel, and many more.
Although Zuckerberg is not a Nobel Prize Winner, OIW founder and president Jim Luce feels Zuckerberg’s story offers inspiration to OI’s children. “Without saints, secular or divine, sanctity can too easily be viewed as mere abstraction. Our children need heroes. The courage of Mahatma Gandhi and the brilliance of Albert Einstein make sainthood a reality for us all,” states Luce. “Mark Zuckerberg is a hero for the new era, a young man our children can aspire to emulate in addition to our own childhood heroes.
”Zuckerberg had been offered one billion dollars for his company, Facebook, by Yahoo! and turned it down. He claimed he wanted to build something for the long term and believes that the openness, collaboration, and sharing of information is a by-product of the social networking that can make the world a better place. Keeping his company in his own hands at this point allows him to continue on that important path.
“Orphans International is working to raise global citizens who are Interfaith, Interracial, International, Intergenerational, and Internet-Connected,” states OI Advisor Lindsay Mure. “It is easy to see how Zuckerberg’s resolve and vision would be an excellent example for OI to hold up as a model for our children. I’m hoping to connect with him soon.” “He is living proof that young people can also impact the world. OI’s goal is to raise young adults who will become global citizens and leaders in the own communities. They need heroes,” she adds.
Orphans International America has received bi-partisan support from leaders such as former presidentBill Clinton, Mayor Mike Bloomberg, former Governor George Pataki, Sen. Chuck Schumer, and Sen. Hillary Clinton. Orphans International is a non-partisan, interfaith organization incorporated in New York in 2002. OI Worldwide has been accredited by the United Nations Department of Public Information, OI America is designated as a 501(c)3 organization by the IRS.
OI’s children remain in their native countries to become educated to their fullest potential and then to help move their own countries forward; OI does not place children for adoption in America. Projects now are running in Indonesia, Haiti, and will open in May in Sri Lanka and El Salvador. Each OI campus is working towards full programming for their orphaned children, with classes for English, computer science, and a strong emphasis on the arts. Each project is fully integrated into the local community.
More detailed information is available on both OI’s website, www.orphansinternational.org and wikipdedia.com The organization’s monthly e-newsletter is available on-line (pdf), as is the founder’s inspirational story, Riding the Tiger (pdf). Tax-deductible contributions may be sent to “Orphans International,” at 540 Main Street, Suite 418, N.Y., N.Y. 10044. Last year less than 9% of OI America’s income was spent on administration.
Associated with the U.N. Dept. of Public Information | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphans_International
Photo: Children of Orphans International Haiti in Gonaïvesexpress their appreciation to the founder’s sister, Molly Larkin, for her generosity, April 2006. Pictured here with program director Jacques Africot.
“Love,” an eight year old boy living at Orphans International Haiti in Gonaïves, passed away unexpectedly this week.
Photo: This precious little boy whose name was “Love” was welcomed into our home in Gonaives following Hurricane Jeanne – on Valentines Day. Credit: Orphans International Worldwide Haiti.
The following was released to the boards and staffs of Orphans International April 18, 2007 by Jim Luce, Founder and Director of Orphans International Worldwide, and Donald W. Hoskins, M.D., President, Orphans International America:
New York, N.Y. We are very sorry to have to report the death of our precious child, Love, age eight, living at Orphans International Haiti in the City of Gonaïves. Love passed away unexpectedly at 2:45 pm on Saturday, April 14, 2007, in the presence of our housemother and volunteer nurse. Funeral arrangements are being made as we write.
Both Jacques Africot, OI Worldwide Officer at OI Haiti, and Serard Gasius, OI Haiti Director, report Love had a normal day in school on Friday followed by afternoon playtime with our other children and his housemother. Love and the children shared dinner together then Love went to bed. Love remained in bed the next morning, limp and unresponsive. The staff immediately called the director and board members, rushing Love to the hospital emergency room where care was both poor and insufficient.
