Philanthropy Age Issue 6 by Philanthropy Age

DEDICATED TO THOUGHTFUL GIVING

www.PhilanthropyAge.com

Issue 06

Middle East, North Africa and South Asia

October – December 2014

HOW YOUR

GIVING

CAN HELP SAVE A

GENERATION

PLUS Kuwait’s Abdullah Al Matouq on charity and transparency Hollywood star Matt Damon on his philanthropic journey Khalaf Al Habtoor on aiding victims of Middle East conflict

CONTENTS

In this issue...

REGULARS 08 10 12 14 74 76 80

Need to know

A matter of trust Kuwait’s Abdullah Al Matouq on the push for greater transparency within the Gulf humanitarian sector

Chance of a lifetime We visit Lebanon and see firsthand how your money can help to save a generation of Syrians displaced by conflict

Good business Khalaf Al Habtoor argues that the Arab world must do more to aid the victims of regional unrest

The Moment Global Eye Guest Column One Day Trends Diary

From auction to action How Noor Dubai and The Carter Center are fighting to eliminate the curse of blinding trachoma in Ethiopia

City of life After decades of neglect, there is optimism again among the Zabaleen community in Cairo’s ‘Garbage City’

Unnatural disasters Why investment is crucial to avoiding further tragedies in Afghanistan’s poorest rural communities

CONTENTS

Saving â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;little maidsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

Market forces for good

Preventing malaria

Matt Damon

In an exclusive interview, the Hollywood icon talks about his personal philanthropic journey and the efforts of Water.org to boost access to clean water and sanitation across Africa and Asia Orbis Flying Eye Hospital

74 5

CONTRIBUTORS

With our thanks to...

Alia Haju

Alia Haju is a photojournalist based in Beirut, Lebanon. She has been working as a freelance photo editor and photographer with Thomson Reuters since 2011, and has covered crises in Syria, Iraq, Mali and the Central African Republic. In this issue she records the hardships faced by Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

Stuart Yasgur

The head of Social Financial Services at Ashoka, a global organisation that invests in social entrepreneurs, Stuart Yasgur has more than a decade of experience working with start-up and growth stage companies. In this issue he highlights the power of the market to drive positive social change.

Anthea Ayache

A Dubai-based freelance journalist, Anthea Ayache writes on social injustice and humanitarian affairs throughout the Middle East. She spent ten years as a broadcast journalist in Lebanon, the UK and the UAE before turning to print. For this issue she travelled to Afghanistan and the landslide-devastated village of Abi Barak.

Andrew Doust

Andrew Doust is vice president of strategy at Legatum Group, which has a philanthropic portfolio that invests in humanitarian programmes worldwide. In this issue he describes the benefits of a recent workshop on transforming slums into communities of opportunity.

Adam Ramsey

Adam Ramsey is a Saudiborn British freelance journalist based in Cairo. He covers politics and social movements across the Middle East for the Irish Times and the New Statesman, among other titles. In this issue he ventures into ‘Garbage City’ in Cairo, home to one of Egypt’s most marginalised peoples, the Zabaleen.

EDITOR’S LETTER

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Contributors: Laurence Tissot; Alia Haju; Stuart Yasgur; Anthea Ayache; Andrew Doust; Adam Ramsey; Amanda Mustard

Trust and funding One of the most common concerns among donors today is that they can’t be sure exactly where their money is going. How much of their contribution will make it through to those for whom it is intended, and who need it most? How much will be lost to administration or unspecified overhead costs – or worse, find its way into the wrong pockets? Given the number of humanitarian crises unfolding in our region, we cannot afford to have suspicion inspire inaction. There is already too much tragedy in the world for lives to be lost as a consequence of a breakdown in trust between people with the desire and the means to help, and the very organisations designed to deliver relief and support to those in need. It’s up to organisations to convince would-be donors of their efficiency and credibility. It’s up to governments to keep those organisations in line, to ensure that humanitarian actors operating on their soil are keeping their promises and making every dollar count. It’s up to donors to do appropriate due diligence and identify channels through which monies can be safely delivered to deserving beneficiaries, achieving maximum impact for the greatest good. In this issue we travel to Lebanon to witness first-hand the work of the UNHCR, a global organisation happy to account for its spending, from the moment the money leaves the donor, to the moment it reaches the beneficiary. Meanwhile Abdullah Al Matouq, advisor to the Amir of Kuwait, assures us that Gulf governments are prioritising transparency among charitable organisations. If so, then all that’s left is for donors to step forward and reward such progress with intelligent giving. No more excuses; it’s time to do some good. Andrew White Editor, Philanthropy Age

The publishers seek to broaden the knowledge and understanding of good philanthropy and do not seek to promote the interests of any one individual, organisation or agenda. Individuals and organisations are featured solely according to the merits of their philanthropic endeavours. Go interactive with Philanthropy Age and Blippar. Just follow these simple instructions on pages 27, 43, 48 and 75: (You can download the Blippar application for free from the Apple App store and Google Play)

Images: Getty Images; UNHCR; The Carter Center; Womanity/March Thorens; INSAF; Roll Back Malaria/Adam Nadel; Orbis; Geneva Global; Sam Jones Pictures; Water.org; Reuters; IICO; Noor Dubai Foundation ISSN: 2306-0328 Distributed by: GLS Media Services Printed by: Emirates Printing Press, Dubai

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NEED TO KNOW

Nine things you should know... 1

New money, in new ways

Too young. Child brides made the global agenda in July as UNICEF and the UK government co-hosted the first Girl Summit, to raise awareness of child, early and forced marriage. Global actors rallied in support, including a $20m contribution from Canada to the UN children’s agency for projects in Bangladesh and Yemen, among others; and a $4m pledge by the Gates Foundation for research into the economic costs of child marriage. Some 42 per cent of all children married before 18-years-old are in South Asia – including 33 per cent in India, according to UNICEF’s latest report.

3 Access to money is one of the biggest challenges in the development field. Celebrating its fortieth birthday, in June the Saudi Arabia-based Islamic Development Bank (IDB) teamed up with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to open up $2.5bn of new funding. The announcement unlocked not only new financing, but also a new way to extend support to the underserved. The facility offers access to loans with no mark-up for those most in need, what Gates Foundation co-founder Bill Gates hailed as a “historic innovation in development finance”. The sharia-compliant loan facility will disburse money for health, infrastructure and agricultural programmes, for the most vulnerable in the IDB’s 56 member countries.

2 Can you contribute? The loan facility will use grants to make it work. A funding pool of $500m will pay for the markup on the concessional loans, of which the Gates Foundation said it would guarantee 20 per cent. The remainder of the pool will come from a mixture of government aid agencies and philanthropists, as well as the private sector.

“Syrian refugee women are the glue holding together a broken society. Their strength is extraordinary, but they are struggling alone” Angelina Jolie, activist and UNHCR Special Envoy

NEED TO KNOW

8,789

The amount in metric tons of food and relief supplies airlifted by the UN’s World Food Programme in the first six months of 2014. Relief to Syria made up 16 per cent of the total

6 Walmart, Wells Fargo & Co, and Chevron topped the ranks of US businesses who gave the most cash to philanthropic causes in 2013. While Walmart donated more than $311m in one year, donations still accounted for just 1.3, 1.0 and 0.6 per cent of pre-tax profits, respectively. Can this region do better?

Registering progress. Some countries have made headway in reducing the number of out-of-school children by at least 50 per cent in just over a decade, a report from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics found. These include Yemen, India, Iran and Morocco. Still, the world will not reach its goal of getting every child in school by 2015: nearly 58 million children of primary school age were not enrolled in school in 2012 and many of them are unlikely to ever enter a classroom. How can we accelerate progress?

“Give to the near of kin his due, and also to the needy and the wayfarers. Do not squander your wealth wastefully” The Quran 17:26 9

The percentage of the world’s population that will live in urban areas by 2050, according to the UN’s biennial forecast. Getting services to all residents will be a challenge: by 2050, every third person on the planet is predicted to live in a slum

THE MOMENT

Monday, May 5th, 2014

Drop of life J

ust a few drops can change the course of a lifetime; it can be the difference between health and debilitating disease. The polio vaccine is also what stands between containment of a crippling virus and its spread to other fragile countries recently rid of the scourge. On May 5, 2014 – just 40 days after India was certified polio-free – the UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the spread of wild poliovirus a “public health emergency of international concern”, only the second time the WHO has issued such a warning. The extraordinary announcement came as the virus sweeps across national boundaries. The health agency identified three countries exporting polio: Pakistan, Syria and Cameroon, while Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia risk becoming exporters, too. Pakistan is cause for particular concern; it was the site of 80 per cent of this year’s polio cases as of end-April. The WHO called for all three polio-exporters to guarantee that anyone travelling abroad be vaccinated, and Pakistan set up vaccination booths at some of its borders in an effort to restrict the country’s deadliest export yet. The announcement is a blow for an international community that in 2012-2013 had been within touching distance of wiping out the spread of the disease globally. Without concerted effort, eradicating one of the world’s most serious vaccine-preventable diseases could slip out of our grasp. n

GLOBAL EYE

How can we reduce this historic high? The global refugee population is at a record high. More people in the world today have been forced to leave their homes and find refuge elsewhere than at any time since the end of World War II. In 2013, 6 million more people were forcibly displaced than the previous year, tipping the total number worldwide in excess of 50 million.

he worsening situation in Syria and an increase in internally displaced persons (IDPs) – exiles in their own country – were the main drivers behind the rise in numbers, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) 2013 annual report. The year 2013 also saw the largest outflow of humanity – some 2.5 million new refugees – since 1994. And for the first time in a decade, children made up half of the world’s refugee population.

Taking flight

Number of refugees fleeing per day globally

The global ranks of the forcibly displaced swelled last year, the vast majority displaced within their own country. UNHCR recorded 51.2 million people displaced by conflict, violence or persecution – a population the size of South Africa or South Korea that would be the 26th largest in the world. Eight million new IDPs edged numbers to 33.3 million, while refugee numbers rose by a record 2.5 million to 16.7 million worldwide. Some 1.2 million asylum seekers globally made up the complement. South Korea

South Africa

For some countries, refugee plight is not new. More Afghans are still forcibly displaced than from any other country and Pakistan continues its 11-year reign as top host nation. For others, this is a brutal new reality. Conflict has transformed Syria from the world’s second-largest refugee host to its second-largest refugee producer in just five years. Refugee flows, old and new, trouble the MENASA region. Concerted efforts are required if refugees are not to face another record-breaking year.

32,200 2013

UNHCR recorded 51.2 million people displaced by conflict, violence or persecution – a population the size of South Africa or South Korea that would be the 26th largest in the world

23,400 2012

14,200 2011

GLOBAL EYE

A regional burden Conflict and geography has seen five countries in the MENASA region top the global rankings for hosting refugees. Pakistan ranks first, absorbing most of the outflow of Afghans who remain the top source country for the 33rd year running. Pakistan is ill-equipped to cope with the burden; it had the highest number of refugees for its national economy, hosting 512 refugees per $1 GDP per capita.

The rest of the region is no stranger to refugees either, but in 2013 the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) faced a new horror. MENA accommodated 2.6 million – or 22 per cent – of the world’s refugees, of which Syria accounted for more than half, with 1.8 million. In the course of 12 months, the total number of refugees in the region jumped by more than 1 million.

512

Number of refugees hosted in Pakistan per $1 GDP per capita

Top 10 refugee host nations in 2013 Pakistan1.6 million Iran 857,400 Lebanon 856,500 Jordan 641,900 Turkey 609,900 Kenya 534,900 Chad 434,500 Ethiopia 433,900 China 301,000 US 263,600

Syria’s exiles The ongoing crisis in Syria exacted a heavy price on global refugee numbers in 2013. The UN agency registered the one millionth Syrian refugee child in August 2013 and by the end of the year, some 2.47 million had fled their country altogether due to the conflict, now in its fourth year. In 2011, Syrian refugees were the 36th largest group of refugees in the world; in 2013 they were the second largest. Some 2.2 million Syrians crossed the border in just 12 months, the largest annual exodus by a single refugee group since the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

An overwhelming ratio

Iraq 212,800

An influx of 737,000 Syrians catapulted Lebanon into the top 10 refugee hosting countries in 2013. Relative to Lebanon’s size, that figure is overwhelming: almost one in five inhabitants is a refugee, rising to one in four once Palestinian refugees are included. No other country has been exposed to such a high concentration of refugees over the past three decades, said the UN agency.

Lebanon 851,300

Total Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries at end-2013

Relative to Lebanon’s size: almost one in five inhabitants is a refugee

Jordan 585,300

Number of refugees per 1,000 inhabitants

178

Lebanon

Turkey 585,600

Jordan Chad Egypt 131,700

Mauritania

34 24

*Source: UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Global Trends 2013

GUEST COLUMN

Two billion reasons to invest in slums How does a foundation go about investing in a new area? Andrew Doust, vice president of strategy at the UAE-based Legatum Foundation, shares his experience of kick-starting learning in unfamiliar territory wo billion. That’s the number of people the UN estimates will live in slums – informal urban settlements – by the year 2030, double the number doing so today. Most will make the move hoping for a better future, but the sad truth is millions will be exploited and trapped in poverty. So what will ensure that the biggest urban migration in history is a path to prosperity, rather than poverty? That’s just the kind of challenge we like to turn our minds, and capital, to at the Legatum Foundation. Over the years the foundation has invested to help abolish slavery for 30 million people through the Freedom Fund, end neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) for more than 1 billion people through The END Fund, and help get 60 million out-of-school children back into education through Speed Schools. With each challenge we ask the question all investors ask: which opportunity provides the best return on investment (ROI)? In philanthropic terms, that means what interventions will have the greatest measurable social impact. Investing in programmes that maximise each dollar is important to the foundation. When Legatum first considered investing in NTDs, the investment case was compelling. For every $0.50 invested we could leverage $10 in donated medicines, ensure that people at risk would be treated for a year, and strengthen local health systems.

