By Leyna Krow, Assistant Editor, JTNews
Ruth Messinger, president of the American Jewish World Service, visited Seattle last week. While in town, she spoke with members of the American Jewish Committee board of directors and students at Hillel at the University of Washington and gave presentations at Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation and Temple Beth Am about the AJWS’s work in developing countries.
The American Jewish World Service provides grants, advocacy, education, and on-the-ground labor for a wide range of humanitarian projects all over the world. Jew-ish.com spoke with Messinger about her recent visit with President Obama, the AJWS’s new hunger-fighting campaign, and the organization’s service learning trips for young adults.
JTNews: I’ve heard the American Jewish World Service described as sort of a Jewish Peace Corps. Is that accurate?
Ruth Messinger: Service is a huge piece of what we do. The reason I back off a little bit from that description — although, believe me, I use it from time to time myself — is that just one piece of our service is with skilled professionals. About 100 of the people we send each year are people who might have a Web background or a public health background or human rights and education background and they get matched individually with projects that have some particular interest in their skill. So that’s like what the Peace Corps does. Then, the bulk of our service is our group service trips, which are much shorter. Most, for 16 to 25-year-olds, are either a single week — like what UW does doing an alternative spring break trip with us — or an intensive seven-week summer program. So there, in my mind, is where it is not the Peace Corps. These people go as a group. Also, they are doing a labor project, but they are also in a fairly serious study context — they are learning text, they are learning what’s Jewish about what they’re doing and they’re learning about these significant international.
JT: Those one or two week trips, do they have a meaningful impact on the places participants go? Or is it more about getting the people who go on those trips exposed to the problems facing developing countries?
RM: The trips make three kinds of impacts. They make a difference on the ground because they’re doing serious hands-on work. So, 30 new hands help a farmer fertilize fields a lot faster even if they aren’t farmers, which, by the way, none of them are. The second impact is — just what you asked — to have them be exposed to what poverty looks like all over the globe, to have them understand that there are things they can do about it. The last piece of the impact is on the people in the villages. Not only do their fields get fertilized faster and their latrines get built more quickly, but it means so much to them that 15 American Jewish students want to come and spend a week with them and want to be helpful. So it’s a way for them to understand Judaism from the best possible perspective.
JT: What would make young people want to do a trip with AJWS rather than a secular organization?
RM: My impression is that people choose to go with us because they are very consciously trying to craft their own Jewish lives. So they were Bar or Bat Mitzvah, but then they try to think about what meanings the Hillel has for them and what kind of Jewish lives they want to put together. And because they are of this generation they want to be sure it includes global awareness. So that’s some of them. Some of them are probably just sort of casting around and discover this and decide to sign up. And some of them, I think, quite clearly are choosing us because it’s a way to get to the developing world and they think that if they do it with a Jewish organization, their parents will be happier, which is fine with me.
JT: AJWS recently launched a new campaign called Fighting Hunger from the Ground Up. How does this effort differ from AJWS’s other fundraising programs?
RM: Well, it’s a targeted two-year campaign. It’s designed to put a spotlight on what is the largest growing problem in the developing world right now, which is global hunger. The UN now says it’s over a billion people who have a problem with hunger or malnutrition. It’s a killer. And we launched this campaign because we think it’s a way for people to understand something that’s not so easy, which is that fighting hunger is not just about bringing food to where there’s a drought or shortages. It’s about recognizing that there is enough food in the world to feed everyone. It’s a very complicated problem. Agricultural technology and a lack of farming collectives and a lack of clear titles to land and American policies to dump American farm surplus in other markets all have to be looked at together to figure out how to strengthen people’s capacity to feed themselves.
JT: For that campaign, you’re working with existing local or grassroots organizations. How do you go about finding those organizations?
RM: We support over 400 grassroots groups in 36 countries. Now, some of them have found us — they found us on the Web, they sent a letters of inquiry. But most of them are found by our grant staff when they visit our existing projects. They go and ask, “who else here should we be supporting?” So we do a pretty good job of finding the groups that are right for us to fund that way.
JT: You had to opportunity to meet with President Obama recently to talk about Darfur, what was the purpose of that meeting?
RM: Well, Obama was quite articulate about the genocide in Darfur during the presidential campaign. So the people who have been fighting this genocide for five years have continued to put pressure on this administration to make this a higher priority issue. One of our early requests, which was not successful during the Bush administration, was to have the president appoint a single special envoy because that just allows a level of focused attention to these complicated negotiations and diplomatic procedures. So when the president named a special envoy, General Scott Gration, he actually invited six members of Congress and six Darfur activists to come to the White House to chat with him.
JT: Do you feel like Obama and his administration are going to make good on their initial enthusiasm for ending the genocide in Darfur?
RM: I don’t know. I think the jury is still out. They are faced with immense challenges. First, the challenge of everything else that’s on their plate, from health care to Iraq to Afghanistan to the economy. Second, they discover, like everyone who gets in there, that dealings with Sudan are incredibly complicated. And so, developing policy toward and in this region of the world is not easy. But we feel — we being not just the American Jewish World Service, but several Darfur activists — that the situation on the ground continues to be untenable. Too many people in camps for too long. And now there’s even less access to food and water because of the expulsion of some of the large humanitarian aid groups. There needs to be more attention and more efforts to stop the daily violence.
JT: What actions has American Jewish World Service taken in Darfur?
RM: Well, we continue in Darfur to provide humanitarian aid and we’ve probably provided five million dollars in aid that has gone to the larger NGOs that can build a field hospital, or launch a whole clean water sanitation campaign. We have funded those groups for things that they could not get government funding for. In addition, we’ve used a piece of our Darfur fundraising steadily in the last five years for Darfur advocacy work. So in the last few months, we have continued to do some humanitarian aid funding, but also to be in touch with all of our Darfur advocates to bring them up to speed and urge that petitions go to the president asking for full restoration of humanitarian aid, and end to the violence on the ground and a targeted effort by the Western and other powers to act according to the comprehensive peace agreement elements.
JT: Finding a way to make an impact with issues like hunger, or genocide can be daunting for individuals who want to do something but aren’t ready to sign up for a year of service in someplace like India? How do you suggest folks get involved?
RM: We talk about several different ways of working with AJWS. Specifically by learning, educating others, becoming a more mindful and ethical consumer, bring of service and giving money and organizing.