Orphans International America will assume financial responsibility for the funeral, which our children will attend. Members of our Board who had traveled to Haiti and knew Love have written homilies, translated into Creole, which will be read at the funeral. Our staff and volunteers in Gonaïves are working closely with the children to ease them through this emotional crisis.
After extensive questioning and remote evaluation by medical professionals on our Board, we can still only speculate that the cause of death may have been a ruptured brain aneurysm, an unknown cardiac disease, or an aspiration with tracheal blockage. Injury, infectious disease, and food poisoning have been ruled out as best we can. Due to lack of ability by local officials to perform an autopsy, this is the most we can ever know.
The lack of medical treatment received by Love at the E.R. speaks to the desperate needs for better medical facilities in Haiti. At this point we do not yet have the money to build a health clinic, but we hope to. Even then, our plans do not include emergency medical care. Long term we would like to address that need as well. For now, we can only focus on the living – and grieving – siblings whom Love has left behind.
In the first year of having paid staff, 2006, I did not think to have contracts. Sounding more and more like my grandmother with each passing year, I can only say that “in my day” we would not have taken a commitment for less than a year.
Tokyo, Japan. I am tired beyond compare. Not the tiredness that comes from lack of sleep, although I did have only an hour’s rest last night finishing up our 2006 financials. No, the tiredness of the soul which has faced disappointment in others so often ones mind becomes numb. I sit here in this tight seat, economy class, Japan Airlines, en route to Tokyo then on to Jakarta.
It is mid-January 2007 and I am off for training, debriefing with OI staff, and one day alone with my son Mathew. Not that I am counting, but this will be the second day off I have had since August 2005 and I am looking forward to it. Many of my friends receive two days off each week and they call it a “weekend.” I am taking two days off per year and trying to call it “my life.”
In the last month I lost virtually my entire paid staff
In the first year of having paid staff, 2006, I did not think to have contracts. Sounding more and more like my grandmother with each passing year, I can only say that “in my day” we would not have taken a commitment for less than a year. I recruited some great kids to my staff, but cannot pay them enough, nor offer benefits, and one by one they all jumped to larger ships in December. The United Nations. Covenant House. New York Cares. They are all committed to social change, but in institutions where they can survive.
It was my sister Molly, a director with Little Brothers Little Sisters in suburban Chicago, who brought home the point that if I could train staff once I could train staff again. Move on to Year Two, she urged. And move on I did. I have just hired ten new staff members. I am clueless how they will be paid, but I certainly know what they need to do to move us forward. More than that, I have just retained the entire old staff who took real jobs to continue to help us on a volunteer basis.
The Vision Continues
Nathan Byrd, who had served as a Programs Officer and was then promoted as my highly motivated Assistant Executive Director, pulled off the celebration of all celebrations for our fifth annual benefit at the United Nations. He has now joined our advisory board and continues to have much to offer.
Andrys Erawan, who I stole from the United Nations reconstruction effort in Aceh following the Tsunami, has been stolen back. I have to admit that’s fair. He is now volunteering 20 hours per week to us to coordinate Indonesia, where we have OI Sulawesi and OI Sumatera. Andrys is perhaps the finest man I have ever met, and has single-handedly made the word “Islam” so respectable in my mind it has made me question my own cultural Christianity.
Felicity Loome came to me from an orphanage in Guatemala, although she is from Minnesota. Quiet, unassuming, we took a few weeks to begin to work well together. Then she took over editing my book, Riding the Tiger: The Story of Orphans International and showed me how strong she was. Today, as head of our Communications Committee, she is working as hard as she ever did on staff.
I understand that Orphans International is a thankless job that eats staff up and spits them out. My longest working staffer seems to have hit the wall in September and is still not back on board yet. The need is endless, the resources finite, and the entire world seems to hold you responsible for not having adequate funding.
Night after night over five years I have laid in bed unable to sleep, worried about how to feed our children. Although our rapid growth has stunned the international community to some extent, our “success” comes with enormous guilt that we simply haven’t done enough. This eats at me and my staff, and coupled with a lack of salary tends to work against retention.