About the writer Andrew Doust is vice president of strategy at Legatum, a private investment group. The Legatum Foundation’s philanthropic portfolio invests in catalytic global development programmes and has allocated more than $100m to health, human liberty, education and economic empowerment projects in 107 countries

We launched the programme in Burundi with spectacular results: over five years, the national prevalence of hookworm dropped from 18 per cent to 2.6 per cent; blinding trachoma levels dropped from 13 per cent to 3 per cent; and schistosomiasis prevalence reduced from 12 per cent to 1.4 per cent. People were healthier and could go back to work and children missed fewer days of school. It was one of the best ROIs we had ever seen. And it led us to launch The END Fund in 2011, a philanthropic investment vehicle where other philanthropists and social investors could come together to invest in NTD control. So when considering the one billion people currently living – and, in many cases, suffering – in slums we asked the same investment question. However, while the potential for impact was clear, the investment case was not. With our delivery partner, US-based Geneva Global, we trialled a process to start fleshing out the investment case. The process itself was a learning curve, our own education along the way to tackling the challenge of slums. Despite considerable investment in slums around the world, existing approaches aren’t working fast enough and are unlikely to deliver the impact needed to address the scale of the challenge. To find out why, we convened a workshop in Dubai – the Slum Summit – to answer some fundamental questions: what is already

GUEST COLUMN

working well in the slum sector that can be strengthened, replicated or scaled? What ingredients are lacking which, if enabled, would lead to catalytic impact? What opportunities exist to integrate the work of organisations in slums to achieve greater impact? What distinctive contribution can the Legatum Foundation make to offer a compelling social return on investment? Not being experts on slums, the next step was to see who could answer these questions. We saw value in engaging different minds on the issue, so we went to great lengths to identify participants with diverse skills and backgrounds. We hoped the workshop would develop new thinking and ideas, not just to improve conditions, but also to find ways to transform slums into communities of opportunity. We identified participants, and set a quota for each, in five categories: slum community leaders, NGOs, entrepreneurs, private sector service providers and policymakers, ensuring gender and age diversity, too. The inclusion of entrepreneurs and business leaders was, to my mind, crucial to exploring the role of the private sector in transforming slums. The workshop was small – just 25 participants – to enable each person to contribute their ideas in an open and collegiate environment and allow each person to engage in meaningful discussion. The hope in gathering such a diverse group was to infuse discussion with different perspectives and foster innovation: either new ideas, or new combinations of existing ideas, that would deliver a big impact. Broad geographical representation was also vital given the scale and global scope of the challenge. Participants came from

nine countries, including Brazil, Uganda and India – three geographies that have significant urbanisation challenges and where the foundation may test and refine an investment approach through pilot projects. There are many extraordinary people working in this field – whether with decades or just a few years’ experience – and it was humbling to meet and learn from them. For the foundation and the attendees, the intimate and frank manner in which the workshop was structured allowed everyone to understand the issue in a new way and explore unique perspectives. Feedback from participants highlighted the voice it gave to on-the-ground perspectives so often sorely lacking in such international gatherings. What did we learn? On the issue of slums, it was clear to those attending that there is a significant global community living and working in slums that lacks

“We hoped the workshop would develop new thinking and ideas not just to improve conditions, but to find ways to transform slums into communities of opportunity”

a coordinated voice and strategy for progress toward greater prosperity. The conference enabled conversations that produced immediate value and laid the groundwork for long-term cooperation, both inside and outside the scope of the foundation’s future programme. Would we go through the workshop process again? This is a new approach to programme design for us, and it worked well in a situation like this, where, as a potential investor, we had insufficient knowledge to form an investment case. Did a compelling investment case emerge? Not immediately, but we are confident it will. The ideas generated are being distilled, which will firm up the investment case for a series of pilot projects to implement across three locations. Participating in the workshop also enabled due diligence on a number of implementing partners, with whom we hope to work on the ground. We are confident there is a distinct role for investors like ourselves in transforming slums, and while it’s too soon to say if these efforts will lead to the desired breakthrough, we have learnt a great deal and moved closer to our vision of launching a new slum-focused philanthropic investment fund. n

PHILANTHROPY AGE

Matter of Trust A

As an advisor to the Amir of Kuwait, Humanitarian Envoy to the UN and chairman of Kuwait’s largest charitable organisation, Abdullah Al Matouq is a busy man. In an exclusive interview, he tells Philanthropy Age that Gulf governments are recognising the need for greater transparency within the humanitarian sector

BY Salem AlShaikh and Andrew White oments after the end of Fajr, the pre-dawn prayer, Abdullah Al Matouq is on the move. If he is not at the UN, in his role as Humanitarian Envoy for Kuwait, or visiting one of the many aid projects for which he is responsible, he travels to the headquarters of the International Islamic Charity Organisation (IICO), a body of which he is chairman and which has activities in 136 countries. By 9am, he is at the Amiri Diwan of the State of Kuwait, where he sits with the country’s ruler and discusses the needs of the poor and the suffering. It is mid-afternoon before he is able to return home, to pray and

perhaps spend time with his family. So pass the days of a man dedicated to his work on behalf of Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, the man he refers to as “the Amir of Humanity”. “I am so preoccupied because of the numerous unfortunate events that are going on in this region today,” says Al Matouq. “Around 90 per cent of all crises in the world are taking place in Muslim countries, whether in Sudan, Myanmar, central Africa, Syria or Iraq. We are responsible for all of them.” However while the eyes of the world are on the crises in Iraq, Syria and – more recently – Palestine, Al Matouq is concerned that another humanitarian catastrophe is brewing in the region. Yemen, on the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, is “forgotten in every sense of the word” by the world’s media, yet represents a significant challenge to the security and prosperity of the wider Middle East, Al Matouq insists. In 2011 the poorest country in the Arab world teetered on the brink of civil war. Today that threat has subsided, however, Yemen remains in economic and social disarray. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than half of the population or 14.7 million people are in need of some form of humanitarian assistance. 10.5 million people are food insecure, of whom 4.5 million are severely food insecure.

PHILANTHROPY AGE

MAIN The Amir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad AlJaber Al-Sabah, was recently recognised by Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, for his work as a ‘Humanitarian Leader’

PHILANTHROPY AGE

MAINâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; Abdullah Al Matouq, Humanitarian Envoy to the UN, greets Ban Ki-moon

PHILANTHROPY AGE

An estimated 1,080,000 children under the age of five suffer from acute malnutrition, and around 13.1 million Yemenis have no access to improved water sources, or to adequate sanitation facilities. A further 8.6 million people have insufficient access to health services. “All my work has been in the humanitarian domain, however nothing has brought tears to my eyes [as quickly] as what I have seen in Yemen,” recalls Al Matouq. “Excuse me for putting it this way, but I swear to God, I raise sheep and they have a five-star kind of life compared to [people in Yemen]. “I used to hear or read about their situation, but it wasn’t even near to what I saw with my own eyes,” he continues. “The bare ground is their bed and the sky is their cover, especially the refugees – not to mention the displaced inside Yemen.” There are more than 240,000 refugees in Yemen, and more than 300,000 internally displaced persons, placing a huge strain on infrastructure and institutions. “I have seen the refugees in an area called Haradh at the Yemeni-Saudi Arabian border, including those coming from African countries like Somalia and Nigeria,” he says. “These people are told that once they cross the sea and reach Saudi Arabia they can start a new life as traders, but far from this, those that do not drown end up in a dire situation. “A Yemeni family, of seven to ten people, is living on 50kg of flour, five litres of oil and some cans of beans, for a whole month,” he adds. “How could this be enough? Moreover, they live without electricity, leading a life not worthy of human beings.” Such intolerable misery has already prompted Al Matouq to take much-needed action. He has met with Gulf foreign ministers and warned them of a “time bomb” that could have dramatic consequences beyond Yemen’s own borders. “I told the ministers that anybody could pay [the poor people]… that once they secure a sum of money for their families, they would be willing even to kill themselves,” says Al Matouq. “Anyone could buy them, and the nearest people to them is us in the Gulf countries.”

“Transparency is a must, for if there is no transparency, there will be no trust” A former Minister of Justice in Kuwait, Al Matouq is no stranger to efforts to combat extremism and terrorism, “so I know very well that one of the causes of terrorism is poverty; poor people want to live, they may consider anything”. Donations of $8bn have so far been raised by the Gulf states to boost development in the country, however no funds have been forthcoming for relief aid, including food supplies, and now Al Matouq believes it is time to return to Yemen and to grant direct assistance to the forgotten masses. “The warning was heeded, but it needs a follow-up,” he says. “I’m talking about helping Yemen on a purely humanitarian basis, and I have suggested [to Kuwait’s Foreign Minister] that on top of humanitarian considerations, he could add security, political, religious, and moral considerations.

“We must help these people,” he continues. “First, because they are our neighbours; second, because they are Muslim; third, they are Arab; and fourth, they are human beings just like us. Everybody agrees on this, but who’s going to accept the task?” Al Matouq argues that Arab organisations must ally with international groups to alleviate suffering in problem areas across the region. “There should be participation from non-governmental organisations in the Arab world, and those from around the globe,” he says. “The question is whether the region can stand alone in trying to tackle these issues. But it cannot – there must be partnerships. “All countries, regardless of their ideologies, religions and line of thinking, have memoranda of understanding and cooperation between each other,” he notes. “It would seem worthwhile that they cooperate on humanitarian issues too, especially as they share many things in common.” Kuwait has struck partnerships with a range of global organisations and the IICO, which, along with the Kuwait Red Crescent Society, receives and divests all the

QCHARITY.org

MDGs-2015 Since the adoption of the UN Millenium Development Goals

Working closely with vulnerable communities. . . QC has provided empowering economic opportunties globally to more than 30,000 families in 32 countries

COMMITTED TOWARDS ERADICATING EXTREME POVERTY AND HUNGER

ERADICATE EXTREME POVERTY AND HUNGER

PHILANTHROPY AGE

“The question is whether the region can stand alone in trying to tackle these issues. But it cannot - there must be partnerships” humanitarian funds raised in the country, and has strict criteria when selecting those with which it will work. The IICO has both internal and external auditors, so any prospective partners must be prepared for equal scrutiny if they are to receive funding. “Transparency is a must, for if there is no transparency, there will be no trust,” says Al Matouq. “Every penny that comes in or goes out [of the IICO] is accounted for, and so I don’t deal with any organisation that lacks the proper transparency.” Al Matouq insists that there is a noticeable trend towards transparency in the region, led by governments wary of soiling their reputations, by unwittingly disbursing funds to any undeserving, or perhaps inappropriate recipients. “I see now that Gulf governments in particular are stressing that charity and humanitarian organisations in their countries should be transparent in their dealings,” he says. “There are several types of control in place: control over banks, control from the US Treasury, and control from the foreign ministries in all our countries in the Gulf. All regulatory and oversight entities know what’s going on and they also know that observing this transparency means upholding the country’s reputation. “In Saudi Arabia and the UAE, they closed down many charity associations because of their lack of transparency,” he adds. “Even in Kuwait, more than 10 charity organisations were closed last year, because of a lack of transparency and other violations. Now

everyone is well aware that in order to preserve their organisations they have to show their commitment to transparency, and they should present exact financial statements audited both internally and externally.” In Kuwait, this has prompted a race towards respectability: organisations are climbing over themselves to achieve credibility through ISO awards and certification. At IICO, a committee has been assembled to ensure that monies are spent wisely and by consensus. “We don’t spend a single dollar without knowing exactly where it’s going, and what its implications are for our organisation,” says Al Matouq. Such careful oversight, Al Matouq insists, has reinforced confidence in charitable and humanitarian institutions across the region. At the IICO, this has manifested in a host of multimillion-dollar contributions from a collection of private individuals and companies across Kuwait. “It’s the culture in Kuwait; since we were children our parents raised us to give,” he

ABOVE Al Matouq believes increased transparency and oversight have helped to boost charitable giving in the region

says. “Our parents would pay zakat, but even though we as children were not required to pay, our parents would give us money to donate. They planted these values inside us. “Furthermore, with the advances in information [technology] and the rise of social media, people can see the impact [of their giving]. So it’s about marketing as well: people give more because they can see what their money is doing, and they trust the institution.” The State of Kuwait is among the leading donors to UN agencies struggling to cope with the fallout of the ongoing conflict in Syria. Kuwait has made pledges worth $1bn to a host of UN humanitarian bodies, and two Kuwait-hosted events raised $1.5bn in 2013 and $2.4bn in 2014. The fundraising events, which saw donations from 70 countries and 24 international organisations, each broke the record for the highest amount ever pledged for a single humanitarian crisis. At the IICO, meanwhile, Al Matouq is still touched by the generosity of his countrymen. “Many of the people who make donations don’t mention their names, and don’t want others to know how much they gave,” says Al Matouq. “One businessman made a donation of $1.6m on the condition that he remained anonymous. Then another donor came and asked the value of the single biggest donation we had ever received. We told him the value but not who had donated the money, and so he gave us $2m under the same arrangement that he would remain anonymous. “In another case, we had an old man, about 90-years-old, who came to us,” he continues. “We have a magazine that shows all of our projects, from Somalia to Pakistan and the Philippines, where we are building schools or hospitals or other things. We showed him the magazine and he said ‘I want them all’. He paid for and developed every single one of those projects, and then he gave us another $93m as an endowment. And all of these donations are made for the sake of giving and not for fame. Thank God, there is still goodness.” n

PHILANTHROPY AGE

THE CHANCE OF A LIFETIME: HOW YOUR GIVING CAN HELP SAVE A GENERATION

More than 160,000 Syrians have died since the country began its descent into chaos in March 2011. Another 3 million have been forced to flee the country, leaving behind their homes, loved ones and livelihoods and striking out into a dangerous and uncertain future. The UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR, is struggling to meet the food, health, education and protection needs of these displaced millions: as of July the agency had raised only 30 per cent of its $3.74bn target for 2014. Over the following pages we trace the impact that a donation to the UNHCR can make. We track the cash from the donor’s wallet to the people who need it most, and as good intentions translate into worthwhile deeds, we illustrate how the generosity of one human being can change forever the lives of countless others. From the Gulf to Lebanon, via Switzerland and the Mediterranean, we follow the money and demonstrate how every dollar really does make a difference. BY Andrew White

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n January 2014 the UN stopped counting the dead in Syria. The intensity and the brutality of the conflict were such that safe access to war-torn swathes of the country had become impossible; all the outside world could do now was rely on the estimates of NGOs and the first-hand accounts of the millions of refugees streaming into Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq, among other countries. This mass exile has placed a huge burden on the humanitarian and aid agencies tasked with ensuring that those who escape the conflict are able to survive with dignity. It has also placed a near-intolerable strain on Syria’s neighbours: unofficial estimates place the true number of refugees at far higher than the official figure of 3 million. “The Syrian crisis, both with regards to refugees and internally displaced persons,

1.1

million

The number of registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon

has created one of the largest populations-in-need that we have ever seen,” says Daniel Endres, director of external relations at the UNHCR. “This year alone we expect another million refugees to arrive in neighbouring countries, and this represents a huge challenge.” In late May, Philanthropy Age visited Lebanon, one of the leading recipients of refugees from Syria, travelling to the Akkar District in the north, and the Bekaa Valley in the east. Both areas have long, porous borders with Syria, and both have been overwhelmed by new arrivals. The number of Syrian refugees registered in Lebanon has grown from 5,000 in the summer of 2011, to more than 1.1 million as of mid-August 2014. Unofficial figures place the true total at more than 2 million, in a country of just 4.5 million before the conflict began. Today, one of every four people in Lebanon is a Syrian refugee. “There simply is not a country in the world today that has more refugees in proportion to its size than Lebanon,” says Ninette Kelley, the UNHCR’s representative in Lebanon. “Lebanon has so far shown incredible generosity in responding to this crisis, however, we don’t have enough money to support the needs of the Syrian refugees, let alone Lebanon and Lebanese institutions in the manner in which they really need to be supported.”

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“This massive increase in our budget has all been towards operations in the field,” says Imran Riza, the UNHCR regional representative to the GCC “What is important for anyone who wants to contribute is to be countries, based in Riyadh. “This means that it’s been going to the sure that their contribution has a direct impact on the refugees,” beneficiaries, rather than being spent on more headquarters.” says Daniel Endres at UNHCR. Today around 88 per cent of “We can guarantee that whatUNHCR’s 7,000 staff are in the ever support we receive will be channelled to the refugees in the field, while 690 staff work in Geneva – down from 1,300 in most relevant, most prioritised and most effective manner, and 2006. “We spend only 5 per cent on management and adminour donors trust us because istration,” explains Endres. “At they can see everything that least 83 per cent of funding goes is happening. directly into programmes to help “We work with national and international NGOs, and we have refugees, and another 12 per cent a very rigorous selection mecha- is spent on programme support, things such as warehouse and nism, so only the most qualified stockpile management. and the most effective ones are “Everything we spend, and chosen,” he continues. “In this way, we multiply the relief effort, every partner that spends money with us, is audited as well as bring local knowledge independently,” adds Endres. into the global effort.” “We have independent auditors As humanitarian crises internally and externally, and proliferate, the UNHCR’s budget an auditing board, so there is a has increased almost threefold multiplication of verifications. over the last decade, while staff numbers at the agency’s Geneva It’s a constant presence and everything is published.” headquarters have contracted.

