“Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World”

But… what exactly is an opportunity and why does missing one seem like a tragedy? The dictionary matter-of-factly tells me that an opportunity is “a set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something.” Another source describes opportunity as “a chance for success or advancement.” Central to both of these definitions is the idea that an opportunity is not a normal occurrence. Rather, it is a unique occasion to enact significant and positive change, if you like. The irony of Edison’s quote is that extraordinary opportunities are often camouflaged in the grey monotony of school, small talk, emails and newspaper clippings.

I recently learned about a fascinating man who takes full advantage of the opportunities he encounters. Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains tells the intriguing story of Dr. Paul Farmer. Raised in a low-income family, educated in Ivy League institutions, and molded by his experiences in broken, rural Haiti, Farmer is a quirky and brilliant doctor committed to treating the chronically ill in developing countries. Farmer’s staunch dedication to and concern for impoverished people is unwavering. As I was reading Mountains Beyond Mountains, I caught myself romanticizing Farmer’s life. His endless trips from Haiti to Russia to Peru to Cuba then back to Haiti sounded exhilarating. I quickly realized, however, that Farmer’s trips abroad are hard work from start to finish. He likely has endured countless 24-hour workdays, exhausting conversations and demanding projects during his travels among some of the world’s most vulnerable communities.

Opportunities are elusive and maximizing them is not easy. However, pursuing good often leads to positive consequences. Throughout Mountains Beyond Mountains, Paul Farmer’s schedule is more than chaotic, but he is energetic and derives great satisfaction from serving impoverished people. Countless others who are devoted to meaningful causes have had similar experiences. Though leading a purposeful life is difficult, sweet rewards stem from sacrificing personal comfort in pursuit of service to others. The rewards shouldn’t prompt the action, but remembering that they will eventually come is an encouragement when one’s desire to pursue meaningful work is obscured by unexpected circumstances or missed opportunities. I’m going to try to remember this the next time I look at my Post-it note.

Allison Bearden is the technical proposal writer in Opportunity’s International Business Development department.

“In the Horn of Africa, even in the midst of tragedy, there is a common humanity that unites us all.” -Rajiv Shah, Administrator, USAID

Along with the tragic photos and stories, Shah presented a bleak picture of the future. “More than 30,000 children have already died,” he said. “And the UN estimates that 750,000 more will die from this crisis, not just from lack of food but from disease.” And yet, this is a picture, Shah insisted, that should make the U.S. people proud. As a country and an administration, we’ve deeply invested in this crisis. Along with the help of the World Bank, and most importantly, the governments of Kenya and Somalia, more than eight million people who would’ve been highly vulnerable due to the famine are not, said Shah. A significant portion of our investment has been in vaccinations, both for children and animals, in order to prevent disease. Shah showed the audience a slide of Second Lady Jill Biden visiting a greenhouse outside of Nairobi, where they are growing a more nutritious orange-fleshed sweet potato that will give children more vitamin A to better stave off malnutrition and disease. We also understand the cultural aspect of dealing with this crisis, he said. “We know that women are the key to feeding the children. We know that when more income goes to women, they will use it for the family, contributing it to the education and nutrition of the children, and helping the community move out of poverty.”

Dr. Rajiv Shah at the Nov. 17th talk in Chicago.

Shah went on to discuss more than just the Horn of Africa crisis. He also reminded the audience of the continued need in Haiti. (“Though U.S. people have given overwhelmingly to Haiti, most don’t know the scale of what is still going on.”) He called attention to Feed the Future, the pledge made by President Obama at the 2009 G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy, in light of the 2007-2008 food price spikes and the burgeoning global financial crisis at the time. Feed the Future was a response to the G8 leaders’ acknowledgement that these crises would have the greatest effect on more than three billion of the most vulnerable and impoverished people worldwide. He emphasized the need to represent all findings connected to Feed the Future in a transparent way so that the government will continue to support it going forward.

He also talked about the long-term economic and cultural implications of raising children under chronic malnutrition. He said that a crisis of this magnitude could actually affect children’s ability to one day contribute to the economy, stunting their long-term mental and physical development. He cited studies in which MRIs actually show long-term deterioration of brain matter, and other neurological damage, due to undernutrition and malnutrition in early development.

Visualizing Facebook friendships (by Paul Butler)

Finally, he emphasized the role that technology has played and will continue to play in empowering hungry people. He showed a slide of the world map ”according to Facebook.” The areas showing the most light were areas of high Facebook use and the places with the least light were no surprise: mostly, they were China, Russia, the Amazon, half of the Middle East and most of Africa. (See image at right.) Shah said that with the explosive growth of cell phones and the projected growth of Internet access throughout the developing world in the future, he expects that in 10-15 years on a map like this, “the whole world will be lit up.” The technological tools that NGOs and governments employ now to communicate with people in need, to ascertain where and who needs the most immediate help, and even to transfer money and goods, will only become more useful with greater technological infrastructure in place. He also called attention to Feed the Future’s new online campaign called FWD (Famine. War. Drought. Relief), a social media- and cell phone-based awareness campaign for the Horn of Africa crisis at usaid.gov/fwd.

This hour-long lunchtime talk with Administrator Shah was a provocative and, ultimately, relatively hopeful depiction of the current and future state of hungry people in the Horn of Africa, and the solution, according to Shah, is innovation. After all, he predicted, “The most entrepreneurial humanitarian organizations will continue to strive to think creatively and innovate to solve the world’s problems because they’re packed with people who care.”