But not being particularly smart, I am particularly stubborn
And as the new year rolled around I rose to my sister’s challenge and began to scour the earth for new staff to train once more – only this time with a one-year contract. Using my own network, made stronger by on-line networking tools such as LinkedIn.com and Plaxo.com, and using the resources of the Net community, specifically idealist.org, we came up with dozens of applicants to train with me in New York then head south to staff our Global Administrative Office in Lima, Peru. It is amazing to me how many young people out there are bi-lingual and yearning to do something important.
Our organizational needs are many
We need to build projects around the world for children in need, assure that they are run appropriately, and pay for it all. Thus, I have a need for Programs Officers, Compliance Officers, and Development Officers. One stroke of luck is having been able to retain John Garesché for 2007 as my Senior Development Officer on a part-time basis. John served as our development consultant in 2006. He will remain in New York, but will oversee our Development Officers who will end up in Lima, linked to the world via Internet. The ramifications of Yahoo! instant messaging (IM) and Skype, the Internet free telephone service, are endless; we could not have operated Orphans International ten years ago.
Passion Restored
The first Development Officer is a young woman who worked for the YMCA, first in Thailand, and was about to be posted to the Y’s growing program in Sri Lanka. Her name is Carly and she chose to work for us instead.
Compliance is a trickier role to fill, but Jonathan Torn emerged and we seem set. Jonathan works presently on Wall Street in compliance and is transitioning over to us by the end of the month. He is half-French and speaks Spanish. He seems very wise and intelligent beyond his 22 years. Andrys Erawan was our Compliance Officer in 2006, and Messan Minyanou heads Compliance on our Board of Directors. Both have agreed to work with Jonathan in bringing him up to speed with OI issues, and then he will join our Lima Team.
Programs Officers are deployed around the world as needed
Andrys had been so gifted he had served in two capacities: Compliance and as the Programs Officer for Sri Lanka. There he trained Australian volunteerMelle Patrick, who also rose to the level of Programs Officer. But Melle will not stay long in Sri Lanka as she has already agreed to return to her home in Bahrain where her parents live to begin to build OI Bahrain as a donor nation to raise funds for our Moslem projects, including OI Sumatera. She would need to be replaced by the spring.
Johan Lee Min How was someone I meet on Roosevelt Island in the fall, a student finishing his course work at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) in New York City. He had come to the diamond trade through a circuitous route of law school and special events at the Ritz Carlton. He is Chinese from Malaysia who lived for years in Singapore and was on his way to Thailand to work with diamonds. He goes by John Lee. Given his eclectic global background, I was delighted to meet him through the Roosevelt Island Toastmasters!
He became a good friend very quickly. When I first knew I was losing Andrys to the U.N. I had lunch with John and asked him to do me a personal favor: would he take a year off from his profession and train and work as an OI Programs Officer. He said he would have the rest of his life for his career and would be delighted to assist me and give back to the world at the same time. It is John that I am meeting in Indonesia to begin to train for his assignment beginning in February in Sri Lanka.
Andrys Erawan will join us for the training in Indonesia as that is where Andrys now lives, home with his mother in Jogjakarta working with the United Nations there. As our first Programs Officer in Sri Lanka, he knows the ins and outs of that project more than anyone. Andrys, as mentioned, is continuing to volunteer with OI in three capacities: to serve as a compliance resource, to train John for OI Sri Lanka, and to coodidinate OI Sulawesi and OI Sumatera, our two projects in Indonesia.
Hernan Gonzalez came to us from an orphanage in Guatemala. An Argentinean, Hernan was recruited to replace Yuri Guanilo in El Salvador. Both Felicity Loome and Nathan Byrd had known Hernan in Guatemala and recommended his work. He arrived in San Salvador last week to find our newly rented home there in bad condition, and along with local coordinator Diana Torres, volunteer Jennifer Le, and with the assistance of Miguel Dueñas and his family who are underwriting the project in El Salvador, Hernan set to work to oversee renovations.
