International Relief & Development: Improving Lives. Building Livelihoods.

IRD’s work has spanned the globe. Here are selections of our more notable speeches:

TRUE GRIT: A Necessary Ingredient

Baccalaureate Address
Bethany College
Bethany, WV 26032

Delivered: May 5, 2006
By Dr. Arthur B. Keys, Jr.

Scripture: Acts 4: 1-12. "Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, 'Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a cripple, by what means this man has been healed, be it known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him this man is standing before you well.'”

Tonight, let us look at the world we are about to enter and see how our scripture can illuminate our viewpoints. Today we truly live in an international community, even tucked away here in the foothills of the Alleghenies. Through the media and the internet, we are connected to all parts of the world. This radical transformation of our country and planet will only accelerate tomorrow as you leave this Gothic temple of learning.

I grew up in Washington, PA and spent much of my career in Washington, DC. My journey has taken me from Bethany to Bosnia, from Belgrade to Banda Aceh, from Baghdad to Budva to Baku and Biloxi. It has taken me from Kigali to Kabul to Kiev, from Sarajevo to Singapore, from Jakarta to Port Au Prince to Gulfport. I invite you this evening to prepare your own magic carpet as you fly off and set forth into your new life.

In preparation for this flight, let us look into our crystal ball to see what the world we are about to enter looks like. What do we see? We see a world that appears to have lost its way. We see a world where nuclear proliferation is on the rise from established nations like Iran and where international terrorism and Al-Qaeda seem to gain strength.

Our fathers and mothers fought a great war that ended fascism and the horrific European genocide. When I was your age, we all uttered the phrase, “Never Again!” Yet in the last 15 years, we have witnessed genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda and the genocidal killing continues in Sudan and Darfur as we speak. All three events have impacted my professional and personal life.

Poverty and hunger is widespread today, the health of the majority of the world’s population is atrocious, economic disparities and ecological degradation is increasing. Wars continue to spread and outpace our capacity for resolution, many people use terms like the First World, the Third World, and the Developing World.

But in the midst of all this despair and gloom, there are new forces of change at work. Major advances are being made in information technology. International trade and population migration is accelerating. In most parts of the world, infant mortality has decreased, childhood diseases have been eradicated and life spans are lengthening.

But the force for change that I hope will touch your lives is the spirit of activism, volunteerism and social change. Catch the spirit that motivates people to join the Peace Corps! Catch the spirit that causes people to voluntarily assist victims to help deal with complex emergencies!

The physical and human disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina, outstripped the ability of established agencies of government like FEMA to handle it and the agency itself broke down. The Red Cross and local governments were overwhelmed. Individual motivated citizens and non-governmental organizations stepped into the vacuum caused by this social and political meltdown. NGOs have increasingly been called upon to lead or to encourage others to lead in one crisis after another. The irony is that governments have often not been able to sufficiently address these complex emergencies. But at the same time, these social problems are of sufficient magnitude, that they require the resources of governments to address them. Private charity is a beginning but it is not enough. You cannot feed the millions of displaced refugees and internally displaced persons in Darfur without national and international governmental resources. And in our complex world, often the military is called upon to provide immediate humanitarian relief at the same time they are establishing order.

On December 26, 2004, the most significant tsunami in recent history struck the coasts of Indonesia and nine other countries, affected and displaced two million people, killing over 225,000 people in an instant. International Relief and Development (IRD), with an established office, staff and program in Indonesia, made an immediate response. We sent medicines and medical supplies, food and clothing to Aceh. But most importantly we sent our staff with their technical expertise and compassion. These motivated young people, lived in modest conditions with no hot running water for months.

Early in the relief phase, IRD had over 50 tank trucks delivering potable water to 60,000 displaced persons in camps twenty-four hours a day. We set up 340 water tanks, built over 2,000 latrines and bathing areas. We built three camps housing thousands of survivors and cleaned and built hundreds of wells. But we did not only work to meet physical needs. We worked with local Muslim religious leaders and community-based psychologists to provide culturally acceptable psycho-social assistance. The crisis outpaced everyone’s available resources and forced people to pull together.

One young woman on our HQ staff wanted to do more. She had a good general liberal arts education and worked on a community organizing project in the US. She worked on numerous projects in the DC headquarters office: program development, communications, and health. But she was moved by all of the human suffering and accepted the challenge to make a difference. She volunteered to go to Aceh to support the psycho-social and other community-based health projects. And guess what? She is now studying for a Master of Public Health degree. She took risks to help others and her life was changed as a result.

