PRESS RELEASE
Near East Foundation – Headquarters
90 Broad Street, 15th Floor – New York, NY 10004, USA
Phone: +1 (212) 425-2205 Fax: +1 (212) 425-2350
This speech was the keynote address for the April 20th Congressional
Armenian Genocide Commemoration held on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
200 distinguished guests attended including members of Congress and
Armenian American representatives from around the country, religious
leaders and the Armenian Ambassador to the US. If you have any
questions/comments pls contact Andrea Couture, Near East Foundation
[email protected] telephone in New York 212-425-2205 x17.
Also available, but not included here, is a 3-part series on the history
of the Near East Foundation which was founded to respond to the Armenian
Genocide and deportations and consequently is celebrating its 90th year
as this country’s oldest international development organization. I hope
you are interested in seeing the series as well.
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Keynote Remarks
Armenian Genocide Observance
Capitol Hill
Ryan A. LaHurd, Near East Foundation
April 20, 2005
Honorable congresswomen and congressmen and honored guests: I
am privileged to be addressing you today as we commemorate the 90th
anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and deportations, one of the
darkest times of our era, and privileged to be representing the Near
East Foundation which this year commemorates the 90th anniversary of its
founding as America’s first nationwide international relief and
development effort, born in response to those tragic events.
On the wall of the offices of the Near East Foundation in
downtown Manhattan hang framed yellowed front pages from New York Times
editions of the autumn of 1915. In terms very reminiscent of what we
read in the New York Times these days about Darfur, lead stories tell of
almost unimaginable atrocities against innocent people and the
determination of Americans to respond to the victims’ needs. I pass
these newspapers every day as I work around the office, just as I pass
vintage posters by American artists of the early 20th Century with
legends like “They Shall Not Perish,” “Remember the Starving Armenians,”
and “Which Shall it be: Life or Death?” These artifacts are invitations
to despair, for they simultaneously recall the subsequent human
tragedies of the Nazi holocaust and of Cambodia, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, and
Darfur – inescapable evidences of humanity’s terrible propensity toward
what we have come to call “man’s inhumanity to man.” The fact that we
call such actions “inhuman” indicates our deep desire that such
murderous events remain unrepresentative of who we are essentially as
human beings.
Yet, in a very real sense, those same newspaper pages and posters stand
also as a monument to hope, heroism, and what is best in us as human
beings. And, notwithstanding the beating Americans have taken recently
in the forums of international opinion, I think we can feel comfortable
in the assertion that they truly report something representative of us
as Americans. For despite our vaunted isolationism and the warnings of
our national founding fathers against international entanglements,
Americans by and large understand the great privilege we have of living
in a land of freedom and bounty; and we are motivated to bring to others
in need the help we are able to give.
So it was that in September 1915, Henry Morgenthau, then U.S. Ambassador
to the Ottoman Empire, gave notice to President Wilson that the world
was witnessing “the destruction of the Armenian race in Turkey” and that
immediate assistance was needed. Despite the fact that the American
government had determined to maintain neutrality with regard to the
alliances fighting in the Ottoman Empire, the situation of the Armenians
demanded a response. At the request of the President, a private relief
committee was established in New York headed by industrial leader
Cleveland H. Dodge “with the remote hope of raising $100,000 for relief
in Turkey” for hundreds of thousands of Armenians, Greeks and suffering
members of other minorities. The committee received bipartisan
congressional support, including the active assistance of President
Wilson, who himself appealed to the American people for contributions.
The “remote hope” was not so remote after all. Between 1915 and 1918,
hundreds of thousands of refugees were fed, clothed, housed and cared
for in camps and orphanages in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, the Caucasus and
Persia. After the Armistice, the committee was chartered by an act of
Congress in 1919 as Near East Relief, and designated as the primary
channel for U.S. post-World War I aid to the region. Foreshadowing its
future name change, NER expanded its mandate beyond relief to address
the resulting huge social problems of the vast numbers of refugees,
including over one hundred thousand orphans. Help was for all
“suffering people” on the basis of “need not creed” and under the slogan
“Hunger Knows no Armistice.” As one of the founders of the organization
observed, they could continue to give relief forever and nothing would
change. If there was to be hope for the future, people must have their
capabilities developed so they could build their own futures.
Based on population, each American town and city was asked to
contribute, resulting in an unprecedented manifestation of American
generosity to provide hope and reconstruction. Among the innovative
fundraising approaches employed were the posters created by top American
illustrators. Thousands of tons of used clothing collected on “Bundle
Days” were sent overseas; and the “Milk Campaign” was spearheaded by
10-year-old child actor Jackie Coogan with movie theaters around the
country used as “food stations” for the collection of cans of milk.
Coogan even visited the Near East, traveling on a “milk ship” out of New
York Harbor. On “International Golden Rule Sundays,” families across
the nation ate a simple “orphanage meal” and donated the equivalent cost
of an average American Sunday dinner.