COUNTING THE COSTS

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In Lebanon, 82 per cent of refugees are in rented accommodation, many living in Lebanese families’ homes. Local communities are incentivised; for example, locals’ homes may be renovated if they agree to take in families. Now, however, villages have become crowded and tensions are emerging between the refugees and their hosts. “The pressure of refugees has been very dramatic and we are seeing this in increased consumption of water and electricity, as well as great pressures on other infrastructure including water and sanitation,” says Kelley. Right now, the UNHCR and its partners are fighting a losing battle. Refugee numbers are rising steadily, while money is running out: as of July, the agency had raised only 30 per cent of its $3.74bn target for its Syria Response Plan for 2014. Furthermore, there are precious little government funds to cut the shortfall. Many consider Lebanon to have suffered a significant economic meltdown even before the influx: GDP growth dropped from 10.3 per cent in 2009 to 8 per cent in 2010 and 2 per cent in 2011. Upon the arrival of the refugees, it sank to 1.2 per cent in 2012 and 0.9 per cent in 2013. “The Lebanese economy has been affected by the war in Syria by $8bn, and the Lebanese state needs $4.7bn to return the economic stability that it had before the Syrian crisis,” says Sejaan Azzi, Lebanon’s Minister of Labour.

“The Palestinian and Syrian refugees are dangers to the unity of the country, and then there’s the economic, financial burdens, and on the working population,” he continues. “Lebanon is unable to bear the brunt of the Syrian refugee crisis. Its economy is unable to carry it. Its geographic space does not allow it to host these numbers and there are security problems.” “Lebanon faces the most extreme situation,” concedes Endres, warning of the effect on ordinary Lebanese. “It has pushed a significant segment of the Lebanese population into poverty because rents are going up, while salaries go down. It is having an enormous impact and, for Lebanon’s own stability, it is vital to do something to ease this situation.”

Fundraising shortfalls have a straightforward consequence: the less money there is coming in, the less the UNHCR and its partners can do to help. “We’re looking at a very serious shortage and we’re constantly looking to have to reprioritise what we’re going to put first among equally compelling needs,” says Kelley. “We’ve already made restrictions in healthcare, for example, and we’ve limited how much we can do in education. Now we’re coming up to another critical review in terms of what we can do. “We are reaching out to the Gulf countries,” she adds. “There are so many ways that your efforts, your energy and contributions, can make a huge difference to people’s lives.”

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TO PROVIDE A FAMILY WITH A UNHCR TENT EQUIPPED TO COPE WITH WINTER CONDITIONS ocated on the outskirts of Dubai, International Humanitarian City (IHC) is the world’s largest aid depot and home to a host of international aid organisations including the World Food Programme (WFP), the International Red Cross and the UNHCR. From 100,000 square metres of warehouse, storage and office space, humanitarian agencies stockpile and disburse billions of dollars worth of essential equipment, from family tents and staple foodstuffs, to armed vehicles and bulletproof vests. Every single item is destined for foreign shores, and Dubai’s strategic location at the nexus of trade and logistics routes between Africa, Asia and the Middle East ensures that goods can be quickly and efficiently delivered on demand to troublespots from Sudan to the Philippines. “The UNHCR keeps stockpiles of core relief items in many locations around the world, but Dubai is the most important one,” says Soliman Daud, senior global supply officer at the refugee agency. “Globally, at any given time, we have enough core relief items stockpiled to help 700,000 people. Today 50 per cent of our [global inventory] is in Dubai.”

More than half of UNHCR aid to Syria comes through IHC, and in June Philanthropy Age watched as the agency loaded 42 shipping containers with a range of goods bound for the war-torn country. Weighing almost 250 tons in total, the dispatch included 100,000 blankets, 100,000 sleeping mats, and 40,000 jerrycans along with other equipment such as tents and cooking equipment. The crates would be taken to the nearby port at Jebel Ali, and then delivered via the Mediterranean to the port of Tartous, Syria, where they would be distributed among some of the estimated 6.4 million Syrians that have been forced to flee their homes but remain in the country. A series of shipments and airlifts has spirited thousands of tons of goods to Syria as well as Lebanon, Jordan and other countries buckling under the weight of the refugee crisis. And according to the UNHCR, the cost of storing and distributing these items in such bulk would be prohibitive were it not for the support of the Dubai Government, which donated the land for IHC and bankrolls the free zone’s operations. The UNHCR has operated from Dubai since 2006, and this relationship was

formalised in 2012 with the signing of an agreement designating the UN agency as a member of IHC. As a consequence, the UNHCR pays no rent on the 22,500 square metres of warehouse and office space that it utilises. The Dubai Government also covers the cost of water and electricity, so that IHC operates as a heavily subsidised platform for inter-agency coordination, one that is enabling global aid players to funnel money towards beneficiaries rather than hordes of back-office staff. “This support is very valuable, and IHC’s geographical location is very important too,” says Daud. “Dubai has a strategic location and it also has a very good logistics infrastructure connecting the emirate to many different parts of the world.” Around 30 per cent of the agency’s shipments from Dubai are targeted towards mitigating the human suffering caused by the conflict in Syria; the rest is destined for other crises, and Africa in particular. “We send by air, by sea and even by road,” adds Daud. “Near to us is Jebel Ali Port, which has very good facilities, and we are also near to seven airports in the UAE, all of which we can use for deliveries. There is a lot of work to do.”

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TO REGISTER A REFUGEE IN LEBANON

t the UNHCR registration centre in Tripoli, northern Lebanon, scores of Syrian refugees cluster quietly under shade as they wait to be ushered into a large white tent. Their docility this morning is as much a consequence of exhaustion or resignation, as it is indicative of any newfound reservoirs of patience; the previous week, a woman set herself on fire on this spot in an effort to draw attention to the plight of her family. These people are desperate, and this huge canvas pavilion, stamped with the blue olive branches of the UNHCR logo, represents any hope they have for the future. Inside the tent, which serves as the agency’s main registration facility for the almost 300,000 refugees that have so far flooded into northern Lebanon, the atmosphere is different altogether. It is as if the physical pain and psychological strain of days spent on the road, on foot, or squeezed into battered vehicles, can be contained no longer and finds its outlet here. Parents weep while their children run amok or slump mutely in plastic chairs, overwhelmed by everything they have seen and everything they have already lost in the course of their young lives.

Yet for the first time in days, weeks or even months, help is at hand for these wretched families: among them move blue-jacketed UNHCR staff, taking names, guiding them through registration forms, and encouraging them in their first steps towards rebuilding their shattered lives. “Registration is crucial because it allows us to assess who is here, and what their needs are,” says Ninette Kelley at UNHCR. “Across the whole country we’re registering 11,000 new people per week, more than most countries would take in a year, and we’re also reregistering 12,000 people a week who were issued with their papers a year ago. It’s a massive exercise, one of the most complex in the world today.” The Tripoli centre processes around 400 new arrivals each day, as well as another 800 who are renewing their status as refugees. Once registered, displaced Syrians are able to avail of food programmes and medical treatment, to apply for accommodation, and to move freely without fear of being detained at the hundreds of police checkpoints scattered across the country. They exist once more, individual names and details in a ledger and distinct from the shapeless torrent of humanity that cascades

out of Syria each day the ABOVE LEFT Children under 18 receive vaccinations against conflict drags on. polio and measles, as well as Each person is intervitamin supplements viewed, their irises are scanned for biometric RIGHT The Tripoli registration centre in northern Lebanon records, and they are processes around 400 new assigned a number. Depend- arrivals each day ents are counted and children under the age of 18 are administered vaccinations against polio and measles, and given vitamin supplements. “The Ministry of Public Health and UNICEF have gone out with a very aggressive campaign,” says Bathoul Ahmed, a public information assistant with UNHCR, of the vaccination campaign. Syria had been polio-free since 1995; however, an eruption of cases in March this year was described by the UN as “the most challenging outbreak in the history of polio eradication”. According to Bathoul, the risk of the disease spreading to Lebanon is acute, and so vaccination teams are sent door-to-door in refugee communities, to schools across the country and to border crossings and registration centres. Neither the refugees, nor the country that hosts them, can afford to count polio among the myriad miseries carried wearily across the border.

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Of Lebanonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population is made up of Syrian refugees

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in winter, they also received winterisation assistance: fuel and a stove with which to cook and stave off the cold. Finally they received an electronic card to buy supplies, which the UNHCR and its partners top up each month. “Today the WFP provides food vouchers to 73 per cent of the refugee population, a section of the population we consider to be the most vulnerable, and who could not survive without these vouchers,” says Ninette Kelley at UNHCR. The agency is also extending the cards to certain core relief items, which gives some automony to the refugees and injects money into the frail Lebanese economy TO PROVIDE A ‘NEWCOMERS KIT’ more quickly. FOR A FAMILY OF REFUGEES Without their cash card, Rawda’s family would have little chance of survival, itting on a thin foam mattress yet with an allowance of just $180 a month, on the floor of her new home, the family is not yet food-secure. “My priorRawda recalls the moment the ities are to buy frozen fish, bread, milk, rice, missiles struck. It was December 2013, and cheese and mushrooms,” she says. “However warplanes had been circling the airspace above the village of Al-Zarah, west of Homs, I am short [of money] at the end of every for hours. Shortly after midnight they rained month, and so I borrow from people and repay them whenever I can.” their ordnance down on the village, killing As well as basic foodstuffs, Rawda Rawda’s husband and badly injuring two of dreams of an operation to remove the her young children. shrapnel from her 14-year-old son’s leg, or Today, Rawda and her seven sons a replacement joint for the grotesquely and daughters live in a single room in a scarred shoulder of her 10-year-old UNHCR-supported shelter in Khirbet Daoud daughter. Most of all, she yearns for a home in northern Lebanon. The two-storey buildings are grey and ugly, squat concrete blocks “somewhere safe and stable… where the children can go to school and study”. “ I more suited to cattle than human habitahope,” she says, “but I do not expect.” tion. Yet they offer a measure of protection from the heat of summer and bitter cold of winter, and for that Rawda and her children are grateful. They arrived in Lebanon in late February this year. As with all families given shelter by the UNHCR and its partners – in this instance the Danish Refugee Council – they were provided with a simple ‘newcomers kit’ containing non-food items (mattresses, The funding shortfall in blankets, hygiene kits, and kitchen sets), UNHCR’s Syria Response dignity kits for women, and a small collection of basic foodstuffs. As they arrived Plan for 2014

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TO KEEP A PREMATURE BABY ALIVE IN AN INCUBATOR FOR ONE DAY n the early months of the Syrian conflict, the rooms of the Dr Ferhat Hospital in Joub Jannine were filled with war wounded, not fighters, but innocent civilians caught in the crosshairs of their own government. Now the 72-bed facility, just ten minutes from the Syrian border to the east, faces a new challenge: the welfare of tens of thousands of refugees who have settled in the area and come knocking on the hospital’s doors each day. Dr Mohamad Hamed Farhat is a partner at the hospital his father founded. He spends part of his days treating patients, and the rest negotiating with family members and GlobeMed, a UNHCR partner that provides medical assistance to registered refugees. Through GlobeMed, a private healthcare firm, the UNHCR covers 75 per cent of all primary healthcare treatments, up to a ceiling of $15,000. This covers essential treatment including emergency and lifesaving interventions, as well as pre-natal and post-natal care. Around 20 cases are admitted each day and today there are a throng of visitors and patients in the hospital’s reception area. Among them is Khalaf, 69, a former

construction worker whose three-year-old daughter is a patient at Dr Ferhat’s. Doua’a sliced two of her tendons wide open reaching to pick up a broken cup; her hand has been operated on successfully, however there remains the matter of the unsettled bill. Khalaf has been unable to find work in the 12 months since he, his wife and their nine children came to Lebanon, and they have been able to raise only $200 of the $500 they owe for their daughter’s operation. The hospital and the father have reached an impasse. “I did not realise how much the bill would be,” says Khalaf. “If we had known yesterday how much it would cost then we would have gone back to Syria and had it done there. That would have cost us $200, maybe $300, including travel.” Dr Ferhat, meanwhile, is left at a loss. “There are medical, legal, financial and human issues at stake,” he says. “Every day we have people coming to us begging for operations and treatments, and we are trying to help people but there is a limit. I cannot afford to pay from this from my own pocket, or from hospital funds. “It’s very difficult, but what can you do? You can’t close the doors,” he continues.

“I feel depressed but we have to continue, we have to stand up. We can’t turn people away, as it’s not moral. However, we’re losing money for [these treatments] and we should not be doing this.” If the limitations of funding are evident in primary healthcare, then they are brutally apparent in the case of secondary and tertiary care, which the UNHCR and its partners are not able to cover to any degree. “We simply do not have enough funds to provide care for chronically ill patients: hospital care, secondary and tertiary medical care is beyond our means,” says Ninette Kelley at UNHCR. “Serious and life-threatening conditions are going untreated and it’s very sad,” she continues. “Children are unable to receive cancer treatments because we cannot afford it: treatment for one child can cost up to $100,000, and with that same money we can provide primary healthcare treatment to 10,000 children. We are constantly making difficult choices.” “Cancer patients don’t come here because they know the situation,” confirms Dr Ferhat, quietly. “At first some patients came but when they saw the price of treatments they left. We don’t see them any more. Not at all.”

