NEAR EAST FOUNDATION CELEBRATES 90th YEAR;

YUKSEL OKTAY [mailto:[email protected]]

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Founded during Armenian Genocide
NEAR EAST FOUNDATION CELEBRATES 90th YEAR;
FIRST U.S. INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATION;
PIONEER OF AMERICAN PHILANTHROPY ABROAD
“NEF@90: Celebrating Development; Honoring
Philanthropy” is the theme of this year’s
commemoration of the 90th anniversary year of the
Near East Foundation (NEF), which was founded as
Near East Relief in 1915 in urgent response to the
Armenian genocide and deportations and in the process
pioneered international humanitarian assistance. A
series of celebratory events is being planned throughout
the year, highlighted by a gala banquet to take place
September 21 in New York City.
During World War I, the Near East Foundation is
credited with saving a million lives of Armenians,
Assyrians, Arabs, Persians and others in the region,
among them 132,000 orphans. Many an Armenian can
trace their lives or those of their parents and
grandparents back to Near East Relief orphanages and
camps. NEF’s rescue mission and relief operation
during war and subsequent reconstruction work in its
aftermath employed techniques that reverberated
through the following decades and are employed to this
day. NEF’s approach created the models for the
Marshall Plan, Truman’s Point-4 Program, the Peace
Corps, the US Agency for International Development
(USAID) and the United Nations Development
Program.
Commented NEF President Ryan A. LaHurd, Ph.D.,
“While the Near East Foundation has an extraordinary
record of past accomplishments, we remain on the
cutting-edge of practice today. Currently we are at
work in a wide range of development projects in a
dozen countries of the Middle East and Africa, carrying
out this organization’s historic mission–‘To help people
the people of the Middle East and Africa build the
future they envision for themselves.’”
Corroborating that view, last year NEF received the
prestigious Arab Gulf Programme for United Nations
Development Organizations (AGFUND) International
Prize for Pioneering Development Projects for 2004,
for enhancing nursing as a career in Upper Egypt.
Announced in Riyadh, the award came as a result of a
competition with 83 projects from 32 countries on
three continents.
Also, the Near East Foundation received the 2004
Freedom Award, the highest recognition granted by the
Armenian National Committee of America for the
organization’s “longstanding history of aiding the
Armenian people and others in their darkest hours.” In
February of this year, NEF was among those honored,
and NEF’s President delivered the keynote address, at
the “International Relief, Refuge, and Recognition”
luncheon sponsored by The Armenian Assembly of
America, The Armenian General Benevolent Union,
and The Western Diocese of the Armenian Church of
North American to honor Near East Foundation’s
humanitarian response to the Armenian Genocide.
Further recognition came in the 2003 museum
exhibition, “Near East/New York: The Near East
Foundation and American Philanthropy,” of 300
photographs and objects from the Near East
Foundation archive chronicling its early work. The
show debuted at the Museum of the City of New York
in Manhattan, and has subsequently toured this past
winter to the Doheny Memorial Library at the
University of Southern California. It will next be on
view at the Armenian Library and Museum of America
in Watertown, Massachusetts, opening April 24, the
commemorative date of the Armenian Genocide. In
2004 NEF’s history and its current work in Morocco
and Egypt were featured in two, half-hour, television
programs, produced for “The Visionaries,” a series on
“philanthropies that make a difference” broadcast
nationally on PBS.
ORIGINS
NEF was created in response to an alarming cable from
American Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry
Morgenthau to the U.S. Secretary of State stating that
the Turkish “destruction of the Armenian race is
progressing rapidly,” and it was urgent that something
be done. Within two weeks a group of civic, business
and religious leaders, led by Cleveland H. Dodge,
formed a committee, mostly comprised of distinguished
New Yorkers, to rescue over a million people caught up
in the tragedy. Dodge’s grandson, David S. Dodge, still
serves the Near East Foundation, having been for many
years the chair of its board of directors. He is
representative of the intergenerational commitment of
many of the founding families and their ongoing
financial support through the years.
The volunteer committee quickly met its $100,000 goal,
thanks to donations from those early board members.
