Written by BRIAN STEWART, Edited by KEVIN SPURGAITIS
I’m rather struck by how long I’ve been in the business of journalism — since 1964, the year after President Kennedy was assassinated. In that time, I’ve worked on every conceivable form of journalism. Before TV, I was in print, doing everything from drama reviews to editorials — and loads of obits.
If I were to divide my career into two parts, I’d say the younger reporter — like so many — was chiefly interested in covering raw events, chaos and conflicts, as well as trying to understand the evil in human affairs. How wars began. How power worked to shape the world. But I’m at a point in my career when I’m rethinking a lot of my former suppositions about the way humans interact with one another. I’m now fascinated by the resilient empathy and collaborative effort moved by faith — stories of people caring for one another and distant strangers. I’m more interested now in what ends wars and what mobilizes efforts to shelter and protect the poorest and most marginalized on earth. What works in human communities, and how?
Over the past decade, I’ve also started to appreciate the extraordinary impact of churches on the world and their own small- and medium-sized non-governmental organizations or aid agencies. I’m now fascinated by these small grassroots movements that begin in church halls and basements. In fact, I’m convinced that the phenomenon of the growing number of NGOs in every part of the world ranks as one of the most important historical developments of the last 20 years. And yet, here lies one of the great, often overlooked stories of our time.
Everywhere I’ve gone in the last 10 years, I’ve been struck by the way organizations form a “critical mass,” bringing better education, health and respect for human rights to ever-spreading circles of people. The modern NGO movement has really taken off. Today, it’s the fastest growing sector of the world economy. New NGOs are launched every year and from unexpected places: Brazil, India, China, South Africa.
It has been a long journey from northern Ethiopia in 1984, when I was the only foreign reporter in the famine zone, what was then called “the worst hell on earth.” For me, it was a time without hope; the world hadn’t yet responded, and I doubted it ever would. Live Aid was months away. Still, along with Michael Buerk of BBC fame, I reported the story of the Great Ethiopian Famine on television. TV was widely credited for being the first to ring the alarm and for saving millions of lives.
But we were not the first. We went because for months, church and aid groups on the ground had seen famine coming miles away and had been beseeching the world to take notice. When we finally managed to get in, against considerable Ethiopian government resistance, it was these groups that showed us where to go; gave us rides on their relief flights ; and mapped out where and how the world had to react. Often
over drinks, after a long day in the field filming volunteers, one of us would say something like, “Strange, strange people these volunteers. There’s just something different about them. They’ve got something that we don’t have. They’re on another plane.”
Every few years, I return to Ethiopia to visit a family I support and to complete documentaries. If you wonder what faith-based groups can do, land in northern Ethiopia today and go to any college or university. You’ll see thousands of students becoming nurses, engineers, office workers, journalists and farmers with modern techniques and skills.
The only problem is we in the media almost never do count successes in Africa. A lot of what we have to talk about in the battle against extreme world poverty is so very bleak. It is sadly true that 40 million children in Africa are not in any kind of school. There’s not enough money invested in this area, not enough teachers, not even enough pencils let alone paper. And certainly nowhere near enough girls in school.
To avoid being a defeatist numbed by statistics, you have to think of those tens of thousands who have made it from famine camp to college. And think too that even small changes can have enormous impact on very poor lives. Clean water. A new health service. Fertilizers and irrigation for farmers. Rights for women. Above all, peace and security through a loving, extended family.
I’ve found there is no movement — or force — closer to the raw truth of war, famine and vast human predicament than “faith in action.” And there is no alliance more determined and dogged in action than church workers, ordained and lay members, when mobilized for a common good. It is these Christians who are right “on the frontlines” of committed humanity today, and when I want to find that front, I follow their trail. It is a vast front stretching from the most impoverished reaches of the developing world to the hectic struggle to preserve caring values in our own towns and cities. I have never been able to reach this frontline without finding Christian volunteers already in the thick of it.
This is something the media and government officials rarely acknowledge. Quite simply, religion confuses many, and more often than not, we all like to blow our own horns. Frontline efforts of Christianity usually do not make the headlines, and unfortunately this feeds the myth that the church just follows along, to do its modest bit. I don’t slight any of the hard work done by other religions or secular NGOs; I’ve dealt with many over the years. But so often in desperate areas, Christian groups are there first. They labour on heroically during the crisis and continue on long after the media and the visiting celebrities have left.
In terms of reporting, when there are human rights abuses anywhere, the church is often the first into action — for who has better sources on the ground? Church reports often help galvanize Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations into effective action. Truly, the ultimate early warning system. I also think of them now as my open-source intelligence networks.
From the very beginning, Christianity marched forward with a massive structure of volunteerism and charity. Impressive, considering those earliest Christian charities were so mocked in the world of ancient Rome, until they caused a revolution in human empathy. In 1787, 12 men of faith quietly gathered in a printing shop to explore a seemingly impossible idea: to end slavery in the British Empire. A movement of 12. Utterly improbable. Yet within five years, hundreds of thousands of Britons were boycotting the products of slavery, mainly sugar. Plant workers even accepted unemployment rather than work with slave cotton, and the anti-slavery society (still with us today) had discovered all the techniques of modern NGOs: pamphlets, publicity and fundraising. Within one generation, slavery was banished from the Empire, and in scarcely 80 years, wiped from the face of the developed world. It was yet another revolution in empathy.
Today, I believe we face an equivalent task. And we can move even faster because the globe is so interconnected and the forces for decency so much more advanced. We might well see the end of extreme poverty on earth — the many famine images that still haunt us. There are not dozens or hundreds of organizations to be allies, there are tens of thousands. This is a global movement — a pandemic of shared ideals. These people are doing the kind of good so much of the rest of the world has yet to grasp.
Brian Stewart is a longtime foreign correspondent and program host with the CBC.