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TO EDUCATE ONE REFUGEE CHILD FOR ONE YEAR IN LEBANON harifa, 13, looks as though she has been skipping rope all her life. A picture of insouciant grace, she counts each revolution in a different language, dancing through Arabic, English and French every time she lifts her little feet from the ground: “Sitta, seven, huit,” she shouts. “Tis’a, ten, onze…” The youngster, who arrived in Lebanon 18 months ago with her mother, father and six siblings, is expending her energies after an afternoon in the classroom. A year ago she would have been exhausted by this time of day, having spent hours in nearby fields picking fruits, vegetables and spices, in order to help boost her family’s meagre income. “I used to be tired and sick with work, but now I’m very happy,” she says. “School is lovely, I’m making friends and learning a new language as I did not speak French before.” Sharifa is a child again, infused with an innocence that belies the squalor of her surroundings. She and her family live in an informal tented settlement near Terbol in the Bekaa Valley, an otherwise beautiful swathe of farmland in eastern Lebanon. Here, in a world of open latrines, crusted brown mud and swollen black flies, the arrival of the school bus is one of the few

moments when these refugees can entertain hope for the future. Sharifa and her friends attend classes in the afternoon as part of the ‘second shift’ programme instituted by the UNHCR and its partners. It is estimated that between 32 and 34 per cent of registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon are of school age, and so the UNHCR pays for teachers across the country to pull double duty in order to meet demand. The morning shift is dedicated to Lebanese pupils and the Lebanese syllabus, the afternoon to refugee children and a curriculum designed to dovetail with Syria’s education system. Schools running two shifts provide classes in Arabic, French, Maths, Science, Civil Society and Geography, and take students between the ages of six and 14, after which it is hoped that the pupils will be fluent enough in French to enter secondary education in Lebanon, should they wish to continue their studies. Currently, 32,000 Syrian refugees are enrolled under the programme, at an annual cost of $630 per child per year. Ahmad Mumtazz Jaam is the principal at Jedeidet Al Kayteh, a second shift school on the coast of the Akkar District in northern

Lebanon. Close to 600 pupils attend classes in the morning, and then 431 Syrian refugees fill the same wooden benches each afternoon. Funding for the school comes from the UNHCR through its implementing partner, Save The Children. The money is transferred to the bank account of the school, and this allows Jaam and his staff to run the second shift. “The children are learning, and in the first term at least 40 per cent passed [their exams],” he says. “We didn’t expect this, but it happened.” There are significant challenges to maintaining this pass rate. According to Jaam, as many as 330 of the second shift pupils attend classes without being persuaded to do so by the school and its staff. The remaining 100 are more difficult to coax through the school gates. Their parents are “not pro-education”, he says, and pupils are sent to see “what they can get out of it”: a free pencil, perhaps a copybook, or a school bag. There are also issues with discipline, as you might expect considering the background of the children. “It’s a condensed programme that is all academic: there are no PE or art classes, no sports, no computers,” says Jaam. “So the Syrian child living in one room with the whole family comes to the school and faces even greater stresses as [the curriculum] is purely academic. “Some of these children have already lost two or three years of education and they are living under stress so they can be quite aggressive,” he adds. “However things are starting to get better with the students and with the parents, because they have been studying here for three or four months now. “We are trying to be positive with the children and put ourselves in their shoes,” Jaam continues, but they are doing it on their own. “We don’t have psychologists in the school or any psychosocial support so the teachers have to play this role. We would like to bring in a psychologist, someone who has experience with trauma and knows the Syrian background, to help the children, but so far this has not happened.”

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TO GIVE A YOUNG REFUGEE A THREE-MONTH TECHNICAL SKILLS COURSE

n Halba, the capital of Akkar District in northern Lebanon, a small community centre offers young adults the opportunity to learn new skills and therefore boost their chances of employment. Syrian refugees attend classes in hairdressing, computer skills, cooking and English, among other disciplines. They are joined by a handful of Lebanese youth, part of a concerted effort to reassure the local population that they, too, will be offered much-needed opportunities.

THE MOTHER: Doua’a, 22, arrived in Lebanon three years ago, with her husband and two young children. She enrolled in a sewing class and today she works as a teaching assistant, helping new arrivals to fashion bedsheets, aprons, oven gloves and clothes for prayer. “It has helped me a lot because I get a salary here and although it’s not so high it helps me to support my family,” she says. “I am paid $250 a month for working three days a week, three hours a day.” With the help of the Italian government, the UNHCR has been able to provide Doua’a with her own sewing machine, which she uses at home to work as a seamstress, stitching and mending and giving second life to that which otherwise might be discarded. “I live just up the road [from the community centre], so when I am not working here I am working at home,” she says. “I feel like this new skill that I have learnt has opened many new opportunities for me. And now we have a roof over our heads, which is not the case in Syria any more.”

THE LAWYER: Hamood, 27, crossed the border in March 2013. He had been studying at Damascus University, and was weeks away from graduating as a lawyer. Today he is taking a computing class in order to help support his mother, father, and eight siblings. “It’s a huge struggle, as I was so close to graduating and I feel like I have had to start from nothing again,” he says. “You’re not even sure if you want to dream any more: it’s really difficult to sit and think about your future because what you thought that future would be, has been completely destroyed.” Hamood’s hopes of becoming a lawyer likely ended when the conflict began: even if he is able to return to Syria one day, the disruption to his education will be lasting. There is no way he can continue his training in Lebanon, as wages are low and the family is struggling to pay for food, let alone a law degree. “[The community centre] has helped us a lot psychologically,” he says. “We’ve met new people, good people, and made new friends. There is a sense of real community, among the refugees and the Lebanese too. I have also strengthened my skills, which will be very important.”

THE TEACHER: Manar, 26, was a primary school teacher in Homs when the fighting broke out. Although a qualified educator, she did not carry her degree certificates with her to Lebanon, and so is unable to teach formally in her new country. “I am doing some tutoring and applying for work, but it’s difficult to get anything without being able to prove my accreditation,” she says in excellent English. “It is very frustrating as I can’t even work as a teaching assistant without the correct documentation.” Manar, like many others, left Syria with just the clothes on her back. She never thought to bring her degree certificates with her, and never expected to be in Lebanon for such a prolonged period of time. “When you first register with the UNHCR you get your registration certificate, which is valid for one year,” she says. “Everyone said ‘we will not be here for a year’ and they never expected to see the registration centre again. In July last year they started to give certificates valid for two years. That really hit hard. We have been destroyed; we have lost our education and we cannot find jobs. It has broken us completely.”

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Good Business The founder and chairman of one of the Middle East’s leading family conglomerates, Khalaf Al Habtoor is used to making an impact. He tells Philanthropy Age why the Arab world must do more to aid the victims of regional unrest BY Joanne Bladd n his airy office overlooking one of Dubai’s oldest districts, Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor is wrestling with the idea of eradicating extreme poverty worldwide. If the concept of zakat, the charity tax Muslims are obliged to pay, was adopted globally, he muses, the money raised would be sufficient to expunge preventable diseases, starvation and more. “It’s only 2.5 per cent [of income], which is nothing,” he says, gesturing broadly. “If just the US and Europe took on the principle of zakat, there would be no poverty. But the problem is simple; not enough people care.” Al Habtoor is a man who trades in big ideas. As chairman of Dubai’s Al Habtoor Group, his bold forays into hospitality, real estate, construction and more helped turn an engineering business into one of the UAE’s largest and wealthiest conglomerates. In the last 18 months alone, the firm has snapped up a hotel in Budapest, launched Dubai’s first Waldorf Astoria and unveiled its most ambitious real estate project to date:

the $3bn Al Habtoor City. The development, which is set to include three luxury hotels, penthouse apartments and a theatre, will be bankrolled entirely by the group. A formidable networker, Al Habtoor has gained the ear of royalty, politicians, industry titans and businessmen the world over. The 65-year-old Emirati counts former US President Jimmy Carter and the Queen of England among his circle, with the former penning a foreword to his 2012 autobiography that applauded his outspoken style. “To read of his life is to take inspiration from his actions,” President Carter noted. Former

“Charity isn’t for show. When God gives to you, you have to give to the people”

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US congressman Paul Findley describes him as a gentleman. “He puts a good face on the words Arab, Islam and Muslim.” For a man whose greatest boyhood wish was to one day own his own shop, the journey has been little short of extraordinary. “I am living proof that you can be whatever you want to be,” Al Habtoor said in a speech to the graduating class of Illinois College in 2010, shortly after receiving an honorary doctorate of humane letters from the institute. Al Habtoor’s philanthropic work is a barometer of his ambition. With the same dexterity that earned him a reputation as one of the Gulf’s savviest businessmen, he has staked out a position as a leading humanitarian, doling out millions of dollars of his own money to causes close to his heart. In 2012, he launched the Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor Foundation (KAHF), and took the significant step of awarding it a 20 per cent stake in his business, hitching its fortunes to that of his company. The foundation also receives the group’s zakat, thus netting a further 2.5 per cent of its income. This is far from philanthropic windowdressing: the shareholding alone is worth millions of dollars. “If we make a profit, the foundation takes a share of that profit,” Al Habtoor says. “Charity isn’t for show. When God gives to you, you have to give to the people. Wherever there are people in need, it is our duty to assist them as much as we can. We are all human beings.” Faith underpins much of his philosophy.

20%

The Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor Foundation holds one-fifth of the shares in Dubai’s Habtoor Group

“Sometimes you can’t be a diplomat, you have to be tough, straightforward and strong” “I am a strong believer in God, and in the constitution of God. It is a discipline: to rise early, to work hard.” His charitable priorities include education, fostering interfaith and inter-cultural bonds, and easing the plight of those caught in the Middle East’s myriad conflict zones. Universities in the UAE, Egypt and the US have all received generous sums – both the American University of Sharjah and Zayed University have endowed chairs in his name – while a $5.1m gift in 2007 helped to fund a cutting-edge medical simulation centre in Dubai. At the US-based Illinois College, the Khalaf Al Habtoor Leadership Centre is busily attempting to shape the next generation of trailblazers. It is, he laughs, quite a turnaround for a man who dispensed with formal education at the age of 12. “I barely went to school at all,” he admits. “I hated it. Perhaps I’m trying to compensate now for the mistake I made. I learned from life, which perhaps is good, but I know the value of a good education too.” Al Habtoor has also put his financial muscle to work closer to home. The Palestine question is a bitter one for the Dubaibased entrepreneur, who has described the grim life of its residents as “one we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemies”. He has paired with both the United Nations and the non-profit Carter Center – founded by the former US President and his wife – to channel aid and drive job creation in the troubled region, which was left reeling again this summer following the outbreak of renewed hostilities with Israel. In 2011, he was awarded the Shield of Merit by the UN

agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), in recognition of his humanitarian work. Syria is equally a growing concern. The Arab state’s brutal conflict has created more than three million refugees, who are largely corralled into camps in Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere. Almost half of Syria’s pre-war population is now homeless, with many still trapped miserably in the crossfire, a toll that surpasses that created by any other recent conflict. With fresh turmoil roiling Iraq, the ranks of the regional displaced are only likely to swell further. Al Habtoor has donated more than $3m to the UAE Red Crescent and the UNRWA to aid Syrian and Palestinian refugees, and is characteristically blunt in his view that both the West and the Arab states must do more to stem the blot spreading across the regional landscape. “The Arabs are responsible to the people of Syria; we haven’t done enough,” he says. “This [the fighting] is a disease, a cancer in the region, and one we have to stop. Sometimes you can’t be a diplomat, you have to be tough, straightforward and strong. As the Americans say, talk is cheap and we don’t need words, we need action.” Al Habtoor knows what it is to be poor. Born in Dubai in 1949, when the emirate was little more than a dusty trading post, he has had a ringside seat to its transformation into a bustling metropolis. Rather like his home city, Al Habtoor has achieved a staggering amount from modest roots, but remembers well the one-room barasti of his youth. In person, he is a force, with a punishing work ethic and an outspoken political style. He is charming company and a gifted storyteller, peppering his many colourful anecdotes with a booming laugh. At the Emirates Literary Festival earlier this year, he held his audience spellbound for an hour with tales of old Dubai and his rags-to-riches career. It hasn’t been an entirely smooth ride, he confided: attempts to run a soap factory and sell imported Scandinavian tents both fell flat. A proud Emirati first, Al Habtoor retains great affection for his country. He has given

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“The Arabs are responsible to the people of Syria; we haven’t done enough” large sums of money, quietly and without fanfare, to low-income local families or other causes in need of help. In the weeks before our meeting, KAHF paid for a mass wedding for 30 Emirati couples, funding both the ceremony and a lump sum for each pair beginning their married life. The foundation, at Al Habtoor’s behest, also operates a payroll that doles out a monthly stipend to people or families in need. “My wife is the one who will remind me; she is the first to notice someone who needs help and she will ask me to get involved,” he says. “We have a huge payroll for people, both here in the UAE and outside. My family feels strongly about philanthropy; they deserve a lot of credit.” Still, he needs little encouragement to act. In 2009 Al Habtoor watched as the mayor of Hrar, a neglected town in northern Lebanon, bemoaned the area’s lack of medical facilities on television. In quick succession, that short clip prompted a $6.8m donation and the start of the construction process for the 50-bed Hrar Hospital. While retirement is not in the pipeline – “the word ‘retirement’ is not in my vocabulary and neither is ‘holiday’”, he says – Al Habtoor does intend to scale up his philanthropy through his foundation, bringing his particular brand of impact-led largesse to a wider audience. These may be early-stage ambitions but, if Al Habtoor’s career to date is any indicator, they are likely to be bold. “I have big plans for the future, over the next three years,” he says. “We’ll be studying what projects we can launch, and where we can help. It will have nothing to do with culture, religion or colour. We’ll just go wherever we are needed in the world.” n

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Trachoma in Ethiopia:

From auction to action BY Adrienne Cernigoi t Dubai Ladies Club, the thick, oyster-coloured carpet muffles the click of women’s heels. In an elegant white room, polite murmurs crescendo as the bidding begins in earnest at the annual Art4Sight auction; more than 100 philanthropists and art collectors will vie for ownership of 39 works donated by regional artists. Meanwhile, in Kosero – a kebele, or sub-district, of the highland Amhara region in Ethiopia – a small group of women in pink, yellow and blue print wraps sit patiently by a golden haystack, amid lush fields. They too murmur and chatter. The community group meets weekly, swapping tips and monitoring each other, to discuss household and personal cleanliness. Both groups, while worlds apart, are fighting for the same goal: to eliminate blinding trachoma. The proceeds of Art4Sight’s auction – an initiative of the Noor Dubai Foundation – are part of a greater effort to keep Kosero’s families healthy and their children in school.

While trachoma – estimated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to affect 21.4 million people globally – was eliminated in the UAE in the 1980s, Ethiopia is one of 50 countries where it remains endemic. The fly-borne eye disease is most pernicious in the country’s northern Amhara region, where 60 per cent of the population is at risk. Children are most likely to contract the bacteria first, transmitting it to their families. The infection causes inflammation of the inner eyelid, treatable with antibiotics. But repeated infections prompt a build-up of scar tissue, causing the eyelid to turn inwards, where the eyelashes rub against the cornea. The advanced stage, called trichiasis, eventually leads to blindness. Seid Hussein, 78, knows only too well the excruciating pain this causes. “It itches and it’s most painful at night,” he says, pointing to his left eye. “Because of [trichiasis] I only move around my village. I don’t go far away because if something happens no-one will be there to help.”

MAIN Dr Manal Taryam, CEO of the Noor Dubai Foundation, with the women of Kosero

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Hussein is queuing outside Kosero’s one-room local health centre, for surgery to return his vision. The 20-minute procedure is part of US-based The Carter Center’s (TCC) trachoma control programme in Amhara, active since 2000. TCC and its partners, including Noor Dubai, fight the disease using a combination of preventive measures and treatment, which includes antibiotics and trichiasis surgery. So far, more than 300,000 people have had the operation. The impact of trachoma is significant. As primary caregivers, women are more likely to get the disease from their children, restricting their ability to farm, or collect water. The burden shifts to their children who leave school to help out at home. “In a country like ours, somebody losing their vision – especially a breadwinner or caregiver – is a big blow to the whole family,” says Dr Zerihun Tadesse, TCC’s country representative in Ethiopia. “It is not a mere health problem, it is a socio-economic problem.” Neglected tropical diseases such as trachoma are not high on typical donors’ lists because they are not big killers. Yet successes such as these have attracted the international community’s attention to what the trachoma control programme director, Kelly Callahan, calls “low-hanging fruit” in terms of impact. Every year since 2008 TCC has organised two weeklong campaigns to treat the infection, called MalTra Weeks. Held in spring and autumn – straddling the rainy season – each week covers five of Amhara’s 10 zones. In May, the 12th such campaign, in the east of Amhara, reached close to 9 million people in six days, powered by 25,000 government health extension workers, two covering each kebele. It distributed the antibiotic Zithromax in tablet form – four per adult – and syrup for young children, all donated by pharmaceutical major Pfizer Inc. The two weeks together target 18.2 million people.