By 1919 the committee was chartered by Congress and
designated the primary channel for U.S. postwar aid to
the region. From 1915 to 1930, Near East Relief raised
$110 million for refugees—that is about $1.25 billion in
today’s dollars—including $25 million in in-kind food
and supplies. This remarkable outpouring occurred at a
time when bread cost a nickel a loaf.
More than one million people had been rescued from
certain death by starvation and exposure. Some 12
million people had been fed, and at one point between
1919-20, an average of 333,000 people were fed daily.
Forty hospitals were built. Over 130,000 children were
housed, fed and taught in orphanages and provided
with medical care. One of these Armenian children was
Phoebe Kapikian, who thinking back to her memories
of being a two-and-a-half year old in the village of Sivas
recalled only “confusion…driven out…groups with
bundles on their backs of things that belonged in the
house going on ahead…60-70 children left behind and I
was clinging all the time to my older sister Ashan…a
long, hard journey….”
She was piled into one of the many carriages hired to
rescue abandoned orphans and taken to the Island of
Syra. “The buildings already were in construction. We
were taken care of very well by the Near East
Foundation. We would rise on time, wash our faces.
There was plenty of water. They tested every child for
his or her capacity of how much they could read and
write. So we had to go to school and we had food,” she
explained, recalling her years at the orphanage.
Nearing the age of 10, she was chosen to join a group
of children being sent to England, later joining her older
sister in America–thanks to the tireless efforts of
Katharine Reynolds McCormick, an philanthropist who
traveled the United States lecturing about the plight of
orphans, raising funds and finding homes. “She was a
mother for all that she did for me and my sister too,”
said Miss Kapikian in an interview shortly before her
death in 2004 after a rich life and career as a librarian in
Queens, New York.
Very early in the relief effort attention focused on
helping the rescued orphans to become self-supporting
and contributing members of the communities that
absorbed them. Both in its orphanages and in foster
care homes under NEF auspices, attention shifted to
teaching agriculture and industrial skills, primarily at
NEF demonstration centers. A generation of poultry
raisers, dairymen, mechanics, shipbuilders, cabinet
makers, masons, shoemakers, tailors and nurses grew up
and moved out into their adopted countries. Thus
NEF moved beyond relief to become the first true
international development organization.
In the Middle East, NEF became a symbol of American
generosity and a prototype for the Peace Corps, besides
its work with orphans, providing medical aid to six
million patients. NEF was the vehicle for service to the
region by hundreds of American volunteers—doctors,
nurses, teachers, social workers. In short, NEF
provided hope, home, training and education to a
generation “without a childhood.” NEF saved the
remnants of Armenians, helping resettle them in
Armenia, Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus, Greece and the
United States; and helped rescue other wartime victims
including Assyrians, Greeks, Turks and Kurds. NEF
was at work in Armenia, Turkey, Persia, Lebanon, Syria,
Palestine, Egypt and the Caucasus.
PHILANTHROPY
An unsurpassed achievement at the time and
remarkable even today, all this was accomplished by
pioneering philanthropic techniques which continue to
be used today. Among the innovations, NEF produced
a series of compelling posters created by top American
illustrators. Their national fundraising campaign feature
Madison Avenue-style slogans like “Hunger Knows No
Armistice” and “Clear Your Plate—Remember the
Starving Armenians.” NEF Bundle Days encouraged
Americans to send used clothing overseas, which they
did—by the tons. Celebrities became spokespersons.
Child-actor Jackie Coogan spearheaded the NEF Milk
Campaign; and cans of condensed milk were collected
at screenings of his films at movie theaters around the
country. He even visited the region, traveling on a
“milk ship” out of New York. Americans were urged
to “adopt and orphan,” being told “$60 a year cares for
a child.” On International Golden Rule Sunday, families
across the country ate a simple orphanage meal and
donated the equivalent cost of their average Sunday
dinner. Based on population, each American town and
city was asked to contribute. President Woodrow
Wilson issued proclamations and wrote endorsement
letters.