Finally, our staff needs a leader, and I don’t have time to wait for someone to move up the ladder. I am completely overwhelmed, although out new on-line program promises to be the best asset in our history, allowing me to coordinate projects with contacts, all with due dates and tangible deliverables.
Enter Nathaniel Foster. Recruited through idealist.org, Nate has a master’s degree in non-profit management and come from Seattle looking for an NGO start-up where his background can be parlayed into dramatic social change, and he can cut his teeth in the real world in ways he could not with textbooks. I believe he may be coming to the right place. When I get back he will fly in to New York for us to meet and see if we have the right chemistry to make it happen.
The challenges, upon reflection, are enormous but not insurmountable
The potential is unparalleled. In Indonesia I will need to grasp my day off with my son Matt and revel in my opportunities to connect and build with John and Andrys.
Orphans International by definition is impossible, and as I enter my eleventh year of dreaming and sixth year of doing, I remind myself that we have changed the lives of children on three continents permanently – of course it is hard. Of course it is thankless. Of curse it is lonely. But I am not acting in a vacuum. Close to 40,000 people have read our website, many downloading my book about our first five years.
My goal now is to bring home the next five years, with the best staff I can recruit and retain, with a board that remains unchallenged for its commitment to our kids, for our 226 staff and volunteers in eighteen countries around the world. Yes, I am tired, but knowing that our team – international, interracial, interfaith, and most significantly in terms of global administration, Internet-connected – is behind me fills me with hope and energy to continue onward.
I as one man giving all that have can make a difference
I as one man with literally hundred of people of good will and talent and perseverance can change the world. In the words of Margaret Meade, indeed, that is the only thing that ever has. Raising Global Citizens is not easy. But I didn’t leave investment banking to look for ease. Writing this entry between naps on this flight has been cathartic. Alternating between Kirin and o-cha (green tea), munching on o-senbe, and reflecting on where we are today, I feel invigorated.
I am about to arrive now in Tokyo, then off to Jakarta, knowing that tomorrow our team grows stronger. And the hope for our children and their bright futures grows stronger as a result. If you are not yet a contributor of time, talent, or assets, I implore you to join us. Thanks to you, we are Raising Global Citizens.
New York, N.Y. It is Christmas Day 2006 and I am on an Amtrak train headed up to Connecticut to spend the night with my cousins; we hope to build a new Orphans International chapter in Connecticut. Now would be a good time to begin writing Riding the Tiger II, which I envision as a series of blogs which I will transform into a manuscript during next August’s trip to Africa.
I wrote Riding the Tiger I last August on the balcony of a hotel in Lomé, Togo in West Africa. The book is now on our website, and about 40,000 have now hit the site. I am excited that our new (third) website, designed by Michael Bierman and engineered by Shereen Hall, will be up in the next month.
I created the first website, beginning in 1999, and our Indonesian webmaster Edwin Abang created the second (current) version. Our dedicated and talented Communications Officer Felicity Loome has coordinated he inception of our third website.
I transgress. How can I capture the activity that has occurred since August 2006, most importantly the rise – and fall – of our global team, and the great success – and great failure – of our Fifth Anniversary Benefit at the United Nations?
The high points of the last five months have been connected to the United Nations. Our benefit held there in the Security Council conference room was brilliant, although it raised significantly less than forecast – or needed. The addition of H.E. Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa to our Global Advisory Board, joining H.S.H. Prince Albert of Monaco, was particularly exciting.
Then only last week we were finally accredited as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), somewhat akin to getting our 501(c)(3) status from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Another highlight is the fact that the United Nations is beginning to work with us around the world, particularly in Haiti where Javier Hernandez has connected us to MINUSTAH (the U.N.’s military mission there), in addition to UNICEF, and various other U.N. agencies…
The downside has been cash-flow, which although enormous after the Tsunami beginning in January 2005, dwindled precipitously after Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. We have been struggling for the last year, only now beginning to catch up. This cash-flow shortage has meant that we have often been late paying the $400 per month stipend to our employees around the world, and slowly but surely we have begun to lose our top staff as a result.