A winding 10-hour drive ABOVE Poor sanitation allows the musca sorbens fly to breed from the capital, the and carry trachoma, spreading region’s mountainous the bacteria that those without terrain requires health clean water cannot wash from their faces workers to walk its vertiginous hillsides to alert communities to the campaign and administer the treatments. The scale of its organisation is remarkable. “We spend over $1m on each [campaign] just on logistics and operations, such as vehicles and daily allowances for the drug administrators,” says Dr Tadesse. Resource-intensive though this approach might be, it works. When TCC first started its MalTra Weeks, the trachoma prevalence rate among one-to-nine year olds in Amhara ranged from 12 to 60 per

cent, with seven of the 10 zones touching 30 per cent or higher. “[Even] 12 per cent is considered a public health emergency,” notes Callahan. By 2012, all 10 zones had registered prevalence below 30 per cent, and today six districts are below the UN health agency’s 5 per cent threshold for active trachoma. Now a celebratory occasion, the campaign is kicked-off with a raucous display of music and dancing. Still, prevention is better than cure – something the programme has learned well. “We cannot prevent trachoma by only giving treatment to the community,” cautions Mulat Lemu, TCC’s regional malaria and trachoma project manager in Amhara since 2007.

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“[Trachoma] is a symptom of poverty, a lack of access to the infrastructure for safe water and latrines,” explains Callahan. This lack of access forces households to allocate water for the basics, such as drinking or cooking. Poor sanitation allows the musca sorbens fly to breed and carry the disease, spreading the bacteria those without clean water cannot wash from their faces. For their part, TCC supports community groups – like the women in Kosero, whose group is trachoma-free – and the health extension workers assigned to each kebele to raise awareness of good hygiene, and encourage households to build toilets using indigenous materials. Eleni Teshome, a health extension worker in Kosero, has seen the fruits of this

advocacy first-hand: “Eight ABOVE Some 25,000 government health workers years ago trachoma was a walk Amhara’s hillsides to alert big problem, there were communities and administer only 70 latrines [for 6,000 medicines to nearly 9 million people each MalTra Week people].” Now the burden of trachoma is decreasing, she says. It is this lifestyle change that is key to eliminating the disease – and keeping it that way, emphasises Dr Tadesse. The programme wants to ramp up its efforts with communities, including working with more schools in the region such as Haik Elementary School. “It is important to develop the idea [of prevention] from an early age,” says Reta Kassa, one of the school’s teachers who already works with the programme. “The students develop a

play on keeping clean, which they go out and perform in the community.” The Noor Dubai Foundation sees this multi-faceted approach as a good investment of its philanthropic dollars. The foundation gave $400,000 this year, part of a three-year commitment. “We’re working in a place where people are accepting change, which is a very difficult thing,” says the foundation’s CEO, Dr Manal Taryam. Still, the battle isn’t over. “If we could simply focus on face-washing and latrine usage, we could reduce blinding trachoma and virtually eliminate it within the next year and a half,” says Callahan. “Getting the message out there is extremely important.” Seeing the difference your dollars can make is a motivating factor to keep giving, enthuses Dr Taryam, who would like to bring some of Art4Sight’s contributors to the dramatic highlands of Amhara to see their donation in action. “We could have easily just built a hospital,” she advises, nodding towards the picturesque scenery around Kosero. “But that wouldn’t provide the value that such programmes give in the long-term.” n

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Treating trachoma Trachoma is the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness, a symptom of poverty that burdens the whole family. Only behaviourial change can eradicate it, but treatment can alleviate the suffering

Global burden

21.4 million

The number of people the UN health agency estimates are affected by trachoma globally

6 million

* 2011 data

The number of people globally blind from the disease

Trachoma in Amhara, Ethiopia 2020

The target year by which the UN’s health agency wants to eliminate blinding trachoma

30 – 40 years old

The age range in which trichiasis typically occurs, following repeated infections

All data: The Carter Center.

60 per cent

1.2 million

85 per cent

The number of people reached by the programme each year with antibiotics

The number of people in Ethiopia estimated to be affected by trichiasis, the blinding form of trachoma

$2.9bn

WHO’s estimated economic cost per year of trachoma, from lost productivity

$15.4m*

18.2 million

Cost of The Carter Center’s Trachoma Control Programme active in six countries – Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, South Sudan and Ethiopia

The proportion of the population at risk of contracting trachoma

The level of antibiotic drug administration coverage needed to protect the population

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Treating the infection in Amhara...

... And restoring sight

144

The number of local surgeons trained in 2012

93,690,641

The total number of azithromycin antibiotic doses – Pfizer’s Zithromax – distributed between 2000 and 2013

1,000

The number of local surgeons that need to be trained each year to meet the backlog

$1.8bn

The total estimated value of the Zithromax donated by Pfizer

$11,500*

The market rate to provide 450 people with antibiotic treatment

$100*

The programme’s cost to reach 450 people with antibiotic treatment

66,766

$0.22*

People received eye surgeries in 2012

The cost to provide antibiotic treatment to one person

31,584

25,000

317,678

The number of Health Extension Workers needed for one MalTra Week

The number of people the programme has helped receive trichiasis surgery through 2013

299,751

The number of lorries needed to take the medication out to the districts from the capital, Addis Ababa

The current backlog of people requiring trichiasis surgery

Number of bottles of Zithromax distributed in one MalTra Week. Each bottle contains 500 tablets

282,576

Number of bottles of Zithromax liquid suspension, or syrup for under-fives, distributed in one MalTra Week. Each bottle is 30ml

$1m*

The cost of logistics and operations to cover one half of Amhara

$250*

The cost of one trichiasis surgery kit, which includes needles, sutures and a scalpel. The consumable items last for between 150 and 200 surgeries

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Action Hero When Hollywood icon Matt Damon realised his philanthropic endeavours weren’t delivering the returns he desired, he ripped up his own script and started again. In an exclusive interview, he describes his personal philanthropic journey and the efforts of Water.org to boost access to clean water and sanitation across Africa and Asia

BY Andrew White

t the heart of an industry where success and failure is defined numerically – opening weekend, box office gross, fee-per-picture – Matt Damon has other, far more pressing statistics on his mind. He’s thinking about the 3.4 million people who die every year from a water-related illness, a population almost equivalent to that of the entire city of Los Angeles, his home. He’s thinking about the fact that every 51 seconds, a child dies as a consequence of their inability to access clean water. He’s thinking about the one in nine

people on Earth who lack access to an improved water source – one likely to be protected from contamination, in particular from contamination with faecal matter. “People talk about the global water crisis and what’s coming down the road,” Damon says. “We just want to keep reminding them that for 748 million people, the crisis is already here.” Damon’s personal wake-up call came in 2006, when he joined a fact-finding mission to Africa organised by DATA, the multinational NGO co-founded by U2 frontman and veteran campaigner Bono. DATA, which stands for Debt, AIDS, Trade, and Africa, would arrange tours for individuals so that they might engage first-hand with the difficulties surrounding apparently intractable problems, and also meet face-toface those whose lives could be improved by intelligent intervention. While much of the focus fell on HIV/AIDS initiatives and microfinance schemes, Damon spent one day learning about the role that water – or the lack thereof – plays in the perpetuation of misery. “I knew I wanted to engage with issues of extreme poverty, and I knew there were all these pressing problems that I needed to know more about,” he recalls.

Sam Jones Pictures

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“I was shocked and amazed that I hadn’t heard more about the impact that water has on poverty, and that more people back home in the US weren’t talking about it. At that time [the US] had a big engagement on AIDS, and yet water was killing far more children [worldwide].” At that time, a child was dying every 15 seconds as a consequence of a lack of access to clean water and sanitation. “Where I grew up you just had to walk over to the tap and turn it on,” says Damon. “We were never thirsty, and I didn’t know anyone who had ever been thirsty in their life.

“I realised pretty quickly that if we joined forces we could do so much more together than separately. That was the key decision for me”

“So it was very hard to relate to the fact that all of these kids were dying of diseases where the cure was essentially clean water,” he continues. “Children in America might get diarrhoea and they might miss a day of school with the stomach bug, but that’s the extent of it and it’s certainly not something that’s life threatening.” Damon returned from Africa with a nascent understanding that a lack of access to water can underpin a whole host of issues that contribute to extreme poverty: the ability to earn an income, attend school, or even survive childbirth, among them. The scale of the problem was at once intimidating and invigorating. Here was a challenge that would not be solved in a year or a decade, but one that would require lifelong commitment. “I chose water for its enormity and its complexity,” says Damon. “It looked like something that was going to be interesting to engage with over my entire life, and I’ve certainly found that to be true.” When Damon narrated a documentary film about three men attempting to become the first humans to run coast-to-coast across the Sahara Desert, he and his producing partners recognised an opportunity. They launched a small foundation named H2O

Water.org

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Africa, with the goal of raising money and awareness for charities doing good work in improving access to water in remote and impoverished communities. They identified projects while planning and filming the expedition, which took place across Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Libya, and Egypt, and Damon was able to use his profile to raise money for specific NGOs operating within those countries. “It was a great way to look at some of these affected areas, and also to push some

PHILANTHROPY AGE MAIN Damon in the field with his Water.org co-founder Gary White

Water.org

Advocating change

“If you re-examine what you’re doing and try and go about it in a different way, then maybe you can really move the needle” funding to some people who were doing really good work,” he says. “There was so much low-hanging fruit, so many people who were affected by this, that my thinking was that if I could raise the money to sink a few bore wells, then I could reach a certain amount of people. “Even at the time I knew it wasn’t the most sophisticated way of attacking the problem, but I wanted to do something,” he continues. “We didn’t make the perfect the enemy of the good, and so we just jumped

in and found people who were doing work we believed in, and raised money so they could continue doing that work.” Damon’s initial enthusiasm doubtless transformed thousands of lives and enabled whole communities to begin the arduous climb out of poverty. Yet the limitations of H20 Africa’s approach were a source of frustration to its founder, who understood that in order to achieve lasting change, a more strategic methodology was required. “We certainly helped people but I

At the 2014 meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, Water.org co-founders Gary White and Matt Damon engaged with politicians, businesspeople and thought leaders in an effort to place water access on the global agenda. “Advocacy for us is ultimately where this is all heading, and it’s going to be a big part of maximising the impact that our organisation can have,” says Damon. “It’s important to go to those forums and meet some of the heavy hitters and get them excited about the issue.” While at the forum, Water.org partnered with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, to explore scalable solutions to water security and ways to ensure that water and sanitation remain a global priority. Since Davos, White and Damon have also been invited to contribute to the WEF’s Global Agenda Council on Water. “It’s about money but it’s also about the intellectual capacity that you can throw at the problem,” suggests Damon. “A lot of these folks in the business world are celebrated for their success, but their success comes from their intelligence and if we can bring that to bear on the problem then we’re really going to get stuff done. I think a lot of folk were excited that we weren’t just there with our hat in our hand, we were actually there to engage them about the issue.”

Water.org

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Personal engagement At Water.org there’s no such thing as an ‘office job’: the whole team is encouraged to venture into the field and experience first-hand the work that their effort is enabling. For Damon the opportunity to reach out and touch the issue, is a reminder of why he took on the challenge in the first place. “Things can be very theoretical, and a lot of important work gets done from behind a desk, but it’s really important to get out in the field every once in a while,” he says. “There’s a very deep and personal and emotional connection you get when you’re talking to a little kid whose life you may well have saved because of a programme that you funded, or put in place.” Furthermore, field visits can deepen understanding of the issues at stake. “I think a lot of these important issues, the more that we’re all thinking about them and working on them, the better chance we have of solving them and solving them quickly,” he says. “I feel like a lot of these solutions can come from unexpected places, and intellectually it’s really about an all-hands-on-deck approach,” he adds. “I believe that there are contributions to be made from my sector, and from others that may not cross over with [the development space], and that one day we will look back and realise that the solutions to some of these things came from all over society.”

realised a couple of things really quickly,” he recalls. “The first was that we were attacking the problem in the wrong way, and the second was that we could do much better on an organisational level, too.” As he delved deeper into the issues surrounding access to water, Damon reached a personal tipping point: he could continue to fund existing projects on a piecemeal basis, or he could rip up his own script, and start again. “You get to that moment where you look at the scale of the problem and you look at your efforts, and I think that’s the moment where a lot of people give up,” he suggests. “That’s really the important moment, because that’s when you have to go for it. You tell yourself that you have something to offer, and that if you re-examine what you’re doing and try and go about it in a different way, then maybe you can really move the needle someday.” Damon’s solution was to reach out to somebody he knew was already an expert in the field, somebody who had a sophisticated understanding of the issues and somebody from whom he could absorb the lessons of decades spent in the dust and the mud. The man who played Jason Bourne needed a hero, and he chose Gary White. The co-founder of WaterPartners International, a non-profit organisation that received H2O Africa funding and provided safe drinking water and sanitation to hundreds of communities in eight countries across Africa, South Asia and South America, White was an experienced water project actor with a commitment to monitoring, evaluation, and results-oriented research.