The lingering impact of NEF fundraising is evident in
today’s attention-grabbing graphics on through celebrity
endorsements. And the Milk Campaign continues as
well. Twenty tons of milk were distributed by the Near
East Foundation to malnourished children in the West
Bank from December 2003 to early May of 2004. Since
then milk, cheese and other local dairy products were
delivered to the families of 836 children enrolled in all
17 kindergartens in the cluster of West Bank villages
north of Nablus, where NEF currently is at work on a
range of development projects.
Forty tons of water, much of it to be mixed with
powdered milk for children, were trucked to Baghdad
by NEF at the height of the Iraq war along an
extremely dangerous route during U.S. bombings. Also
despite extreme risk to humanitarian personnel, NEF
delivered 50 sheep to the Abou Shashir refugee camp in
Darfur, Sudan, for the special occasion of the recent
Eid Al-Adha celebrations. For a brief time, despair in
the camp lifted and life seemed almost normal for
people who feel preyed upon by all sides. NEF was the
only non-Islamic, Western agency participating in the
feast with the local people of Darfur. An NEF
shipment of medicines and blankets followed.
FROM RELIEF TO DEVELOPMENT
While providing emergency relief in these
circumstances, the Near East Foundation has been a
force for the human and economic development of the
region since 1930, when it had successfully completed
its refugee activities. NEF aimed for long-term change,
particularly attending to vocational education and
agriculture, including experimental projects and
instruction in raising sheep, poultry and cattle and the
use of fertilizer’s, seeds and mechanized farm
equipment. NEF had become America’s first
international development agency, teaching people skills
that could permanently improve their lives. The idea
expressed in the saying, “give a man a fish and he will
eat for a day; teach him to fish and he will eat for a
lifetime” became NEF’s watchword.
“NEF’s approach has had far-reaching significance and
has impacted foreign aid programming for the past half
century,” according to Dr. Linda Jacobs, a Middle
Eastern archeologist and current chair of the NEF
board of directors. Dr. Jacobs previously was a
member of the NEF staff. The Jacobs Family
Foundation, set up by her parents Dr. Joseph and
Violet Jabara Jacobs, has been a long-time generous
supporter of NEF’s work, and her mother is NEF’s
largest individual donor. The Jacobses represent yet
another example of the intergenerational commitment
of many NEF supporters through the years.
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“Today this approach is termed ‘self help,’” Dr. Jacobs
continued, “but NEF has been doing this since the
1920s and 1930s, decades before it became widespread
practice. And ‘self help’ remains a cornerstone on our
development work internationally to this day. In
dozens of programs we work at the grassroots where
training, technology and community-based
organizations touch people’s lives.”
The NEF-American University of Beirut Institute of
Rural Life and its specialists provided much of the
leadership in the post World War II Middle East in the
areas of education, economic development and health.
Activities ranged broadly from water purification and
sanitation improvements, to decreasing infant mortality
and introducing malaria control, to home and welfare
demonstrations and small industries employing women,
to organizing schools and teacher training and
developing rural cooperatives.
The Near East Foundation’s first experimental rural
development program was in Greece where they
worked in 48 villages on land donated by the Greek
government. The program consisted of training in
practical farming adapted to local conditions, water
management, basic education in literacy, and health
maintenance. From the beginning the aim was to
develop local leadership and create programs which
could carry on after NEF staff departed. Using this
Macedonian experiment, NEF’s work spread eastward
to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iran. Just one case in
point, in 1946 the Iranian government asked the Near
East foundation to establish a rural improvement
program for 350 villages based upon their successful
Macedonian model. Four years later in 1950, President
Truman established the Point Four Program on
international aid modeled on NEF’s work in Iran.
“Many of the now standard ways of going about the
business of international development,” Dr. Jacobs
commented, “can be traced back to the Near East
Foundation way before the 1960s cries of ‘power to the
people’ and subsequent social movements. I cannot
emphasize this enough since it is an amazing fact given
the prevalent paternalism or worse at the time.
PHILOSOPHY
“From its earliest days the philosophy of the Near East
Foundation has been never to impose an agenda, never
to come into a community with preconceptions of what
is best, but to listen and learn about the needs from the
people themselves, then get down to work and help,”
she continued. “The Near East Foundation has an
enviable record through the years of valuing the dignity
of people and respecting their opinions way before it
was considered the preferred way to proceed,” she
summed up, concluding, “And unfortunately many
organizations involved in similar work still remain
painfully remiss on this issue today.”