I feel strongly it is to our credit that we have recruited and trained some of the best young minds in the non-profit world today – and that they are leaving us to work for prestigious organizations dedicated to improving the world, but I am saddened by their departure none the less.
Ironically, it is the United Nations, among other well-established institutions, that are attracting my departing staff. Orphans International cannot afford health insurance, for example; I don’t even have it. The United Nations can afford to offer it – and they pay on time. Other destinations for my departing staff include Covenant House, New York Cares, and Clearwater Revival, Pete Seeger’s environmental miracle on the Hudson River. All of my departing staff have agreed to continue to work with us in a voluntary capacity, so I am glad that none of them have left embittered.
Where did the Summer Go?
Labor Day Weekend marked the end of summer in 2006 – yet another summer when I was too busy to make it to Jones Beach on Long Island. I had Boris Stankevich of Belarus, Nathan Byrd of Ohio, Felicity Loome of Minneapolis, Andrys Erawan of Indonesia, James Larèche of Haiti living with me in my three-bedroom home-office. James would be the first to head to our newly opening Lima, Peru Administrative Office. The rest were slatted to follow.
Our sights were on the upcoming annual benefit, and it promised to be bigger than anything we had ever done before. Actually it was – three times bigger than the year before at the Harvard Club, with over one thousand supporters showing up, making for a standing-room only, sold-out performance.
But we raised $20,000 less than we had anticipated, and like cast-aways mustering their last super-human strength to row to the island on the horizon only to discover it was mirage, my staff and I pulled toward the benefit, believing it would raise the funds needed to catch-up our cash-flow. It didn’t, and at the next staff meeting I regretfully pledged to do the best I could to get maneuver to the next island, but confidence was shaken and they began to jump ship…
The worst of it was having promised our leadership in Haiti, Sulawesi, and Sumatera that funds were about to be sent, to then inform them that we fell far short of our goal and could not meet our promises. I can only feel how disheartened Jacques Africot in Gonaives, or Monalisa Harris in Sulawesi, or Tasha Rahmany in Sumatera felt to hear that their long awaited salaries had vanished…
Perhaps I am still dealing with issues concerning my parents divorce when I was twelve, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t harbor feelings of betrayal and abandonment learning day after day that my key staff were leaving. Nathan was my designated replacement, and although he had told me six month earlier that he needed health insurance, I was unprepared for him to leave so soon to obtain it.
Spanish-speaking Felicity had promised me that she would assume the team leader spot in Lima, but ultimately decided to stay in New York with another NGO offering benefits.
But definitely the biggest crush to my spirit was receiving notice from Andrys, not only a top-notch staffer who had overseen our project in Sri Lanka from inception, but was also my closest friend and confidant. I had recruited him from the United Nations following the Tsunami in Aceh, but then the U.N. wooed him back – this time to his hometown in Java.
My sister Molly Larkin, a director of Little Brothers/Little Sisters outside Chicago, chastised me for taking his departure personally, and Ethel Grodzins Romm added that a job is not a prison, but it really tore into me deeply and I spent a day feeling like someone had died…
He has made it up to me in five short lines received tonight: ...You bring out the best of me… With a boss like you, work becomes a pleasure… You bring out the best of me… With a good friend like you, you complete me… MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
And then there is the story of Yuri Guanilo, which is still unraveling. Yuri is my best field officer, and was the one who created OI Sumatera for Tsunami Orphans from nothing to what it is today (of course, Tasha Rahmany was the local staff who worked with him). Yuri, originally from Peru and very much a part of our decision to located our Administrative Office in Lima, is the son of OI America Board member Rosa Suárez. Sadly, he was unable to leave Indonesia to assume leadership of OI Sri Lanka because we believe he contacted malaria and was hospitalized, and is still recovering in Jakarta. I will return to this story shortly…
Although in my personal life it is usually I who ended unhealthy relationships, I have been dumped before. And I learned that life does not end and that you pick yourself up and move on. My dear friend Ethel Grodzins Romm, who now serves as Orphans International’s Ambassador at Large for $1 per year, arrived on Christmas Eve to give me a coffee mug from the Jewish Museum in New York that states, “Quand Meme.” Translated, it means, “Through thick or thin,” “Whatever it takes,” basically, “Against all odds.”
