A balm for Darfur

Start with the world’s most violent, urgent and complex humanitarian crisis. Add a high-profile social entrepreneur itching to do something about it. Mix in an experienced nonprofit willing to do the heavy lifting and an open-minded financial services CEO or two and – boom! – you have the Darfur Project, which in April 2007 dispatched the first of eight planned shipments of critical medical supplies to that war-torn western region of Sudan.

The first seed was planted shortly after philanthropic consultant Christine N. Ward was hired to generate interest for the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative among the financial community. At that event, she heard Sudan analyst John Prendergast and actor Don Cheadle speak about their firsthand experiences in Darfur and made a connection.

“This is something I can do,” she thought to herself.

A couple months later, in November 2006, she was introduced to Stephen Skakel of the Bridge Foundation, who along with partner Andrew Hannah had over 30 years of experience delivering aid and relief supplies to conflict and disaster zones around the world.

Skakel advised Ward on the costs of a relief mission and she contacted William Demchak, chief financial officer of PNC Financial and a friend, who didn’t take her seriously at first. But her determination and the appeal of direct involvement won over Demchak and several other financial services executives.

“I’m not selling anything. I’m doing you guys a favor.” Ward recalled telling them. “And to their credit, they absolutely agreed.”

Taking flight 

With funding from heavy hitters like PNC Financial, Blue Mountain and Merrill Lynch, Ward quickly gathered the necessary $250,000 and handed it over to the Bridge Foundation. Despite previous experiences in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, among other hot zones, Managing Director Andrew Hannah admitted this operation – Bridge’s first project in Sudan – had been among his most thorny.

“There was tremendous difficulty getting in,” he said, hoping that the relationships built during the inaugural run will ease future missions. “Because of the impediments that the Sudanese government throws up, you need a lot of resources to go in there.”

Hannah navigated a labyrinthine bureaucracy to gain clearance regarding every aspect of the mission: who would be visiting Sudan, what they’d be bringing, when, where, how, et cetera.

“It’s a morass of intangibles,” said Hannah, citing the additional concern of current events. “If all of the sudden the U.S. has been particularly critical of the Sudan government, or even more worrying, of President [Omar al-]Bashir, you know it’s gonna slow things down.”

After nearly three months of wrangling, the Darfur Project took flight on a Ukrainian carrier and was received by the International Medical Corps on April 10, 2008. That first shipment included enough medical supplies to treat more than 11,000 people for parasitic and bacterial infections and 10,000 for dehydration – both common yet serious problems in Darfur’s dry, disease-ridden desert plains.

A closer look

The Darfur Project may have been direct, inexpensive and nimble, but did it improve the way relief is delivered? Should it, with more widespread involvement from aid organizations and the private sector, be replicated and exported to other conflict and disaster zones?

“It’s a simpler way to do things but not a solution: a palliative,” said Mark Kramer, managing director at FSG Social Impact Advisors. “It’s a good thing to do, a great thing to do – it brought temporary relief to people who needed it – but it hasn’t changed things in Darfur, it hasn’t changed aid or public perceptions or the government’s position.”

On at least one count he is right: It looks like 2004 again in Darfur. Along with the number of dead and displaced the mayhem ticked back up after forces reportedly backed by the Sudanese government attacked two towns and two refugee camps in the first weeks of October, killing scores of locals and 13 African Union peacekeepers. And with Amnesty International predicting an imminent government-backed offensive in the north, the United Nations still negotiating the makeup of its incoming peacekeeping force, aid workers and refugees increasingly in the crosshairs and a dearth of attendees at this week’s peace talks, emergency relief is as urgent as ever and the utility of the Darfur Project of vital importance.

The reviews have been mostly favorable, partially due to Ward’s previous experiences. She scared up nearly $200,000 to rebuild a Sri Lankan fishing village after the 2004 Asian tsunami and collected about the same amount for relief in Pakistani Kashmir after the 2005 earthquake.

“I really got frustrated at the way aid gets to where it’s supposed to go,” Ward said of her experiences in Pakistan. “There’s all these billions of dollars floating around, and where I was, we were handing out corrugated iron, and pins, buckets and so on.”

Many aid organizations did excellent work, she said.

But “there just seems to be a lot that gets lost in the middle,” she added.

Limited transport options, red tape and a general lack of security often make distribution one of the most difficult parts of IMC’s work. But field workers reported no major hiccups during the pickup or deployment of Darfur Project aid. Dr. Solomon Kebede, IMC country director in Sudan, cited two main advantages to this operation: The items delivered matched field needs because of a prior consultation with field workers, and the airlift straight to Nyala, in south Darfur, bypassed bureaucratic impediments and other delays that usually make timely deliveries impossible.

“It was indeed a great success,” said Kebede, adding that more than 280,000 locals benefited from the supplies. “Definitely one of the best donations we received to date in Darfur.”

He echoed Hannah’s complaint, however, that the Sudanese government’s mistrust of and hostility toward humanitarian aid agencies made his work significantly more difficult. Hannah thought it worth the trouble.

“Is it more responsive? Is the timeline shortened? Does it move critically needed material more quickly than a [U.S. Agency for International Development] effort?” he asked. “The answer is obvious: yes.”

Spreading the word

Ideally, such projects would be commonplace. All Bridge Foundation missions are funded by the private sector, and, as such, could be equally expedient. Also, USAID’s Global Development Alliance combines the efforts of private businesses and nonprofits with government funds to create and implement new and innovative aid and development programs. But these efforts can be sluggish; not so for the Darfur Project.

“The relief was like a lightning strike: quick and sudden and a little bit random,” said Kramer, mulling over a new label for missions like the Darfur Project.

“I love the idea of ‘lightning philanthropy,’ but I’m not sure it applies,” he said. “It’s not as if a need arose and someone responded instantly.”

That label might better describe the concerted aid effort that swelled in the wake of the tsunami, when many multinationals immediately lent a hand. FedEx, for instance, altered delivery schedules and rerouted planes to move hundreds of tons of medical supplies to the hardest hit areas of Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The Dow Chemical Co., Microsoft Corp., Citigroup Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp. and many more made significant donations to tsunami relief.

But, like Ward’s tsunami and earthquake relief projects, this was more immediate, and thus riskier.

“It’s a leap of faith,” she said, referring to corporate commitments. “It was something that hadn’t really occurred to them before that they could personally have a very direct impact on someone else’s life.”

The Bridge Foundation and IMC ensured that impact, but Kebede questioned the project’s sustainability.

“Signs of donors’ fatigue are already manifesting,” he said, explaining that available funds were diminishing even as humanitarian needs increase.

Kramer said solving crises like Darfur required “a sustained effort as well as knowledge and expertise.” The analyst also saw an upside: “Perhaps this was done in part to draw attention to the issue – and that’s a good thing.”

That attention has led to funding for four additional shipments scheduled for this year and a fundraising event set for January. Ward, who acknowledged that the crisis “isn’t going away and quite frankly isn’t getting any better,” sees the Darfur Project as a good model because a relatively low funding benchmark - $250,000 - can have a broad impact.

“It’s a much wider effect than you originally think,” she said, citing Australian banking executives contacting her about getting involved and dozens of PNC employees sending cheery emails to Demchak. “You’re not just helping the people in refugee camps.”

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