Her opinion is reiterated by Steven W. Lawry, Ford
Foundation staff person who was former representative
for that Foundation’s Middle East and North Africa
programs, based in Cairo. He had many opportunities
to observe NEF in action up close. According to
Lawry: “The Near East Foundation has made
remarkable contributions toward alleviating human
suffering over the many years since its founding. My
belief is that NEF is best characterized as a humanistic
organization, dedicated to giving vulnerable
communities the capacity to shape sustainable solutions
to their own problems. Their staff are dedicated
professionals, highly trained and practiced in sociology,
agriculture, engineering, urban planning and other fields
relevant to development and change.
“But they also understand the central importance of
giving leadership to beneficiary communities in the
design and governance of development and change
initiatives. Importantly, NEF staff member bring to
their work a profound respect for the dignity and
knowledge of those they wish to serve. This results in
interventions and programs that build community social
capital and better enable individuals and communities to
constructively address their problems over the longterm.
In short, I personally have had very rewarding
experiences with the Near East Foundation and the
qualities of professionalism, service and imagination
that characterize their work.”
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In 1964 the Near East Foundation began working with
the newly-independent African countries on agricultural
development, recruiting hundreds of technicians trained
in livestock improvement, water management, and
scientific crop improvement. As its work evolved, NEF
established a separate African Endowment Fund that by
1980 funded development of experimental projects in
new areas. In the 1980s the Near East Foundation
responded to the threat of famine in Mali with a
program that embraced livestock rehabilitation, village
seed and cereal banks, agricultural credit, literacy, and
soil and water conservation. Even before the end of
Lebanon’s civil war, in 1988 NEF had launched a
vocational training initiative in that country, including
projects to assist those disabled by the war to find
employment.
In the competition between population growth and
food shortages in Africa and the Middle East,
throughout the 1980s NEF continued to work on
agricultural improvement tailored to local conditions
and the strengthening of local institutions and
communities—what historically they had been very
good at accomplishing. Increasingly NEF worked in
cooperation with other donor agencies to implement
projects ranging from beekeeping in Sudan and
Swaziland to community development projects in Egypt
and Jordan and seed and cereal banks in Mali.
It was in Mali that Steve Lawry of the Ford Foundation
first became acquainted with the Near East Foundation.
He was there supervising a University of Wisconsin
team researching forest rights and management. “The
locally-based NEF team asked us to help evaluate their
efforts to build an efficient, low-cost system for better
harvesting rainwater for agricultural and forestry
purposes. What we found was astounding,” he still
sounds astounded to this day.
“NEF staff had designed a simple water harvesting
technology based on surveying natural water run-off
patterns and constructing, with village volunteer labor,
low-level earthen ridgelines that channeled water to
cultivated areas. The practice reduced stress to crops
and improved food security. It represented in
important ways an adoption and extension of traditional
and locally-familiar water conservation techniques.
‘However, traditional harvesting practices were limited
to individual farms, “ Lawry continued, “To successfully
extend the design to a larger water catchment area,
NEF helped community members work through a
number of complex questions around land tenure, water
rights and labor management. NEF staff worked with
intelligence and sensitivity at every level, the technical as
well as the social, in helping shape an intervention that
yielded sustainable benefits and could be managed by
the local community permanently.” He remains an
NEF fan to this day and later, as the Ford Foundation
representative for the Middle East and North Africa,
recommended Ford funding for a variety of NEF
research and community development initiatives.
CENTER FOR DEVELOPMENT SERVICES
A major NEF milestone occurred in 1990 with the
establishment of the Center for Development Services
in Cairo, with assistance from the Ford Foundation to
support their initiatives in community development.
The center maintained that early focus on self-help in
dozens of programs and brought together a cadre of
professionals who could become a “think tank” of
practicing development workers to refine techniques
and mentor local talent. Current projects range widely
from a number of local Egyptians initiatives on through
working with street children to recover their lost
potential in five Arab countries and a six-country
initiative on Islamic philanthropy.