Ethel’s holiday card stated that ‘Jim Luce would do whatever necessary to move Orphans International forward.’ And I chuckled because it was so true. I had already implemented a new contract that demands of staff a one-year commitment, which if broken would result in the reimbursement of all travel expenses extended. Further, I had already begun an aggressive employment campaign on our own website and idealist.com, and through the websites of many of me NGO leader friends…
And I have already recruited the first three staffers: Johan “John” Lee Min How, a young Malaysian who had lived in Singapore and New Zealand before coming to New York to study briefly, where I met him. Living today in Bangkok, Thailand, John has agreed to takeover from Andrys in Sri Lanka following training in Jakarta with Andrys and I, and then train further in New York before heading down to assist in the Lima Office.
Then there is Togolese Kwadjo “Vino” Ezobafuno Vidja, a man I met in Lomé last August, who impressed me for his open-mindedness despite being raised in West Africa where more narrow or socially conservative thinking is common.
And then Felicity recommended a friend who had worked with her in Guatemala, a young Argentinean Hernan Gonzalez, who would be able to work with us in El Salvador. Finally, I authorized the employment of another as yet unnamed Sri Lankan, so that we would have a well-rounded international team.
A Baptism in New Jersey
One of the high points of he fall of 2006 was the baptism of Marcus Inigo Respicio, infant son of Rick and Desiree Respicio. This Filipino-American couple, who have contributed their grandmother’s farm in Ilocos Norte for OI Philippines, are a beautiful young family with an extensive and close-knit extended family. They were all there in force on November 19th, two days after our benefit, when baby Marcus was baptized. I had been asked to be godfather to the child, a request that I was honored to accept.
Not knowing what to get that would have any meaning, I remembered in my keepsake box, an old lacquered Japanese box of my mother’s mother, was a St. James medal that had been given to me as a child by a nun who was friends of my parents. I thought this medal, if I cleaned it up and put a new silver chain on, would be a way to connect me to my new grand-son. The medal seems to have been a hit, although one-year old Marcus didn’t seem overly impressed.
I was amazed at the number of Mercedes and Land Rovers on the parking lot of the restaurant overlooking the Manhattan skyline in New Jersey at the reception following the baptism. The Filipino-American community here seemed to have the resources to make OI Philippines happen and I was happy to hear them suggest a spring fundraising event to raise funds to make the Ilocos project possible.
Thanksgiving in Haiti (2005)
Doris Chernik, Ph.D., has traveled with me to Haiti almost every time and I believe this was my fifteenth trip since 2001… The children of Agnes Humphrey Leadership School in Brooklyn had invited me to speak to several of their classes which were studying the Island of Hispaniola (The Dominican Republic and Haiti, and how they get along, or don’t as the case may be). The kids were great and we really hit it off. They held a read-a-thon to sponsor one of our kids in Haiti, and sent along a Christmas box of goodies that I carried down with us. Our Haitian children wanted to reciprocated, but had nothing to give at all.
That afternoon we went for a swim in the rain-swollen muddy river, and an idea occurred to me: let’s collect smooth river stones and paint them as a present for the students in Brooklyn. Christmas Easter Rocks! Well, the children helped me gather sixty gold-ball size stones, and we spent hours decorating them.
When they dried, Doris orchestrated a team effort to wrap them in multi-colored tissue paper and we loaded them all into a woven basket and I lugged them back to America, setting off many security machines in-between. Airport officials take themselves too seriously, and only one cracked the slightest smile when inquiring what dark sold mass I was concealing in my carry-on. “Christmas Easter rocks!”