NGO programs can be rather sophisticated. IRD no longer provides water to camps in Aceh, but we are now constructing a water and sanitation system for much of the Aceh province that will serve over 500,000 people, including direct potable water lines to the Temporary Displaced Person camps. The livelihood projects have created 12,000 jobs, two-thirds of whom are women, and we have developed a model aquaculture program to restore the seafood industry in the coastal areas destroyed by the tsunami that will create an additional 6,000 jobs. NGOs are also engaged in the most difficult social crises of our time such as Iraq. Some organizations have shied away from involvement in Iraq. Some have stayed out for ideological reasons because they opposed the Administration’s policies. Some have stayed out for security reasons. But I propose to you, that NGOs need desperately to be engaged where the real world issues are the most difficult.

The developing Iraqi NGO sector is one of the few encouraging signs and needs to be supported by the international community. IRD has 150 staff in Baghdad, Erbil, Kirkuk, Dahuk, Karbala and Fallujah. They risk their lives everyday but they have completed 480 infrastructure projects including health clinics, rehabilitated schools, and sewage and power projects benefiting 12 million people. 35,000 full-time jobs have been created. One thing is clear: Iraqis want this kind of help as they struggle to rejoin the rest of the world.

For NGOs, it is important that programs are “needs driven.” At times this will place them at odds with local, country or international political and religious leaders. But NGOs that are “needs driven” and not ideological attract support across the political and religious divides. The IRD Indonesia program has major broad-based support from such disparate groups as UN agencies, the US Government, other NGOs and Latter Day Saints Charities.

Kismet is the force in life that causes things to happen according to a plan that is unseen. It is fate. Others call it predestination, providence, or acts of grace. Kismet is a person’s destiny, that force that causes actions to happen that are unexpected. Kismet occurred in my life in a rather dramatic way that caused me to break out of my established professional path as a church executive.

My life was greatly changed by the war in the former Yugoslavia that erupted in Bosnia in 1992. I had worked in the former Yugoslavia a decade earlier and studied the role of religion in post-Tito Yugoslavia. I studied the culture, met her leaders, climbed her mountains in the summer and skied her mountains in the winter, learned the Serbo-Croatian language and fell in love with my wife. I wrote in Christianity and Crisis magazine in 1990 “that religion would be a force that would contribute to the dissolution of Yugoslavia” but I never imagined it would impact my life and my wife’s family directly. They were comfortable and established pillars in the community. But kismet would change that for me.

International communication was broken due to the war. We lost touch for 6 months in 1992-1993 with my wife’s family who were living in the blockaded enclave of Central Bosnia. We did not know if they were dead or alive.
I was able to travel there to set up a humanitarian relief project and secretly made contact with my in-laws. I was able to rescue them by forging documents, buying passports and transporting them on a Norwegian convoy over the mountains, through hostile fire and checkpoints. Unfortunately, at the same time, my sister-in-law’s father disappeared, never to be found.

These events led and motivated my organization to secure the program and financial resources to set up humanitarian projects in all parts of the former Yugoslavia, in every combat zone on all sides of the political conflict. My wife and I had a vision and a belief that people in Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, and Kosovo should not be forgotten. And we decided to do something about it, to place our personal and professional resources on the line. Because we took these foolhardy risks, IRD is a dynamic organization, today with 1,000 employees in 20 countries. We hire change motivated professionals who also want to make a difference.

In our scripture, what causes Peter to ironically joust with the established political and religious leaders who had put the disciples in jail? What causes him to ask if they are being examined and jailed because they did a good deed to a cripple? What gives the incarcerated Peter the chutzpa to confront raw power and authority? What gives Peter the strength to envision a different and better world? And what gives Peter the ability to heal cripples in the face of such opposition?

The answer lies in true grit. True grit is the quality of life that enables us to allow the Lord of Hosts to prepare a table before me in the presence of our enemies. True grit is the final element needed to complete our Bethany education. True grit is the ingredient in life that you need to succeed. This is the ingredient and quality that I hope you have received at Bethany College. But whether you have received it or not, you will quickly be tested and tried. This is what you need to add to your education to make it effective. This is the leaven you need to make your bread rise. This is what you need to push the edge of the envelope, to succeed in life, to survive in the dog-eat-dog world.

A chicken has no teeth. They can drink water and swallow grass and fine meal or chicken feed. But they cannot digest food or gain energy without also ingesting a sandy substance called grit. The grit goes into their gizzard and all the food that comes into their stomach is then forced through this organ. Grit enables the chicken to convert the raw food into usable nutrition. It enables the hen to have the energy to produce and lay eggs that have a nice hard outer calcium shell. A little bit of grit transforms the lowly chicken into the provider of the most perfect food — the egg.

In the novel, “True Grit”, by Charles Portis, which was made into a film where John Wayne received his only Academy Award, Mattie Ross, a young 14-year-old girl and accountant from west Arkansas frontier, seeks revenge for the murder of her father at the hands of a vagabond hired man. She is very religious, virtuous and quotes scripture every time she comes under pressure.