Lawry again: “After working in the country for several
years, NEF leadership had concluded that the most
enduring contribution it could make to Egypt would be
to help establish an Egyptian development support
organization, embodying many of NEF’s own traditions
of professionalism and service, but bolstered by the
added knowledge, experience and legitimacy that
Egyptian staff would bring to the fore over the longterm.”
He adds, “It is rare for international development
organizations to design initiatives with the explicit aim
of putting themselves out of business. But this was
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effectively the goal of NEF in establishing the Center
for Development Services as a resource for Egyptians
to struggle with complex problems on their own
terms,” he continued, adding, “This initiative
distinguishes, in my mind at least, NEF as a humanistic
as well as a technical assistance organization.”
One of those Egyptians was Montasser Kamal, a
medical student 20 years ago at Cairo University when
he first became associated with the Near East
Foundation’s work in Egypt, and later at manager at the
Center for Development Services. “NEF has had a
profound impact on my life,” he states categorically,
“work ethos, team work, mutual respect and having an
investigative mind are all qualities which I gained while
at NEF, and which I carry with me to this day. As
NEF ‘pushed the envelope,’ its ethos was embraced by
its staff throughout their professional and even personal
lives and in turn by the communities where NEF
worked.” Dr. Kamal also obtained a Ph.D. in medical
anthropology and is now with the World Health
Organization.
He elaborates further: “NEF has without doubt come
to be one of the most influential institutions in the lives
of many disadvantaged people in Egypt and other
countries of the Middle East. NEF also became
influential in my life and the lives of many other
development practitioners in the region. The influence
of NEF, however, cannot be attributed to the scale of
its financial resources, which was always modest.
Rather, the influence can be attributed to the ability of
NEF’s leadership to tackle key cutting-edge
development issues before they became ‘flavor-of-themonth’
and pursing them long after others were swayed
away from them because of their inherent challenges.
“The abilities to make timely decisions, charter new
strategic directions, and create alliances have helped so
many poor because, in part, these were qualities that
inspired new generations of professionals to enter the
field of development,” he believes.
In 1991 NEF began working in Lesotho in southern
Africa on a comprehensive rural development program
based on the creation of a local non-governmental
organization called GROW. In 1993 an Appropriate
Technology Training Center was established in
Morocco to promote technical alternatives for
development by rural women. That same year they
started a micro-credit program in the rural villages of
Jordan.
PALESTINE
In 1994 NEF enhanced its program in West
Bank/Gaza by supporting water resources with the
Palestinian Hydrology Group to help save some 400
springs and ponds. Other programs included a
community health unit at Birzeit University; specialized
training for United Nations Development Program
personnel in multi-village development; technical
assistance to U.N.’s Relief and Works Agency providing
education, health and social service to 2.8 million
registered Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza,
Lebanon, Jordan and Syria; job creation and building up
technical expertise.
“The needs were enormous,” commented Dr. Vartan
Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Foundation, an
Armenian, long-time NEF supporter and member of its
International Council. “If Palestinian selfdetermination
and home rule had to become a reality; if
its economy had to be viable, its economic
infrastructure had to be secured and strengthened.
Hence NEF had established several important
programs.”
In 1998 NEF expanded its urban development work in
some of the poorest sections of Cairo, which in Ford’s
Lawry’s opinion “were decisive in saving a low-income
community in central Cairo from being forcibly
removed to make way for historic conservation and
tourism projects.” He says the Center for Development
Services demonstrated that the community, though
poor, was stable and had a variety of closely-knit
economic and financial arrangements that created large
numbers of service and small-scale manufacturing jobs.
“Importantly, and perhaps ironically,” he commented,
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“the research also found that the volunteer efforts by
community members had over the years been decisive
in saving many revered Islamic monuments from
collapse, while wealthier groups had long-ago
abandoned the district for the suburbs.
“The Center’s research findings were taken up by the
staff members of the Aga Khan Foundation, who were
leading restoration efforts in the district, and used to
convince Cairo local government authorities that
displacement would destroy vital social and economic
support networks and that the community should be
allowed to remain,” he summed up.