“Once you give yourself permission to not know everything, that’s when life gets exciting again”

As he and Damon discussed their common goals, it became apparent that the two men shared a deep personal, professional and philosophical connection. “Half of the water projects in the world fail, and we were very aware of that, but Gary’s group had a great record,” says Damon. “They were very smart about how they operated and I realised pretty quickly that if we joined forces we could do so much more together than separately. That was the key decision for me. “I would definitely advise anybody getting into this space, to find something that they’re really interested in working on. Then I would recommend finding the best person to partner with, because there are so

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“The problem’s not going to go away if we all don’t get in there and mix it up a little bit” the student again. I would just encourage anybody who is thinking about this, that that’s really the fun of it: once you give yourself permission to not know [everything], that’s when life gets exciting again.” Damon is determined to pass this passion to his four daughters. “It’s an ongoing education just like it is for me, but I’m bringing them along as best I can,” he says. 2.3 million “It doesn’t have to be around this People have been served with water issue, but I expect a lot from them. and sanitation “They’ve been born into a lot improvements more privilege than I was and a lot of emotional capital as well,” 370,606 he continues. “They’ve got a great Have been granted WaterCredit loans mum and I like to think a pretty good dad too, and I expect them $9.7m to do a lot. I expect that kids like In partner smart that should do a lot, and they will subsidies has have to if there’s any hope for leveraged $70m in commercial and social our world.” capital financing for Today Damon spends his time Water, Sanitation, and making movies, with his family, or Hygiene (WASH) loans working with Water.org to develop 99% water and sanitation access soluOf borrowers pay tions to otherwise underserved back their loans communities. “If I’m on a movie I’m working 15 hours a day, but if 91% I’m not I’m with my family or I’m Of borrowers are women doing this, and it makes for a really full and fun life,” he says. “The problem’s not going to go away if we all don’t get in there and mix it up a little bit. More kids are dying from this than from AIDS, measles and malaria combined. It’s the most serious problem out there, and we need to approach it just as seriously.” n

Water.org

many programmes out there that would be better served by joining forces.” In 2009 Damon approached White for help, he says, “with my hat in my hand. I said I wanted to help and that I felt I could do more, and I think he saw an opportunity whereby we could reach a lot more people, and get a lot closer to our mutual goals, if we did it together”. The result was Water.org, an international nonprofit that prioritises partnerships with indigenous organisations, and solutions tailored to the needs of each community, as opposed to hi-tech fixes that remote communities have no way of maintaining. Today Water.org has an annual operating budget of $14m, and staff in the US, India, Kenya and Peru. Nearly 2 million people have benefitted from WaterCredit, a microfinance scheme that provides families with micro-loans for toilets and household water connections. According to the organisation, an investment in WaterCredit can reach five to 10 times as many beneficiaries as a traditional grant over a 10-year period; validation,

Water.org

Water.org in numbers

it would appear, of the strategic, as opposed to wallet-to-well, approach. For a bona fide Hollywood giant, Damon is refreshingly self-deprecating when it comes to describing his need to start over and develop a deeper understanding of the issues at play. He also defers naturally to White’s vast experience at the sharp end of the battle to deliver clean water and sanitation to disadvantaged communities. “I’ll never be the man with three engineering degrees and 20-odd years experience in the field, but in terms of the issue I can go to school on it and that’s what I did,” he says. “I’m constantly learning and I think an important thing for people who want to get involved in philanthropy is to give yourself permission to be a student. “That never stops: even Gary, who is an absolute expert in this field, is always asking questions on our trips because conditions are changing constantly,” he continues. “People who go into philanthropy are often very successful in other areas of life, and I think it can be embarrassing to be

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City of life More than 70,000 people live and work in ‘Garbage City’, sorting and recycling nearly two-thirds of Greater Cairo’s daily municipal waste output. Yet after decades of neglect, the tide could be about to turn for the Zabaleen community, thanks to the work of NGOs and a much-needed policy shift

BY Adam Ramsey

n first inspection, the Manshiyet Nasser neighbourhood of Mokattam appears a pungent, anarchic mess of people, buildings, narrow alleys, cars and refuse. Apartment blocks tower precariously over a maze of winding streets, and when the wind picks up, the air becomes thick with a grimy dust, while clouds of flies attack any decaying organic matter. Here, on the outskirts of central Cairo, in the shadow of the Mokattam hills, some 70,000 people live and work in and among the municipal waste of almost 12 million Cairenes. Known as the Zabaleen, which means garbage collectors in Arabic, they collect, sort and recycle nearly two-thirds of Greater Cairo’s daily municipal waste output – all 10,000 tons of it. What’s more, the inhabitants of ‘Garbage City’, as it has become known, are reducing the amount of waste that goes to landfill – its diversion rate – by an amount that would

arouse the envy of any international waste management companies. “The Zabaleen are now recycling about 85 per cent of the garbage they receive,” explains Ezzat Naem, the head of the district’s Garbage Collectors Syndicate. By comparison, the EU is aiming for a recycling rate of just 50 per cent of household waste by the year 2020. Originally subsistence farmers from Upper Egypt, the Zabaleen first arrived in Cairo in the 1940s and began working in close coordination with the existing garbage collectors, from the western Oasis governorates. “When my people first came here, it was the Wahaya [Oasis people] who were collecting the rubbish,” explains Naem. “They would simply take it to the outskirts of the city and leave it to dry in the sun before selling it back to people as a fuel for fire.”

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“The income made by selling our recycled products should make the programme self-sustaining” With the sudden influx of Upper Egyptians, the Wahaya quickly began contracting the new migrants to specific areas of Cairo. It is a business partnership that persists to this day. “Families have been working the same areas for over 60 years,” states Naem. “For example, my grandfather started by collecting garbage in El Koba Gardens, my father continued collecting from El Koba and my brothers continue to do so today.” Yet while the routes may have remained consistent, the incredible proficiency of today’s Zabaleen is the result of a sustained evolution in their methods of collection, sorting and recycling. The early Zabaleen would simply use organic waste as a source of food for their livestock, ignoring the majority of inorganic materials and instead preferring to dump them in landfills. Local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) spotted an opportunity and in the 1960s they began visiting the Zabaleen to buy leftover inorganic materials like paper and

metal, which they would ABOVE The Manshiyet Nasser neighbourhood of Mokattam is then process and resell. home to 70,000 Zabaleen, and It wasn’t until 1984 that the APE initiatives established the Zabaleen themselves to assist them started recycling proper. Micro-loans, provided in coordination with a World Bank programme, allowed the Zabaleen to forgo the third party SMEs. With advice and help from local NGOs, the Zabaleen entered a new period of efficient recycling that continues to outstrip most European and US cities today. In Manshiyet Nasser, the Association for the Protection of the Environment (APE) NGO was established in 1984, with the aim

of helping the Zabaleen make the most out of their situation, in both an environmentally safe, and economically sound manner. Thanks to funding from local and international donors, APE has offered the residents of Manshiyet Nasser guidance and assistance through an ever-expanding range of programmes and workshops. “The main objective when we started was to simply help them in the recycling of rubbish,” says Hany Al Arian, director of APE. “Right now we have diversified into the production of recycled products; programmes for women; pre-school for the kids; and of course, health coverage.”

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The recycling rate of the Zabaleen. By comparison, the EU is aiming for a rate of just 50 per cent of household waste by 2020 In spite of the Zabaleen’s obvious proficiency in recycling, working conditions remain a major health concern. The Zabaleen and their families spend their days surrounded by potentially infectious, disease-ridden garbage. Since 2007, Al Arian estimates that APE has spent some EGP17m ($2.4m) on treatments alone, much of it to battle diseases including hepatitis C, diabetes, anaemia, and glaucoma – all of which are common. “We are especially concerned for the women,” he says. “They are the ones sorting through and categorising the inorganic waste their husbands bring them. We have

been doing a number of awareness, treatment and prevention programmes on good health practices for the Zabaleen.” On the ground floor of the APE building is a small treatment room. A congregation of women waits patiently outside to see the doctors, happy just to have a healthcare option close to their homes. Outside the main block, a small school is hidden among recently planted trees. Packed with young children, the tiny classrooms overlook a garden built by APE in 2002, replacing what had once been a large composting plant. “It was important that we gave these children something to do, some preparation

for school and to keep them away from the streets,” says Al Arian, adding that the facility – and others like it – accommodates children of any age, from birth up to the end of primary school. “Right now, we have approximately 650 children coming to our schools,” he notes. Less than 200 metres away, young mothers work in APE recycling centres, earning a wage, while staying close to their children. “One of the most important things we at APE can do is to empower the women here,” states Al Arian. “But empowering the women is not enough; you have to educate the men. So we are also trying to do some workshops to broaden their minds.” One woman who found an opportunity with APE is 38-year-old Aida Ghaly. “After I was married, I became very lonely, so I came to APE looking for something to do,” she recalls. “I quickly learnt embroidery and now teach it to other girls. “My husband was happy because I was nearby, had work that would help our income, and APE were able to help me when I had my children, and in providing early education for them too.” Using her talent for embroidery, Ghaly is one of around 200 women who help to create recycled products from paper and textiles. Close to the rooms where the women work, a huge array of their products are on sale, from bags and birthday cards, to pillow covers and coin purses. “We have maybe 200 different design styles, but we modify and add new ones every day,” explains one of the local workers proudly.

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“It was important that we gave these children something to do, some preparation for school and to keep them away from the streets” “The income from our recycled products should make the programme self-sustaining, but since the revolution we have had trouble on that front,” says Al Arian. “Because the local economy is in such difficulty, people are less willing to spend and we are having to look more to overseas markets.” The Zabaleen are hoping that more recent political developments will help, rather than hinder, their progress. In the early 2000s their community was dealt a massive blow when the Egyptian government decided to contract four multinational waste management corporations to deal

with Cairo’s rubbish. A ABOVE RIGHT Children’s clubs Egypt’s new govern15-year deal was signed that have been set up as part of a ment has accepted that wider education programme stipulated the multinathe corporatisation of ABOVE LEFT The APE tionals needed to maintain waste disposal in Cairo programme has established a recycling rate of just 20 small schools attended by a was a misstep, and is now per cent, while the Zabaleen total of 650 children preparing to integrate the were told to stop collecting Zabaleen formally into the altogether. The income loss city’s official waste manageof the Zabaleen, coupled with the needless ment system. “The others have failed, waste ending up in landfills meant that a few be they the government or the foreign years into the contract, the experiment was companies, and now [the Zabaleen] should condemned as a catastrophic failure. get a turn, having been sidelined for so “These companies came with a European long,” Laila Iskandar, Egypt’s Minister of State attitude, they weren’t aware of what the for Environment Affairs, under the interim Zabaleen provided,” explains Naem. “So they government of Prime Minister Hazem El placed large [skips] in the streets, instead of Beblawi, said earlier this year. “They are the going door to door. They asked the residents people who have the longest experience in to bring the garbage down to the street. Of refuse collection.” course the Egyptians refused. With the multinationals’ contract due to “We are the only people in the whole end in 2017 and with APE and other NGOs world who will go into apartments and continuing in their work with the Zabaleen collect your garbage from your front community, Naem is optimistic for the door,” he continues proudly. “Now they are future. “Now the government is beginning subcontracting the Zabaleen through the to acknowledge us and we are cared for a Wahaya, adding another layer where income bit more,” he says. “I feel the future could be is lost for the average Zabal.” very bright for my people.” n

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‘Little maids’ in Morocco:

A second chance

BY Adrienne Cernigoi

umbled together on a rocky hillside, the browned and rusted concrete brick houses of Chichaoua may not be pretty, but they are home – and a sanctuary. A young girl with bright eyes and a shy smile nods hesitantly. Just being with her family is something she thought she might never enjoy again. Soukaina is far now from Casablanca, Morocco’s largest city, where she worked 15 hours a day, was beaten regularly and lived in the corner of a kitchen. Hers is a modern-day Cinderella story, yet Soukaina’s rescuer was no prince, but a local organisation offering a second chance – at education and life. “I’m very happy to be living with my family,” says Soukaina, 16. “I was overjoyed when the association found and freed me. Now I’m back with my family, where I feel safe.” Her young shoulders have carried a heavy burden. At ten years old, Soukaina became one of Morocco’s ‘little maids’ – girls as young as eight to 15 years old, sold as domestic servants, to work in homes in Morocco’s cities. The Institution Nationale de Solidarité avec les Femmes en Détresse (INSAF), a Casablanca-based NGO, estimates there are 60,000 to 80,000 girls like Soukaina across the country.

The arid mountain-scape of Chichaoua province, in the Marrakesh-Tensift-El Haouz region, is some 300km from the bustling economic hub that is Casablanca. “Exploitation in domestic work typically affects young girls from marginalised rural and peri-urban areas,” says Bouchra Ghiati, president of INSAF, whose programme to help little maids launched in Chichaoua in 2005. Domestic chores, in particular, are seen as a girl’s job. Poverty, coupled with low levels of schooling, is the main push factor. After just three years of education, Soukaina dropped out of school, to help around the house, when her father became chronically ill. When he died, her mother had to send her out to work. “The poverty level [in Chichaoua] is 29 per cent, compared to 19 per cent in the rest of the region and 14 per cent nationally,” explains Omar Saadoun, INSAF’s little maids programme manager. High illiteracy rates among the families are common too, affecting 94 per cent of the mothers INSAF works with, says Ghiati. Access to education is extremely limited in such rural areas. Chichaoua’s unpaved mountain roads often become muddy and impassable in winter, making parents even less willing to let their young daughters

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walk to school, which will often be some distance away. Little maids find themselves working and living in conditions that far exceed their age and physical and psychological abilities, says Ghiati. More than a third are eight to 12 years old, or primary school age, according to INSAF. Working in urban, middle-class and wealthy homes, the girls do domestic chores such as cooking and cleaning and sometimes childcare – all for a wage of between MAD300 and MAD500 ($36-$60) a month, if they are paid at all.

Brokers, or samsars, get MAD500 to MAD1,000 ($60-$120) for each girl they place. Apart from missing out on an education, behind closed doors, little maids can be the victims of malnutrition and abuse, too, warns Ghiati. Extended in 2011 to two neighbouring provinces – El Kelaa des Sraghna and El Haouz – INSAF’s programme lifts little maids out of domestic work, raises awareness among poor communities of the problem, and advocates for their rights. Getting the girls back into education is a priority. INSAF finds and returns little maids

to their families, and reintegrates them into the school system up to the age of 16 – the legal school leaving age – support that usually lasts between four to six years. “All the girls benefit from a MAD300 ($36) scholarship given monthly to their parents,” says Saadoun. “It offers a practical and efficient alternative to lighten the financial burden and help poor families educate their children.” INSAF also helps with school fees, school materials and winter clothes. The programme’s total cost to support one girl for a year is $1,000. Crucially, INSAF works with each family and local community to ensure the girls stay in school and out of work, he adds. “After returning to my family, I went back into the third year of primary school,” recounts Soukaina. “If INSAF hadn’t helped me, my life would have probably turned out as it has for other girls in the same situation. Some die from the mistreatment inflicted on them by their employers.” “So far, we have helped nearly 400 girls in Chichaoua and El Kelaa leave domestic work,” says Ghiati. “Four of them have gone on to LEFT The Institution Nationale de Solidarité avec les Femmes Marrakesh University with en Détresse (INSAF) works to two more going [in the] reduce the number of young girls next academic year.” In sold into domestic service from rural areas of Morocco 2013, 34 girls were still in college, thanks to INSAF’s

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80,000 Upper estimate of the number of ‘little maids’ in Morocco

support, and seven have passed their baccalauréat, or high school diploma. What is more, the trade of little maids has been wiped out from 19 communes, many of them in Chichaoua, thanks to INSAF’s advocacy initiative. “We believe this action allows us to eradicate the

practice, and in a sustainable way,” says Ghiati. None of INSAF’s former little maids have gone back to being domestic servants, although the programme says nearly 10 per cent of the girls leave due to what it calls the “scourge” of early marriage, at 15 or 16 years old. Still, the lack of education infrastructure in these poor, rural areas holds back the programme’s ability to achieve greater results, notes Ghiati. Distant schools – particularly at secondary and college level – and poorly maintained school buildings, mean parents lose confidence in the education system.