A Chapter in New Jersey
One of the great strides forward made in the fall is the inception of our first regularly meeting chapter, the chapter of OI America of New Jersey that meets in South Orange. Headed by Mark Merson, this chapter was born of the grief felt by the Cohen Family when their son-in-law Cresenta Fernando was swept away by the tsunami in Sri Lanka.
The efforts of the New Jersey chapter are for building OI Sri Lanka. Tom and Donna Cohen play perhaps the largest role in fundraising for this chapter, and Ariele Cohen and Rajiv Mallick are the co-presidents of OI Sri Lanka. Andrys Erawan, now finishing his work outside Galle, attended a meeting in South Orange with me in September.
Regrets of a Busy Man
As much as I am committed to moving Orphans International forward at all costs – Quand Meme – it does take a toll on me and I must admit having regrets. I have never spent a Christmas without my sonMathew Tendean Luce for over ten years until today – he is now in my house in Jakarta and I postponed my trip two weeks to push fundraising to close the year out as strongly as possible. I miss being with him today terribly, although I called him yesterday twice. He was excited to tell me of the massive police security in place in Jakarta’s churches Christmas Eve to thwart any possible anti-Christian violence on the part of Muslim extremists…
My father has Alzheimer’s and and this also concerns me greatly.
I have been meaning to visit my father and step-mother in Oxford, Ohio since August. But I have not been able to free up a single weekend. In fact, my last days off were in August 2005…
And there is an old friend, Betty Millard, who I missed seeing for her birthday in October. She is in a hospital bed most of the time now and I don’t think she remembers me, but I remember well how much of an impact she made on my life when we had dinner once a week from 1987 to 1991.
I also get frustrated knowing how much I am not doing for Orphans International. Many people think that I have achieved so much, but all I can think of is how many things I have left undone. I lay awake last night – my first day off since August 2005 – thinking of all the things that need finishing before the end of he year.
There is a five-page unfinished letter to Leila Luce, widow of Hank Luce, which has been on my desk for ten weeks. There is a proposal for OI Romania written for the Duke of Bavaria who has already funded us to explore building a project in Transylvania which has gone unfinished for six months, partly because I am afraid of how much of a commitment a project in Romania would be for me at this time.
Then aides of Prince Albert have just instructed us to communicate with three foundations in Monaco, which I need to do as soon as possible. On my last trip to Haiti representatives from a Canadian organization requested that I submit a proposal for funding our educational programming in Gonaives that I have written and our interns have input, but which I need to fine-tune and submit.
Air France representatives asked me to send in a proposal to their Paris office three months ago that my staff has been sitting on. The New York Rotary Club has requested a proposal to continue funding for Rotary House at OI Sumatera for Tsunami Orphans in Indonesia by the end of the year. That gives me three more days…
The Anchor Called Family
Staying with my cousins over Christmas reminded me on the importance of family. Cousin Skip, whose real name is Dudley, as is my middle name, his father’s name, my mother’s middle name, back to Thomas Dudley who co-founded Harvard and served as the Third Governor of the Massachusetts bay Colony.
Skip showed me a family heirloom I had never known about: an 8-foot long American flag with 14 stars that was carried in the Civil War – in fact, had bullet holes in it from the Civil War, and the name on the side: James Grieves Dudley. This sent chills down my spine; I wan named after James Grieves Dudley, who survived the Civil War and went on to co-found the Kasson’s Locomotive Express from New York City up to Buffalo.
Holding this Civil War flag in my hands I realized of course it should be properly preserved in a museum. However, the feeling of connection to my family, the same feeling I got when I sat at my great-grandmother’s piano in their living room, or admired the bookcase of another relative buried for one hundred years… Or holding four year of Jackson Dudley on my lap and having him call me “Uncle Jim.”
Being related to the founders of our nation and a MetroCard get me on the NYC subway.
However unimportant family pedigree is, family itself is important. Family is crucial to child development and to our lives as adults. It is my goal to make Orphans International a family, and to give back to our children a foundation, a heritage, a connection that natural disasters or epidemics have washed away from them.