While working at the Center Dr. Montasser saw NEF’s
pro-poor ethos and participatory modus operandi in
development in action, up front and personally. He
credits NEF’s approach with “substantially helping to
alleviate the suffering of poor women, men and children
in the region” in both urban and rural areas—and
impacting the professional development community in
the process. “The work of NEF in urban development,
in health programming, in local community
development and in economic development has helped
so many poor to stand up for their right and to become
sufficient,” he says. “NEF was there to see them
through and is still there to tap into these communities
as a resource to help others in need.
“NEF works in many areas where poverty has alienated
people and government apathy has left societies
disenfranchised,” he continued. “In the context of this
all too common picture in developing countries, the
extraordinary work of NEF was felt and will be felt for
many years to come. The poor and underprivileged
who have become independent and vocal; the women
who are now more assertive and financially
independent; the youth who are now working and are
fully engaged in the affairs of their community; and the
men who are now more actively engaged in the
governance of the resources in their communities—are
all extraordinary examples of how local development
can change lives if done properly.
“Through gradual and sustained effort, profound
changes in the lives of people NEF works with have
taken place,” he reaffirmed. “From dependent,
expected handouts with a sense of political
hopelessness, NEF has helped people to be
independent active members of society who are socially
engaged in a process of change.
“Perhaps one of the most extraordinary achievements
of NEF has been to bring the voice of the poor to
policymakers,” he added. “In the absence of
democratic processes, people’s voices are often lost to
the more powerful. That is not the case where NEF
works. Where NEF works, people now know that
power is not a zero-sum game and that they have an ally
who can help them bridge this power gap in various
effective and constructive ways. I remember the time I
was working at NEF, when the concept of citizen
participation in development was paid lip-service at
best. NEF had embarked on a change strategy by
which all its projects and programs had to demonstrate
that they were participatory in nature. It was not easy.
It is still not easy. But progress has been made, and
NEF has come to set the ground rules on how to
encourage participation and create the social sphere for
it take place.”
CURRENTLY
Today the Near East Foundation continues to provide
qualified specialists to transfer technical skills and
training, leverages funding for projects with strong local
support, and extends its reach through inter-agency
cooperation. “Being the oldest, nation-wide,
international assistance organization in the United
States gives us certain advantages,” commented NEF
President LaHurd. “We have the history and
experience that attracts a constantly-growing group of
affiliates and contacts as well as highly-qualified staff.
And with few exceptions they are all nationals from the
countries in which they work.
“So we operate with a strong network of partners and
the confidence and trust of local authorities—right now
in 12 countries,” Dr. LaHurd continued. “Our Cairo
regional office and Center for Development Services
are both highly regarded in the Middle East in
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particular. That we are the largest publisher of
development materials in Arabic is just one of many
reasons we are so well respected.”
An up-to-the-moment report on the Near East
Foundation’s current activities is available at their
website www.neareast.org and detailed descriptions of
their projects country-by-country in their 2004 annual
report also is online at the site. What is particularly
noteworthy is how their successful approaches in one
country are replicated in others where they work. A
case in point, the generation of supplemental income
from fish farming in irrigation ponds of poor farmers
pioneered in the 1980s in Jordan and now expanding
wonderfully in the Jordan Valley—going soon to Gaza
and Sudan when funding is available.
For Abou Baker, a 60-year-old farmer in an agricultural
community in the Gor Al-Safi district south of the
Jordan Valley, fish farming brought in $700 last
November, a traditional down-season, increasing his
family income 15-20 percent. This was very important
to him, since he is getting older…now 60; lost a leg
because of a landmine accident, has a family of 14 to
support on his small farm burdened by water shortages,
high production prices, and poor marketing. Abou
Baker was one of 25 small farmers who received
fingerlings, fish feed, and technical and financial
assistance when NEF initiative a fish farming program
in his area in 1999.
Then there is the Near East Foundation’s pioneering
work in micro-credit dating from long before it was chic
and used in many countries where NEF works, like
Sudan. Here the so-called “popsicle lady” lives, a
widow with a family to support and doomed to beg in
the streets…until receiving her $200 NEF loan. She
bought a refrigerator with a freezer and every evening
fills small plastic bags with juice. Next morning she
heads to the nearby elementary school and sells them to
school children at recess—and supports her family. She
was able to repay the loan in a year.