ABOVE INSAF endeavours to return rescued girls to their families and reintegrate them into the school system. It assists families with school fees, materials and winter clothes

“I was overjoyed when the association found and freed me. Now I’m back with my family, where I feel safe”

The scale of the problem may appear as daunting as Chichaoua’s hills. But INSAF hopes to replicate its model in the other provinces of the Marrakesh-Tensift-El Haouz region, making the most of opportunities to raise awareness in local communities, to keep girls out of domestic servitude. In the long-term, INSAF hopes to work with the Moroccan government to extend the programme to other impoverished regions. For now, the chance to return to the safety and care of her family has given Soukaina a new lease of life. “Now I am in college,” she says proudly. “I hope to do well in my studies. My dream is to become a physical education teacher.” It is a dream worthy of a modern fairytale. n

EXPERT COLUMN

The power of market-based innovations Stuart Yasgur, a leader in the field of social innovation, with Noura Ismail, argues that market forces can be harnessed to solve seemingly intractable social challenges s the world changes at an ever-increasing rate, it is vital to provide individuals with the tools to contribute to society. And it is even more important to create the systems that enable them to become change-makers so they can address social challenges as they arise. Each year, Ashoka evaluates more than 10,000 entrepreneurs to identify approximately 200 who have the potential to alter systems for the benefit of all. This constant search for powerful innovators provides us with a unique vantage point to analyse the trends emerging across the globe. One of these trends in particular has caught our attention: in recent years, we have noticed a significant increase in social entrepreneurs using market-based innovations to solve seemingly intractable social challenges. By this, we mean they are developing systems-changing new approaches that use market forces to break barriers and overcome the world’s most difficult social issues. While we traditionally think of markets as a place to pursue self-interest, they have the capacity to do much more. Markets can be a powerful force to improve the character and quality of people’s lives. Mar-

About the writer Stuart Yasgur is head of social financial services at Ashoka, a global organisation that invests in social entrepreneurs by providing start-up financing and professional support services. He has more than a decade of experience working with start-up and growth stage companies

kets offer people the chance to generate enough resources to provide for themselves and their loved ones; to accumulate the assets needed to weather life’s inevitable storms; and to have the dignity that comes from making a meaningful contribution to society. Ashoka Fellows across the world are constantly proving the social value of markets through their powerful innovations. For instance, some Ashoka Fellows in the Middle East are using markets creatively to tackle the region’s high unemployment rates. Their efforts have brought financial independence and individual empowerment to thousands of people in the region, and I would like to share two great examples of this approach. In Egypt, close to 44 per cent of the population lives under the poverty line and the unemployment rate is rising steadily. The country lacks effective systems of public and private employment agencies, and existing programmes cater largely to the privileged. As a result, many of the country’s young people are turning to crime, drug abuse, and religious fanaticism. Raghda El Ebraishi is targeting these millions of youths in the hope of lifting them from poverty and providing them with the tools to ensure better financial futures. Her organisation, Alashanek Ya Balady (AYB), accomplishes this by working with the private sector to provide stable, permanent

EXPERT COLUMN

“Markets can be a powerful force to improve the character and quality of people’s lives” job opportunities for young people whose job applications would otherwise have been ignored. Raghda recognised that many companies are unwilling to devote significant resources to train youth, even if they have vacancies in entry-level positions. To fill this gap, she and her workforce of student volunteers identify companies’ needs and tailor training to fit the requirements. If a young person is able to secure a job, AYB continues to coach the new hire for up to six months after starting work, in order to boost that person’s chances of success. As AYB relies heavily on the work of its volunteers, it is able to charge businesses a lower fee for its employment services than the market rate, ensuring a competitive advantage. AYB also offers vocational training courses, in addition to micro-loans for young people interested in establishing their own businesses. Raghda’s innovative use of market-based principles is providing these

young people with a new perspective on life, and reshaping their futures in a way which grants them profound dignity and optimism. Access to employment will in turn enable them to realise their capabilities as change-makers, and create transformative impact for generations to come. In Turkey, meanwhile, due to traditional gender norms and a lack of suitable employment options, only 24 per cent of women with children are employed. This leaves the majority of women heavily reliant on their family members for financial support, and removes any opportunity for them to participate as full economic citizens. Bedriye Hülya is striving to change this aspect of Turkey’s workforce and empower women by putting an unusual tool to work: fitness. She established b-Fit, an innovative women-only sports and health centre chain, with the ultimate purpose of creating a space to enble women to realise their potential.

The first national chain to cater specifically to women, each branch offers women the traditional benefits of a gym, in addition to monthly seminars and training on a variety of important topics. Monthly membership fees are determined based on the location of each centre, with the goal of accommodating women of all economic backgrounds. The beauty of the b-Fit model is that each centre must be founded and managed exclusively by women for women, enabling them to gain entrepreneurial skills and financial independence. Once a franchise is opened, the b-Fit company supports the franchisees with training on topics including gender roles, management, communications, entrepreneurship, and finance. The b-Fit model has already employed hundreds of women. More than 200 centres have opened catering to almost 250,000 members in 48 cities. Each centre enables women to run and manage their own business, providing them with the chance to contribute to their country’s economy, while also earning an income and becoming economically independent. Bedriye’s innovation is providing women with a new sense of empowerment that is changing the social landscape for women in the region. And she’s doing it using the power of the market. As the largest coordinating mechanism in our society, markets have the ability to not only stimulate growth but also create value in people’s lives. By breaking down barriers of unemployment using innovative market-based solutions and empowering thousands of women and young people, Raghda and Bedriye have proven this. They are not alone, either: they are just two examples of thousands of social entrepreneurs who are using similar market-based methods to overcome our world’s toughest problems. In order to fully unleash the market and achieve the most social value, we must continue to encourage this type of change-making, not just for ourselves, but for the benefit of all. n

PHILANTHROPY AGE

UNNATURAL DISASTERS Hundreds died and thousands were displaced when a double landslide devastated the village of Abi Barak in May this year. Unless investment is forthcoming and innovation embraced, it could be only a matter of time before further tragedies befall some of Afghanistanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s poorest rural communities BYâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; Anthea Ayache

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egum broke into a run, abandoning the donkey that trudged behind her through the village streets, her legs moving as fast as ill health and age would allow. The deafening noise reverberated, mingling now with shrill human screams. “What on earth happened?” she cried as men in shalwar kamees raced by. As she stumbled out onto the plateau above her sprawling hillside village, Begum reeled back in horror. For centuries the hamlet of Abi Barak nestled between the foothills of two rugged peaks; now it lay under a sea of grey-brown mud. Stunned, Begum found herself, like other survivors, clambering down through the debris, digging fruitlessly with her bare hands. Amid the frenzy, many failed to escape a second landslide that came moments later. Soon Begum, like her husband for whom she had been searching, was swamped in the thick bog. “My husband was killed, but people pulled me from the mud,” the 50 year-old recounts from her refugee tent. “I was terrified, it was up to my chest and I couldn’t move. I just screamed and prayed to God for help.” Begum was a survivor of the extraordinary double landslide that hit the Argo district of Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province on May 2 of this year. It was an unprecedented natural disaster for the region, and one that claimed hundreds of lives. Thousands more have been left displaced. And worryingly for those left behind, geologists predict that further disasters are imminent for this impoverished community.

“My husband was killed, but people pulled me from the mud. I just screamed and prayed to God for help”

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CLOCKWISE, FROM RIGHT People displaced by the landslide live in tents on a hillside; Relocating residents raises issues about their connection to their community’s social structure; The dead of Abi Barak were removed on makeshift stretchers; Displaced families share limited space and resources

“The people of Badakhshan live in poverty,” explains Suliman Khalisyar, provincial programme manager at Afghan Aid, an international non-profit charity that works in the most remote and marginalised areas of the country. “The province suffers from a six-month hunger period because approximately 90 per cent of the districts are located in mountains,” he continues. “This means there is a shortage of arable land, a shortage of well managed water, no irrigation systems and poor access to roads. Only two or three out of 28 districts have access to basic facilities, and over 50 per cent of the population face the real risk of a natural disaster.” Due to its geographical position and years of environmental degradation Afghanistan, particularly in the north, is extremely susceptible to recurring natural disasters. Predominantly northern provinces have been dealing with persistent rainfall, leading to flash floods and landslides that have killed hundreds of people and affected more than 175,000 so far in 2014. The figures are almost double that of 2013, according to the

Of the population of Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province lives at risk of natural disaster

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Rural communities have been left desperately in need of shelter, food, water and medicine. The rising figures reflect the deteriorating situation and emphasise the need for sustainable solutions to prevent another disaster like Argo. However, these mountain communities frequently find themselves in a no-win situation. As residents of one of the poorest and most inaccessible regions in the country – more than 900,000 people live on less than $20 a month – the people of Badakhshan are tied by poverty and their rudimentary livelihood often exacerbates the risk of natural disasters. Here residents of remote, rural villages like Abi Barak – where ill-staffed schools are few and opportunities slim – depend heavily on subsistence farming. Rudimentary pastoral techniques are combined with fragile ecosystems, weak geological structures and poor quality soil, thereby unwittingly weakening the very land on which those who cultivate it, so depend. “Landslides will happen in any environment in which there are steep slopes, weak materials and there is heavy, seasonal rainfall,” explains Dave Petley, the Wilson Professor of hazard and risk in the department of geology at the University of Durham. “Afghanistan has all three ingredients and you can season that recipe by adding a population who are changing the way in which the ground is being used.” Increased farming to provide for a growing population, alongside a tendency to cultivate land for rain-fed crops that was

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“If you talk with the older generations they say they have never seen floods and landslides of this scale” once used for grazing, has led to extensive erosion, massively reducing the already limited area of arable acreage in what is now one of Afghanistan’s most disaster-prone areas. “If you talk with the older generations they say they have never seen floods and landslides of this scale in their districts,” says Khalisyar at Afghan Aid. “It is mainly because of farming methods and lack of fuel. If you look around there are no more trees or forests, they have all been cut down.” Subsistence farmers in relatively cool mountainous areas such as Argo have no electricity and scant options for cooking or heating. Rutted rural pathways between villages are filled with donkeys laden with illegal timber. The local dependence on firewood, and a failure to replant, has resulted in near absolute deforestation, another major contributing factor to landslides. Torrential rainstorms in the lead up to the Argo landslide have been blamed for the catastrophe, but the scale of the mudslide can be attributed to a range of long-term causes and changes. Geologists believe Argo’s soil is soft loess, silt-sized sediment formed by deposits of dust blown in by northern winds from Asia. Unable to absorb water, it turns rapidly to mud. “Loess is very landslide prone,” explains Professor Petley. “[Argo] looks like a classic case where the material became disrupted, water got in and the sliding began.” With ever-increasing rainfall due to human-induced climate change, Afghanistan is seeing unprecedented flooding and lacks the technology and infrastructure to cope. The problem is particularly acute

in provinces such as Badakhshan, which lack any major irrigation systems, have few remaining trees, and a weakened soil unable to absorb large amounts of water. “The key is water management,” says Professor Petley. “We know that rainfall intensities are increasing so it may well be that there needs to be a modification to the drainage system on the slopes; in other words more ditches, and more trenches to move water around to prevent it from getting deep into the soil. “It would need a sustained research programme and no one should underestimate the magnitude of the task,” he continues. “These are profound changes that are required and generally speaking, in poor areas with poor populations, they need assistance to enable those sorts of techniques.” In the meantime, Afghan Aid has been implementing Natural Resource Management projects to improve water management through the introduction of less water-intensive crops, soil and moisture conservation via terracing, crop rotation, hedgerow planting and rain-fed tree crops. The projects have been rolled out across eight districts and according to the NGO they have witnessed a decrease in natural disasters in these areas over the last ten years. The problem, however, is convincing impoverished inhabitants to sacrifice prized land for trees that will only reap rewards in decades to come. Of course, Badakhshan requires more than trees to lift the province out of poverty. Yet the required investment remains out of reach, a woeful state of affairs bearing

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“It’s not simply about relocation, it’s about their homes, their livelihoods, their schools and their relationships” in mind the province is abundant with natural resources. “There’s plenty of water in Badakhshan that could be well managed,” explains Charles Davy, director of Afghan Aid. “In neighbouring Tajikistan, for example, the same water that runs through the province is used to generate hydroelectric power, which is then sold back to Afghanistan.” Power generated from the region’s abundant fast-flowing rivers could produce enough electricity using the natural flow of water, to eliminate the dependence on wood and provide electricity to households and businesses for light, refrigeration and machinery. “The problem, however, is that a massive investment is required to harness that kind of resource, which simply isn’t there,” notes Davy. So, while the Badakhshan people wait for modern technologies to change their lot, NGOs and government community schemes are rolling out disaster response training, first-aid instruction and emergency relief packages. They are also educating local communities about nature’s own ‘early warning’ system. “Landslides are not spontaneous,” says Professor Petley. “There are almost always signs that they are starting to develop. The slope will generally start moving significantly in advance, it begins to destabilise and slip a little and that opens up cracks. Typically signs of disruption show on the body itself and down the side. “The key is to identify those signs as they start to develop,” he adds, “and work out exactly what is moving and where it is likely to go. If those signs can be recognised

in advance, then the people at risk can be moved out of the way.” Moving communities to safer areas prior to a natural disaster may save thousands of lives. Yet the logistics of such an operation are daunting and even impractical: in a part of Afghanistan dominated by rugged mountains, sites for safe residences are rare. Towns lie at the feet of huge mountains, positioned in the mouths of canyons. Those affected by the landslide in Argo have been promised new land. Discussions are ongoing at both the governmental and provincial levels, as to where and when the displaced will be moved, but there remains much to be resolved. “It is critical that the people have a voice

in this,” says Davy at Afghan Aid. “[However] before they can make a decision of that magnitude, they need to feel that their life has returned to some kind of normality. It’s easy to say as an outsider, ‘its for their own good’, but it’s not simply about relocation, it’s about their homes, their livelihoods, their schools and their relationships, and there is resistance amongst some villagers. “This is still their land, these are their ancestral homes,” he adds, “and there are concerns that if they are relocated, will they get good land, and how will it change the various social power structures that exist in the communities?” For now, while short-term options are discussed and long-term solutions hypothesised, Begum sits in her tent, overlooking the disgorged mountainside whose contents levelled her life. Her husband lies under metres of mud now designated a mass grave. Without investment and innovation, his loss will not be the last on these precipitous slopes. n

PHILANTHROPY AGE

The malaria menace

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Around the world, a child dies from malaria every minute, another sad statistic among the 627,000 people killed each year by the disease. According to the World Health Organisation around 3.4 billion people – half of the world’s population – are at risk of contracting the disease, and almost half of all cases of malaria occur in predominantly Muslim countries. The good news is that malaria is preventable. The UAE is the leading donor to the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) initiative, having pledged $25m since 2010, to support the scale-up of malaria control worldwide. RBM works with partners to take supplies to affected parts of the world including Africa and Asia, regions where the tiny bite of a mosquito can mean the difference between life and death, opportunity and inhuman poverty. Malaria mortality rates have fallen by 42 per cent globally and 49 per cent in Africa alone since 2000; with a little extra help, millions more could be saved.

