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.