Our children deserve to be grounded, locally and internationally, and I am determined to raise our children as global citizens truly grounded to their own and global culture. I want our children in Haiti to realize how important Toussaint d’Louvre is, to realize that they grew up in a program founded by someone whose first ancestors set forth in the Americas on Plymouth Rock, and to know that it was Jewish support, among other, that will allow them to go to college.
I want Orphans International’s family to be so strong that our kids in Sri Lanka consider the children of Togo their cousins, the houseparents in El Salvador to be their ants and uncles, and their Child Sponsors in the U.S. and Hong Kong to be their grandparents. I want our kids to look up to Tom Cohen, and Ethel Grodzins Romm, and Messan Minyanou, and Doris Chernik, and Miguel Dueñas, and Rosa Suárez – and me – as heir family. Because families do not exist in a vacuum, nor are they based solely on genetics; they are built from love.
When our kids are raised in a home named for my dead brother, Rick Luce House in Sumatera, or in Cresenta Fernando House in Sri Lanka, or Pierre Chernik House in Haiti, they will have more than room and board, they will have more than shelter. They will have a legacy. To grow up in the shadow of my brother and his American roots. To be as good of a man as I understand Cresenta was. To be a global citizen in the shadow of Pierre. We are not growing a network of orphanages alone, we are growing a family. A family of global humanity.
The Second Anniversary of the Tsunami
I was arriving in Manado, Indonesia as the Tsunami swept the City of Banda Aceh in Northern Sumatera. We had already established Orphans International in Indonesia since 2001, and now in 2004 there seemed a desperate and immediate need for help in Sumatera. Within ten days I had our first staff on the ground there, staying with his friends at CNN’s base camp. There was nothing left had he flew in with disposable underarms, canned food and bottled water. When I arrived shortly thereafter I was amazed at how hard it was to tell the story, certainly to capture the story on film. There was nothing there: that was the story.
Along the coast where there had been neighborhoods was now open sea. Further inland the ravished land resembled nothing more than a garbage dump – but for as far as the eye could see. However, a never-ending land fill looks remarkably unremarkable captured on film. However, I knew that almost 250,000 people had perished, and later learned that the exact number was hard to verify as the various governments had exaggerated the number up or down for political gain and real numbers were and would remain unavailable.
Although we did not arrive in Sri Lanka until a year later, and have not yet to arrive in Thailand, the damage to those two proud nations was equally horrific. In Sri Lanka I would witness a train hit by the Tsunami outside Galle in which over one thousand people were washed away. There was nothing for Orphans International to do but embrace the children whose mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, grandparents and neighbors had been got by a wall of water as hard as a cement wall, and slammed to their deaths.
Do not imagine innocents being carried off on the crest of waves; the Tsunami from what I was told hit with the force of the collapsing World Trade Center and simply killed on impact. It was a disaster of Biblical proportions, and perhaps explains some of the stories I felt implausible in the Bible as a child growing up in Ohio.
Today we have an Orphans International project outside Banda Aceh, OI Sumatera, that we are having a hard time funding because the Tsunami is already becoming a distant memory. So many NGOs raised so much money for Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand – and so little of it went anywhere near the victims of the wave.
In Sumatera, our Indonesian medical team opened a clinic which helped hundreds of families a week. In fact, the very same team jetted to the U.S. six months later to assist disadvantaged Americans in New Orleans – the only medical team in the wake of Hurricane Katrina where the women doctors wore head coverings.
Two years later we remember the dead, work hard to raise as many of the living as we have been able to as global citizens, and implore our neighbors to not forget these children in our care. Today these children are happy kids splashing on the beach, winning Aceh-wide swimming competitions, and proudly pointing to the world map in their wall where Uncle Jacques comes from in Haiti, Uncle Yuri in Peru, and all the other international OI volunteers who took these children from unmitigated Hell after they lost everything to the Tsunami to their existence today.Please do not forget our Tsunami Orphans on this Second Anniversary.