Today, Jan. 12, is the one-year anniversary of the disastrous earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince, Haiti. In the wake of the catastrophe, while aid groups worked to provide much-needed emergency relief services, other NGOs looked to implement long-term financial services to empower the Haitian people. Opportunity worked with Fonkoze, the largest microfinance organization in Haiti, to help restore their services, getting them up and running in a matter of days, much earlier than local traditional banks. It was further proof that microfinance institutions often have the power to impact people’s lives where traditional banks cannot.

To that end, reports CGAP blogger Chris Bold, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in coordination with USAID, has made $10 million available for the Haiti Mobile Money Initiative (HMMI) to encourage mobile operators and banks to launch mobile money services. And on Monday, Jan. 10, they awarded $2.5 million to mobile operator Digicel and their partner, ScotiaBank.

Here, Bold interviews Greta Greathouse, Chief of Party for the USAID-funded Haiti Integrated Finance for Value Chains and Enterprises project (HIFIVE), the group responsible for running the HMMI, discussing the ways in which mobile money and greater access to financial services can help people at the bottom of the economic pyramid:

Why was mobile money seen as important in responding to the damage caused by the earthquake?

Greathouse: “…In the days immediately following the earthquake severe liquidity problems mounted as banks remained closed. …[M]obile financial services had potential as a solution that would support many other relief efforts and hopefully leave a legacy of safe, easily accessible and affordable access to financial services for the poor even after the relief agencies had departed.”

Summing up the immense challenges in Haiti, Greathouse concludes, “Who has ever had to face the combined challenges of earthquake damage of apocalyptic dimensions, connectivity issues, hurricanes, cholera, post election violence, gas shortages all within the same year? Despite it all, the government of Haiti and the private sector, working together, have made mobile money services a reality for Haitians.”

To read the complete published interview on the CGAP Technology Blog, click here.

President Clinton leads the final plenary session at CGIU 2010. Stanley Clermont (right) discusses the needs of the people in his home country, Haiti.

At the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGIU) conference this year, the final plenary session centered on the devastating earthquake that rocked Haiti on January 12, 2010. For me, this final panel was the most moving of the entire weekend.

It is plain to see why Haiti was the focus of the final session at this year’s CGIU. For one, President Clinton was just named to lead the reconstruction of the shattered Caribbean nation. Second, the devastation in Haiti has been an ongoing global focal point this year, which is not surprising considering it is probably the largest natural disaster to have taken place in the Western Hemisphere since 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.

Most of all, focusing on rebuilding efforts, population empowerment, economic relief, and infrastructure reconstruction in Haiti presents a unique situation whereby all of Clinton’s key Millennium Goals come into play. The five Global Challenge areas, the focus of the Clinton Millennium goals, are education, environment and climate Change, peace and human rights, poverty alleviation, and public health. And it takes little more than a Google® search of “Haiti” to see how all five of these areas are crucial to the situation there right now.

Since returning home, I continue to revisit the words of one particular panelist at that final session. Stanley Clermont is a college student, a Haitian Education & Leadership Program (H.E.L.P.) scholarship recipient, and an earthquake survivor. When all the participants on the panel were asked, “What does a bowl of rice [the Haitian food staple] signify to you?” Stanley responded, “A filled bowl of rice means two things to me: one, you did your job, you fed yourself, and two, your people have been fed. But, when I see an empty bowl of rice, it means that my family has a need and the people have a need. That’s when I say to myself, ‘Man, you have too much to do. Stop wasting time and put everything into action to fill the bowls of your family and friends around you.’”

Stanley’s words remind us of the ongoing needs of the Haitian people. I feel strongly that conferences like CGIU are crucial to helping young leaders continue to help the people of Haiti.

To read more about our experiences at CGIU 2010, check out other blog posts by Andrew Koehler and Sonya Perez-Lauterbach.

After years of struggling to adapt traditional banking software to its microfinance operations, Fonkoze began working with Opportunity to implement the technology tools it needed to manage its operations. The same technology innovations Opportunity developed for its microfinance banks around the world are now used at Fonkoze.

When the earthquake struck, Fonkoze’s main headquarters and a number of branches were destroyed. Once Fonkoze was able to get its hardware set up again, Opportunity began working with them behind the scenes to restore their operations. Within four days, half of Fonkoze’s 42 branches were operational and all but two were ready within the week. The organization’s nationwide client base of 200,000 depositors (50,000 of whom area also borrowers) had access to the cash they so desperately needed to survive.

As a trusted institution in the community and through tools such a mobile banking, microfinance is now able to play an even greater role in disaster recovery. So much so that Newsweek is now asking, “Could microcredit be the next Red Cross?”

For news coverage of Fonkoze’s remarkable response, visit http://www.newsweek.com/id/233334.

In this immediate aftermath, we would encourage you to consider supporting one of our partners with operations in Haiti or one of the many other great organizations who are providing services in the country.

A terrible tragedy like this demonstrates the vulnerability of those living in poverty, and reminds us of how much work remains to help strengthen poor communities around the world.

As President Obama recently said, “Few in the world have endured the hardships that you [Haiti] have known. Long before this tragedy, daily life itself was often a bitter struggle. And after suffering so much for so long, to face this new horror must cause some to look up and ask, have we somehow been forsaken?”

We join with the President and the international chorus of voices declaring, “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.”

Partners with operations in Haiti:

Compassion International
http://www.compassion.com/

World Relief
http://worldrelief.org/

Fonkoze
http://www.fonkoze.org/

 Other organizations supporting the relief and rebuilding effort:

World Vision
http://www.worldvision.org/

 Habitat for Humanity
http://www.habitat.org/