In Jordan NEF’s micro-credit activities have recently
taken a new twist—home improvement loans for the
urban poor. While in Lebanon, where NEF has had
long-term involvement in landmine issues, they are now
providing loans to disabled victims and their families
and caretakers. Like Abo Khalid, a blind man who used
his $700 loan to furnish his small kiosk with goods—
tea, newspapers, cigarettes, children’s candies. His
average monthly income of $300 helps feed his
children. Thanks to NEF-provided-credit, wheelchairbound
Ali was able to establish a small maintenance
service center for computers and electronic
equipment—and a reputation for high quality work.
Both have been freed from previous dependency on
others, regained control over their lives, and become
fully productive members of society.
The Near East Foundation also has particular expertise
in desert environments, both adapting agriculture to the
harsh conditions and desert reclamation, including 10
years of research on trees best suited to Mali’s Sahel,
ultimately fruitful in every sense of the word. Now
NEF’s involvement with reclaimed desert around
Egypt’s Lake Nasser could in time become the largest
agricultural project NEF has ever undertaken in that
country.
Speaking of large, the Near East Foundation has
completed planning and is now seeking funds for what
could prove to be the most far-reaching initiative in
NEF’s entire history of development work in Africa,
involving nine countries and over 100 million people. It
would support local governance in West Africa’s huge
Niger River Basin under severe environmental threat
and competing demands, building upon successful
approaches modeled in Mali since the 1980s.
NEF continues its investment in the people of the West
Bank, most intensely involved in a cluster of villages
north of Nablus in a wide range of projects, from
traumatized children and nutrition, to environmental
issues and community organization, to good drinking
water and youth centers, even helping train two
promising Palestinian athletes bound for the Athens
Olympics.
It is a particularly rewarding site to see kindergarteners
from the six participating West Bank communities
clapping their hands and bursting into grateful song
when they see the NEF team approaching to distribute
their packages of dairy products. Later, when group
pictures were taken, the children held their milk cartons
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high above their heads and loudly cheered. As the
mother of Sabreen from Ijnisniya put it: “I feel so
happy when I see my child drinking the milk, especially
the chocolate-flavored—she loves that kind. We put
the cheese and yogurt in the fridge to eat later. I am so
happy that we have these important foods for such a
price. You know how bad our economic situation is
nowadays, and without this program, we could not get
these milk products for our children.” While there had
been some absenteeism in the kindergartens at the
beginning of the school year, during the “Cup of Milk”
distribution date—there was absolutely none.
In over 70 villages in the Souss-Massa Dra’a area of
southern Morocco where NEF has been working, in
literacy alone, 92 percent of women participating say
they have learned to read, and 72 percent can now add
and subtract and report using their skills regularly.
Fifty-thousand people in southern Morocco—women
in particular—have gained new self-esteem, education
and income because of NEF’s programs over the years.
Women like Fatima Bouhassi from the village of
N’Kob, who can now read and write, has completed
NEF-sponsored midwife training, and gathers all the
other village women in her house and shares everything
she learns. Using innovative theater techniques, NEF
promoted Morocco’s new and history Family Code that
took effect last July, governing women’s position in
society and status. With seven women playing various
roles for illustration and clarification, NEF field staff
discussed the new laws, particularly marriage, divorce,
child custody and inheritance, with large groups of
village women. So unique, it got attention from the
BBC in news reports.
The little white house at the GROW compound in
Mokhotlong, home to NEF Lesotho country director
Ken Storan, has some new visitors, named Hlompho,
Tumeliso, Rorisang, Thabang, Tiisetso…. The latter is
about one-and-a-half years old—his exact age is
unknown. Before being embraced by Ken, he lived by
himself, most of the time in a cold house, sometimes
outside, even in the rain. Hungry and skinny upon
arrival, two months later he had gained seven pounds
and could stand up by pulling on a chair. Tiisetso also
can breathe easily since his pneumonia is gone; and has
learned to smile and laugh, and likely will soon walk and
run too.