But she quickly comes face to face with the real world and learns that she cannot achieve her objective of arresting her father’s murderer without the help of a tough, cussing, gun slinging, heavy drinking, deputy US Marshall, Rooster Cogburn and a bounty hunting Texas Ranger.

The three of them bond as they determine they have a common purpose and set out into Indian Territory to seek the scoundrel who has linked up with a notorious gang. She uses Cogburn’s greed for money and alcohol and his true grit to achieve her goal of retribution and justice. Mattie Ross transitions from an innocent young girl into a mature young woman as she single-mindedly pursues her goal and exhibits true grit herself. In the process, the drunken Marshall softens his approach and becomes an instrument of healing and justice.

True grit is what you need to transform your basic liberal arts education into the practical life skills that will help you succeed. True grit is the necessary ingredient needed to help you grind through the challenges of life, digest and reflect on your experience and keep on going. True grit is what you need to keep from conforming to the world as it is and becoming bogged down and overwhelmed. Grit is what caused Aeschylus to say “that some of you see the world as it is and ask why; I see the world as it should be and ask, why not.”

A preacher was concerned about his son’s vocational future. He placed a Bible, a thousand dollar bill and a jug of whiskey on the desk in his son’s room to test the boy. The preacher figured that if his son chose the Bible, he would become a preacher and this would be good. If the son chose the thousand dollar bill, the preacher figured his son would be a businessman and this would be good as well. And if he chose the whiskey, the preacher figured he would be a drunkard and would always be in trouble. The boy came into the room and noticed the three items on the desk. He quickly picked up the Bible, placed it under his arm, put the thousand dollar bill in his pocket and grabbed the jug and took a swig of whiskey. The father was dumbfounded, confused and surprised and called out, “My God, he’s going to be a politician!”

If you plan on going into public service remember that the highest calling is to serve the common good and not only win elections. If you are entering the field of medicine, push ahead with new cures and new treatments and remember that the purpose of medicine is to treat patients. If you are entering journalism, remember that communication, understanding and truth are the benchmarks of a free and healthy press. If you enter the world of business, remember that your calling is to employ people, provide quality products and give back to the society in which you operate. And remember, that true grit is what you need in every profession to make a difference.

In my own life, grit is the quality I need when the going gets rough. As they say, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. As the friends and parents of graduates, it is not always easy for us to encourage you to take risks or ingest grit into your system. We are trained to protect you and support you within the system, as it is. We are not boat rockers.

The late minister of Riverside Church in New York, William Sloane Coffin said it this way. “Had Jesus heeded both his parents and the religious authorities of his day, instead of saving he world he would have become the best carpenter in Nazareth. Were our children to heed us and the religious authorities of our day, they’d all become nicely packaged citizens--safe, polite, and obedient.”

Peter had true grit. The religious authorities were annoyed the scripture says, because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead and healing cripples. So they arrested them!! Fine treatment! They questioned and examined the disciples, they put them on trial and asked, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” The indignant Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, since he evidently lacked the courage, strength and grit to answer on his own said, “Dear Rulers, priests, elders and scribes of the temple, who are questioning and examining us today concerning a good deed done to a cripple, by what means has this man been healed?” Peter challenges the established political and religious order by declaring that they are missing the whole point, when you ask by what means has this cripple been healed? The need of the cripple determined their actions and not the established political and religious norms and authorities of the day.

For those of you who are Christian, Peter proclaims that he has true grit because of his belief that even though the world crucified Jesus of Nazareth, God raised Jesus from the dead, and that this gives him the power to heal the man standing in front of them. This is consistent with my own experience in life. I believe that we need to call on a higher power to give us true grit to get through life’s crises.

In the end, it is not the well-motivated individual nor the NGO public health program or the doctor or hospital that heals the cripple. It is your belief in God, the force outside of yourself that heals the cripple. It is ability to open up to the power of kismet that heals the cripple. It is this belief in a higher power that simultaneously motivates us to do good acts on behalf of others and with others that keep us humble enough to realize that no human action is possible without this faith.

The Christian believes that the Holy Spirit actively fills us and calls us to action. Other religious faiths articulate this belief in different ways that lead to a respect for human dignity. This religious impulse motivates well meaning people to take risks to heal cripples, physically, mentally and spiritually.

My wife, who is from Bosnia, asked me on her first trip to Bethany, why the college is located out in the “middle of nowhere.” I answered her that after living here for four years, it was clear to me that Alexander Campbell, in his great wisdom, knew that from Bethany, West Virginia you could go to any place in the world. For the last four years, Bethany has been the center of your world, now you are free to go anywhere, even to the ends of the earth.

My prayer is that you will go forth, filled with the spirit of activism, volunteerism and social change that will lead to a better, more peaceful and just world. It is my prayer that you will develop true grit to convert your Bethany education to a successful life that includes service to others. And it is my prayer that your life will open to the ways that kismet will lead you on your life’s journey.