By 1930, when it was renamed the Near East Foundation, $110 million had
been collected and dispensed for humanitarian assistance, including $25
million in in-kind food and supplies in less than 15 years – 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 as NEF
provided medical aid to six million patients. Over 135,000 children
were housed, fed and taught in orphanages and provided with medical
care.
In the almost 90 years since the Near East Foundation’s founding, calls
like that of Ambassador Morgenthau have continued to come. Though they
are usually less dramatic, they are no less critical to people in the
extremes of crisis, poverty and need. And NEF still answers these
calls, seeking to accomplish its mission of helping people in the Middle
East and Africa build the future they envision for themselves. Whether
it is a village woman in the mountains of Morocco learning to read, a
young man in Lebanon disabled by a landmine getting a job, a family in
Darfur getting food to celebrate a holiday, or a man in Egypt turning
his life from drug use to contributing citizenship – NEF continues what
it started by helping people one by one to have a better life today and
tomorrow.
What this continuing work demonstrates is that something of long term
benefit has come from the terrible malice perpetrated in the Armenian
Genocide. The work of NEF argues that humanity can respond to evil with
good, to despair with hope, and to destruction with rebuilding. Perhaps
more than anything, the Near East Foundation’s continuity recalls that
while human beings are capable of extreme self-interest, we are also
capable of great generosity – and we celebrate the choice of generosity.
Another lasting impact of the work of Near East Relief is the creation
of the idea of international development. One of NEF’s early leaders
noted that “everything we know we learned from the orphans.” What these
philanthropists learned is that if we are to truly help those in need,
we must move beyond relief into development, building their capacity
through education and supplying technical assistance and resources. In
this way they can build their own better future in independence and
self-reliance. Thus the work with the survivors of the Armenian
Genocide became through Near East Foundation the model for the Marshall
Plan of post-World War II recovery, Truman’s Point-4 Program, the US
Agency for International Development (USAID), the Peace Corps, and the
United Nations Development Program. Good has come from evil; hope, from
despair.
Perhaps most importantly, the notion that the Near East
Foundation learned its approach from dealing with the orphans of the
Armenian Genocide reinforces the value of dealing with recipients of our
philanthropic concern, not as projects, but as fellow human beings. In
the best spirit of our country, America’s citizens, not its
government, took responsibility for rescue and relief efforts among
these people they did not know, and formed an organization that has
lasted nine decades. The organization pioneered an approach its
leadership called “practical citizen philanthropy.” By this they meant
assisting people to gain the skills and resources they need, using an
approach that seeks partnership and equality with “no sense of
domination or superiority.” It is this approach the Near East
Foundation has continued to use throughout its history and still
employs, one which encourages participation of the people we seek to
assist and listens to their needs and plans, treating them with the
dignity and respect they deserve.
The reward of this approach is not only that the projects we work on
together are more likely to be successful but, in the process, we build
friendships and we build human beings. Our staff has seen repeatedly
over the years that dealing with people as dignified and honorable
equals builds their capacity more than any training sessions or
educational programs. By insisting on building the capacities of its
local partners and on programs that will be sustainable after NEF has
moved on, the Foundation has, over the decades, built local
community-based organizations that still exist. There are numerous
village organizations throughout Egypt; cooperatives and women’s
associations in Sudan and Mali; larger scale non-governmental
organizations birthed by NEF and then spun off as independent
organizations like GROW in the Mokhotlong province of Lesotho; a
cooperative for women who raise goats and produce and sell goat cheese
in Morocco continues today, fifteen years after NEF’s work introduced
such goat raising in the Atlas mountains.
The Near East Foundation was truly an American response to the Armenian
Genocide. This is true not simply because it occurred in the United
States, but because it combined private, independent entrepreneurship
with Americans’ great commitment to humanitarianism. These values came
together and developed a creative approach in a successful venture which
saved over a million lives and then went on to find new places of need.
Further, NEF values the American commitment to investment rather than
simply spending, understanding the time and energy needed to help people
learn new ways and change old approaches in a manner that preserves what
is most valuable in their culture. Ironically, this very approach which
gave birth to USAID has largely been abandoned. In an effort to
streamline their approach and supposedly become more cost-effective,
USAID and other government agencies which fund international development
now fund almost entirely short term, very large, tens-of-million dollar
projects. This approach has given birth to large contractors whose sole
purpose is to manage such grants, often leaving organizations like ours
– with our hands-on, people orientation — out in the cold.
I ask those of you in Congress to remember today not only the past, but
the living legacy of America’s response to the Armenian Genocide, first
in the people who survived it and went on to become valuable citizens in
our own and many other countries, and then the living legacy of those
Americans who helped them to survive. While we recall the horrors of
which humankind is capable, recognize the need to demand justice and
commit ourselves to preventing the recurrence of such inhumanity, let us
also recall the philanthropy and heroic generosity of which we are also
capable and commit ourselves to ensure its continuity as an American
value.