This is what the AIDS pandemic really means and the
Near East Foundation is helping children—the most
vulnerable victims of disease and poverty—in many
countries in Africa and the Middle East. Beyond
providing individual children with emotional and
physical warmth, safety, rehabilitation from
malnutrition and sickness or care with terminal illness;
reconnection with family or caring adoptive homes,
schooling and mentoring; the Near East Foundation is
combating the AIDS calamity with an integrated and
comprehensive approach that combines health,
agriculture, infrastructure development and more.
In Swaziland, which has the highest HIV infection rate
in the world, close to 40 percent, NEF is using that
comprehensive approach in 18 chiefdoms in the
northern Hhohho area of the country. NEF works
with people like Lussy Tfwala, chairperson of the water
committee of Nkonjaneni homesteaders. They had a
water source in the mountains above, but no means of
getting it except by making hours of trips up and down
steep slopes, carrying water by oxen cart and upon their
heads. With NEF support, the committee, once
organized, successful obtained $17 from every
homestead family who would benefit from a domestic
water supply, for the engineering, materials and heavy
machinery needed. Contributing their labor, association
members carried the material up the mountain and dug
kilometers of trenches to bring the pipes from the water
source to local taps. Four homesteads share a tap and
take rotational responsibility for maintenance chores.
The amount each homestead contributed has become a
fund for repair and maintenance costs, augmented by a
small monthly fee, for ownership leads to responsibility
and commitment.
This Nkonjaneni association now has the skills,
organization, data to build on, new ways to assign
community responsibility, and the means to sustain
their critical water supply. It demonstrates NEF’s
approach: true development is not primarily about the
project, but more about the capacities built in the
community that sustain NEF undertakings long after
their staff has moved on.
And last year the Near East Foundation returned to
Armenia, for the first time since their expulsion by the
10
Soviets in 1927, to work with street children. Actually
they were the only foreign agency allowed to operate in
the Caucasus even after the Sovietization of the region,
and supervised the welfare of 17,000 children in
Armenia alone until being forced out. NEF
Chairperson Linda Jacobs received an overwhelming
reception that left her deeply moved by the often tearyeyed
Armenian representatives who greeted her so
warmly in every sector– government, education, social
welfare, religion—and ordinary citizens.
IN CONCLUSION
The final word on the Near East Foundation goes to an
Armenian, the Carnegie Corporation’s Dr. Gregorian.
“It is an honor and a privilege for me as an Armenian,
Iranian, Middle Easterner and an American to pay
tribute to the Near East Foundation as it celebrates its
90th birthday.
“NEF is not a charitable institution. It is a
philanthropic one. It invests, it welcomes investors. It
builds. Its aim has always been ‘to help people help
themselves.’ It aims to assist the people of the Middle
East and Africa in their quest of autonomy in the social,
economic and cultural realms. It provides people
know-how, wants to endow them with hope, to assist
them in their struggle against poverty, disease, hunger
and injustice. That is the mission of NEF. NEF stands
for dignity. It stands for our community with mankind.
It stands for the best ideals and impulses of the
American people, its idealism, altruism and generosity.”
Dr. Gregorian concludes eloquently: “You, who are a
rescuer of a nation, planter of seeds of hope, promoter
of economic and social progress in the Middle East and
Africa, symbol of America’s faith and goodwill, we
congratulate you for generating knowledge, generating
goodwill, generating hope, generating progress.
Building bridges of brotherhood and sisterhood in a
world that will transcend religion, ideological, ethnic,
regional and racial conflicts, especially now when more
than ever we need to stress common values and bonds
that unite the ‘People of the Book,’ the Jews, the
Christians and the Muslims. May you continue your
good work. May you bring peace to the region.”
Near East Foundation
90 Broad Street, 15th Floor • New York, NY 10004, USA
Phone: +1 (212) 425-2205 • Fax: +1 (212) 425-2350
www.neareast.org
Press Contact
Andrea M. Couture
212-425-2205 x17
[email protected]
Copyright © 2005 Near East Foundation, All Rights Reserved.