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CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVEâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; Homes at risk of malaria are sprayed with insecticide in Nigeria. It has been 20 years since a new insecticide was introduced for use in public health; Private clinics and medicine vendors are often primary caregivers in poor communities. Monitoring the quality of diagnoses and medicines is difficult; Countries, such as Cambodia, that distribute and get people to use bed nets report a 50 per cent drop in malaria cases and deaths

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ABOVEâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; Community health workers, such as Som Suor in Cambodia (above left), are critical to spreading knowledge about how to prevent malaria and control transmission

ONE DAY

“The look on their

faces is phenomenal to watch” More than 600 people a year receive sight-saving surgery aboard the Orbis Flying Eye Hospital. Still, what the modified aeroplane leaves in its slipstream is much more powerful: some 2,100 local surgeons and eye care staff each year learn how to treat preventable eye diseases for countless others. Dr Ian Fleming, a volunteer anaesthetist, takes us through his day

’ve always been aware of this enormous inequality in healthcare. Most of the healthcare needs are in the developing world. Most of the healthcare provision is not. The Orbis Flying Eye Hospital is there to develop local services. We’ll do five to six eye operations a day, for two or three weeks, but the greater impact is that we teach the local surgeons. Orbis employs a small crew of some 20 doctors, ophthalmologists, theatre staff, nursing staff, flight technicians and

biomedical engineers who travel with the plane. Then there are volunteers like me who join specific programmes; there might be 40 people in total, including two or three anaesthetists and around five surgeons. I approached Orbis because I was looking for a development organisation. It took around 10 years to train to be a consultant anaesthetist and I commit around two weeks a year of my time, taken out of my annual leave. They’re quite long days. The bus invariably leaves the hotel for the airport

at about 7am and we don’t get back until 7pm. As soon as we reach the plane we can have the first patient on the operating table in 30 to 45 minutes. The plane is totally self-sufficient, it has its own generators for heating, cooling and electricity that run off the plane’s own fuel. All the plane needs is steps up to it. Inside there is one operating theatre equipped with cameras and four recovery bays. Programmes are divided into weeklong chunks. The first week we’ll typically do surgery for cataracts and glaucoma,

ONE DAY

some of the most common causes of reduced vision and blindness. The second week covers different types of ophthalmic surgery, depending on each country’s need. I was in Kolkata last year helping develop glaucoma, cataract and paediatric services. Orbis has been extensively involved in India since 1988, and the Flying Eye Hospital has visited 15 times, four of those to Kolkata. Mondays are screening days. Local ophthalmologists choose as many patients as they can find with a particular condition. My role is to assess the fitness and medical health of the patients they’ve chosen. We’re looking for good teaching cases, those who have the most common eye diseases prevalent in the country. My job is to check the patients in and make sure they’ve obeyed all the instructions. For example, if someone is getting a general anaesthetic, I need their stomach empty to safely anaesthetise them. I use the World Health Organisation safety checklist: do we have the right patient, for the correct surgery and on the correct side? It only takes five minutes to put in a local anaesthetic block – where the patient is awake but the eye is completely numb – and another five for it to work. If we’re giving a general anaesthetic it takes five to 10 minutes to get someone ready. We have hands-on trainees who are specifically attached to us for the week – they are primarily the ones we’re training.

Because it’s a teaching ABOVE LEFT Dr Ian Fleming, a consultant anaesthetist, programme, each surgery volunteers with Orbis, which can take 90 minutes, even works around the world to if it’s something that would reduce preventable blindness take 20 to 30 minutes in the UK. In a lot of developing countries anaesthetists are in short supply, so sometimes just one will train with me. At the start of the week I say, ‘Just assist and watch me’. It’s a pretty steep learning curve, but within a week or two they’re up and doing it. That’s when you know it’s going to work, if by the end of the programme they are doing the operation solo. The plane really comes into its own in the teaching element. The front part of the plane has all the ordinary aeroplane seats – the classroom. It’s set up with audio-visual equipment for up to 50 ophthalmologists to observe the operating theatre on a plasma screen. The surgeon gives a running commentary, everyone sees the operation being done, and we can answer questions from the classroom, while doing the surgery. Surgeries go on right through the day. Patients wake up in our recovery bay and return to the hospital at the end of the day.

The most striking thing is helping young children with bilateral cataracts, who have had poor vision from birth. Quite often I don’t get to see them because I’m anaesthetising again the next day, but when I can be there to see the seals taken off for the first time, it is truly amazing. The look on their faces when they realise mum or dad is no longer this blurred shape – it’s utterly phenomenal to watch. Typically we’re very well looked after by the local institution, which often wants to take us out for dinner as a thank you. By the end of the day I’m exhausted. But it’s very rewarding and inspiring, knowing that they will carry on the work and that there will be a ripple effect from our programme. The most common frustration I have is the patients you see on screening day that we can’t help. Some of them will be patients with complex or advanced surgery that isn’t suitable for an Orbis programme, or their disease isn’t curable because it’s too far progressed. That’s very sad to see. I’ve done 11 programmes with Orbis since 2005 in 10 countries, including Syria, Bangladesh, India and Nepal. One thing I really like about Orbis is that it recognises it’s not enough just to support the surgeon. I’m teaching the local anaesthetists, nursing staff are teaching the local nurses, theatre staff are teaching their counterparts – it’s this approach to supporting and developing the entire team that really makes the difference. n

TRENDS

Importance of social impact HNWIs call for varies between age groups support on social 92 impact investment 60 %

nvestment advisors are being urged to provide more services to those looking to use their wealth to have a social impact. The World Wealth Report 2014, prepared by Capgemini and RBC Wealth Management, pinpoints an opportunity for firms to help high net worth individuals (HNWIs) make their wealth have a greater social impact. In direct questioning of HNWIs for the report, the firms identified a 14 per cent service gap between the current level of support HNWIs are receiving and what they perceived to be ideal, when it comes to investing for social impact. While 14 per cent was the average perceived service gap, it varied from region to region, with both Latin America and the Middle East and Africa representing a much larger opportunity. Latin America displayed the largest service gap at 26.2 per cent, followed by the Middle East and Africa at

23.5 per cent, demonstrating a clear opportunity for specialised investment advisors. “As HNWIs continue to explore ways of aligning their social impact goals with the way they manage their wealth, the firms that serve them have an opportunity to guide, educate, and support them. Our research shows that HNWIs desire more support from their wealth managers in fulfilling their social impact goals,” stated the report. The report’s findings also showed that some 60 per cent of HNWIs thought the social impact of their investment was ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ important. Social impact was perceived as most important among the young, especially those under 40, and was also influenced by geographical location. About 90 per cent of HNWIs from India regarded social impact as extremely or very important, 30 per cent ahead of the global average of 60.5 per cent.

HNWIs who ascribe some level of importance to driving social impact

HNWIs for whom social impact is either extremely or very important

75%

HNWIs under 40 who cite driving social impact as either extremely important or very important

45%

HNWIs 60 and over who cite driving social impact as either extremely important or very important

Source: World Wealth Report 2014

Top five countries, ranked by percentage of HNWIs who regard social impact as a very or extremely important factor in investment

90.5% India

89.4% China

89.2%

Indonesia

82.1%

Hong Kong

81.1% Malaysia

TRENDS

HNWIs by gender

94% Male

Female

HNWIs by age

10%

51%

29%

10%

25-34

45-54

35-44 55+

HNWIs by wealth source

Inherited

HNWIs by country KSA 25% UAE 25% Kuwait 13% Bahrain 13% Qatar 13% Oman 13%

50%

41%

Self-made

Combination of the two HNWI by profession

24%

36%

11%

29%

Entrepreneur Executive

Professional

Other

Gulf’s richest focus on wealth creation, not preservation igh net-worth individuals (HNWIs) in the Gulf are an optimistic group, with a focus on wealth creation, not just preservation, according to the results of a recent survey. The GCC Wealth Insight Report, produced by Emirates Investment Bank, also outlined the key demographic groups among HNWIs, who are defined as individuals with $2m or more in investable assets. 96 per cent of HNWIs in the Gulf are men, and 80 per cent of HNWIs are between the ages of 35 and 54, the study found. Furthermore, their wealth comes in one of two clear ways: inheritance combined with building their own business, or through being self-made. “Entrepreneurs form the bedrock

Source: GCC Wealth Insight Report

Global quality of midwifery on the rise, says report

of growth and opportunity within the region,” said Khaled Sifri, CEO of Emirates Investment Bank, in his introduction to the report. “By building their own businesses, entrepreneurs are supporting their countries’ growth. They are focused on wealth creation, not simply preservation, which indicates they will re-invest in their businesses in the future.” It is this desire to build further wealth that sets Gulf HNWIs apart from their peers elsewhere in the world, the report said. They also display higher optimism and a greater intensity of feeling towards economic prospects in the Gulf. 87 per cent of HNWIs said they are ‘very optimistic’ or ‘somewhat optimistic’ about prospects for the region over the next five years.

angible progress has been made in improving the state of midwifery, according to a new report from the United Nations. The study, the State of the World’s Midwifery 2014, found that 33 of the 73 countries covered had made vigorous attempts to improve workforce retention in remote areas, since the last report was published in 2011. Furthermore, 20 countries had started to increase recruitment and deployment of midwives; 13 countries had prepared plans to establish regulatory bodies; and 14 had introduced a new code of practice and/or regulatory framework. The report also noted there was a vast improvement in the collection of data, information and accountability, now coming from 52 of the countries covered. Despite the improvement, the report said that more than 92 per cent of all the world’s maternal and newborn deaths and stillbirths occurred within those 73 low- to middle-income countries. A contributing factor, according to the report, is that currently only 42 per cent of the world’s medical, midwifery and nursing personnel are available to women and newborn infants in these countries. The report was co-ordinated by the United Nations Population Fund, the International Confederation of Midwives and the World Health Organisation on behalf of government representatives and national stakeholders in the 73 countries and 30 global development partners.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

‘Change something,even if it’s one life’ Supermodel Tatiana Korsakova talks about her efforts to fund research programmes and rehabilitation equipment for those with cerebral palsy BY Leonard Stall or supermodel Tatiana Korsakova, the move into philanthropy was triggered by the birth of her daughter. Korsakova was already a longterm supporter of, and donor to, orphanages in Russia, where she grew up. In Russian orphanages, she had seen growing numbers of children with birth disorders who had been abandoned by their mothers — often encouraged to leave their disabled children to carry on with their lives, after having been abandoned by their partners. In 2006 a new member of her own family set her thinking. By this time Korsakova was living in London, happily married to a high-profile Russian oligarch: simply giving was no longer enough. She started a journey to establish her own team of

people to assist in a much bigger international venture with the aim of making a real difference, and this team has now become a reality. Tatiana’s UK-registered Gracious Heart charity is now spearheading the drive to acquire knowledge about, and fund research programmes and rehabilitation equipment for those with cerebral palsy. The helping hand reaches out to families in Russia, the UK and also the Middle East. “If God gives you more chances, more possibilities, you should appreciate that and do what you can,” she says, adding a call to action. “Change something, even if it’s one life.” She comments on her new venture: “Our guiding belief is that every child

“If God gives you more chances, more possibilities, you should appreciate that and do what you can”

deserves to be loved, to have a family life, and to lead the most happy and fulfilled existence that they can. “A child is the greatest gift that we can ever receive and one that transforms our lives. Sadly, there are millions of people whose experience of parenthood is a constant struggle, with every day being a fight for their child’s survival and wellbeing. This is especially true for parents whose children have, or are affected by, cerebral palsy and other serious disabilities. We aim to provide the additional support needed to improve these children’s lives and those of their parents.” Korsakova still helps orphanages in Russia, together with her sister who runs a Russian not-for-profit, but the focus of her effort internationally is cerebral palsy. “We help carers, more often than not when the father has left. As a result the mother cannot afford to go to work or have someone else to help, and there is very little support,” she says. Cerebral palsy is caused by damage to

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

the motor control centres and/or motor pathways that can occur during pregnancy or childbirth. “We have created a programme of complex rehabilitation,” she says. “Many children who have taken part in it have improved their coordination and muscle tone. We also pay a lot of attention to children’s mental condition and social integration. Our ultimate goal is to help children with cerebral palsy feel comfortable in society, and also to help educate the general public and dispel misconceptions about cerebral palsy.” Her efforts extend beyond borders. “For me a child does not have a nationality, whether he or she is in the Middle East or Brazil. I would happily support an individual, family, rehab centre or hospital anywhere if I can.” Four years ago, this spirit of philanthropy took her and a team of doctors and specialists to Ajman in the UAE to help the local Rehabilitation Centre for the Disabled implement a series of programmes and rehabilitation, including the introduction

of a training device. Young ABOVE The focus of Tatiana patients there with cerebral Korsakova’s international philanthropic efforts are centred palsy and other motor dison helping children suffering orders could soon walk, and from cerebral palsy even jump, sometimes for the first time in their lives. “I really wanted to give everything to help these children,” says Korsakova. “My goal is to help children all over the world. I have recently been in Brazil and I want to do more in the Middle East. I would love to go again.” Her philanthropy has become a priority. “I feel we can make a difference and I think we can and should change people’s attitudes towards these children, and that’s

“Our ultimate goal is to help children with cerebral palsy feel comfortable in society”

my goal. These children are often ultra smart. They understand. They know they’re different but I don’t want these sometimes gifted children, or their parents, to be alienated from the world.” And she clearly finds it humbling. “It has changed my life,” she says. “It’s good, even to change the life of one child. My message is that if you have the chance to change lives, you should: it’s great. I’m addicted. It’s an important part of my life now. My birthday was a couple of weeks ago and even my husband’s present to me was a donation to my charity, because he knows how happy it makes me.” n • The Gracious Heart Charity helps children with physical disabilities, and also sets out to improve the lives of their families and carers. Around the world, Korsakova and her team have already helped many hundreds of children with cerebral palsy and provided orphanages and child rehabilitation centres with equipment, as well as help with refurbishment.

TA PA

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D. C.

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Key events this quarter Brisbane

Istanbul

Washington DC

Zurich

The 2014 International Association for Volunteer Effort’s (IAVE) world volunteer conference is its 23rd biennial event. Set to attract some 2,500 delegates, the conference will look at current and future models of volunteering and the role technology can play.

The World Economic Forum’s two-day event on Europe, Eurasia and MENA, last convened in 2012, meets again in Turkey. Some 1,000 business, government and civil society leaders will discuss the regions’ employment, growth, innovation and entrepreneurship dynamics.

The eighth annual Global Youth Economic Opportunities Summit draws together businesses, donor agencies, and foundations to examine the impact and scale of youth programmes. Previous events attracted some 400 delegates, with speakers from 37 countries promised this year.

The two-day Global Impact Forum, in collaboration with INSEAD business school, aims to draw together foundations, investors and entrepreneurs to discuss venture philanthropy and impact investing. This year’s event will look at how these efforts can be scaled up for maximum impact.

September 17-20

September 28-29

October 6-8

October 8-9

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Ixtapa

October 12-17 Opportunity Collaboration will bring thought leaders in social change together to talk sustainable solutions to poverty. The event will allow people to connect and contribute, sharing ideas and best practice for making positive changes, while learning from others in related fields.

Singapore October 20-21

The second Philanthropy in Asia Summit is an exclusive, invitation-only event aiming to mobilise Asian giving so that it is not just an expression of altruism, but an impactful and sustainable agent of change. The event seeks to act as a platform for collaboration and impactful giving in Asia.

Greenwich, US

Coming up

The Social Venture Networkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Fall Conference aims to support and empower diverse, innovative leaders who leverage business to serve the greater good. The group aims to do this through peer-to-peer connections among influential leaders and impact investors.

October 27-30 VERGE, San Francisco

October 23-26

Next quarter

October 30 - November 1 Exponent Philanthropy 2014 National Conference, Washington DC November 4-6 World Economic Forum on India, New Delhi November 4-6 World Innovation Summit on Education, Doha

PHILANTHROPY AGE

In the next issue… The CSR question hat’s the business case for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)? How do you measure effectively the success or failure of a CSR programme? Is it even a company’s place to address society’s ills, or is CSR just a way to offset the damage that a business can inflict upon the communities in which it operates? The fact is that even the most dynamic and forward-thinking humanitarian and development initiatives are likely to require corporate support at some point if they are to survive. In an era of near-global government austerity, companies are being urged to bridge the gap between what is required, and what is available. In our next issue, we examine a host of CSR programmes across the region and identify those with genuine long-term benefits to community and corporate alike. We address the issues surrounding private sector engagement in the development space, and ask how we can combine the best of the for- and non-profit worlds, to build a brighter tomorrow. n

PHILANTHROPY AGE