The news this week that another violent earthquake
has struck Indonesia sent world attention back to south-east Asia, where
aid agencies are still struggling to cope with the previous disaster to
hit the region, When multiple tsunamis in the Indian Ocean hit southern
Asia on 26 December and extinguished both the lives and livelihoods of millions
of people, the British public reached deep into its pockets to donate to
the countries that were affected. Even after the most recent earthquake,
media attention will move on again, but the aid agencies will remain on
the ground trying to rebuild communities and prepare them for what seems
all but inevitable: the next major catastrophe.
As chief executive of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), nobody is
more aware of such inevitability than Brendan Gormley.
For forty years the DEC has been raising money to inject into disaster zones
around the world, and in response to the tsunami of 26 December Mr Gormley
and his small team masterminded the most spectacular fundraising coup in
history. In two months the DEC raised over £300
million. It was an extraordinary amount, dwarfing the total raised
by any previous appeal.
"To give you an idea, during a normal appeal we would receive about
250,000 phone calls," he says when we meet at the DEC offices in London.
"This time we had 7.5 million. Normally on the web we'd raise £2
- 3 million and think that was fantastic. This time we took £10.5
million in one day."
He attributes the success of the DEC tsunami appeal to a number of factors
coming together. Horrifying images provoked an emotional response in a public
bloated with Christmas pudding and goodwill. The countries hit are familiar
and accessible as tourist destinations. And the public recognised, as never
before, that the DEC was running the aid appeal it wanted to donate to.
Brendan Gormley unconsciously fills his speech with the symbolism of that
time. He describes the DEC as “Trying to ride the wave" of efforts
to help. "We were submerged with offers," he says. "That
was the sea change. We were swamped with goodwill
instead of trying to fundraise and persuade people to help."
The DEC was established in 1963 as an umbrella agency to co-ordinate the
fundraising muscle power of Britain's aid agencies. Its members include
Oxfam, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (Cafod) and the British
Red Cross. When disaster strikes, the committee meets to assess whether
the seriousness of the situation merits the calling of a DEC appeal. In
order that charities do not have to compete for television and radio airtime,
it then launches itself as the national appeal body and collects donations
on behalf of its members. Funds are then shared out according to strict
guidelines and areas of speciality.
Of the £300 million raised by the DEC,
£112 million has already been allocated
to member charities, but just £25 million has left the DEC bank account.
This figure is only a fraction of what is being spent by the member charities
in Asia, because aid agencies spend from their reserves and overdrafts and
claim it back some time later from the DEC. The lump sum remains in the
DEC bank account generating interest, which is also divided among members.
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Contrary to a recent report in The Times, Mr Gormley insists that the charities
will have no problem spending in the most productive way the money that
has been raised. "We have a planned blue-print for how we're going
to spend it” he says. "It's all on track. The biggest challenge
is how to wind down the appeal in good order so as not to have these unfortunate
stories." The worst consequence of such reports, he says, would be
that people reached during this appeal may be deterred from fulfilling their
potential as committed developing world donors. "It would be devastating
if we did not look after them properly and bring them on," he says.
Mr Gormley, who is 57, and whose brother is the 'Angel of the North' sculptor,
Antony, declares himself a "resting" Catholic. He was educated
at Stoneyhurst and as a young man joined the White
Fathers order as a novice and spent the latter half of the 1960s
training in Ireland and France, where he took a degree in philosophy and
theology.
"I loved it,” he says. "They
were five fabulous years. It was a very happy combination of a bit
of novitiate, a bit of studying and a bit of do-gooding. It suited me very
nicely." However by May 1968, when he was living in Strasbourg and
there was widespread socialist revolt which began in French universities,
monastery rules meant that he was not allowed out at night when he felt
he should be available to help his fellow students and act as witness. Secondly,
he was keen to travel to Africa during the holidays to work at the White
Fathers' technical schools, but the view of the order was that until students
were fully trained they should remain in the community. Thirdly, he was
very uncomfortable with the Church's anti-contraception views.
"So there was a bit of rebellion, a bit of theology and we parted company,"
he says. "It ended in serious tears and for a while I was determined
to show them that they shouldn't have lost me and that I was a shining,
committed, wonderful Christian."
He describes himself now as having lost his Christian spectacles. "When
you're inside and you have faith and you see from inside it all makes sense,”
he says. "Once you're on the other side it is almost impossible. You
can't see with that pair of spectacles any more. Although I'm very sympathetic
to, not probably a very personalised God, but to a sort of religious experience,
it is quickly challenged by not having easy faith-like
spectacles with which to look at the world."
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He concedes that from living in a monastic community and doing
social support work in France, the transition to development work was straightforward.
He moved to Africa where he lived for ten years, working for Oxfam in Niger,
Burkina Faso and Egypt. In 1974, he and his wife Sally married in London
and had the first of their three children in Niger. "We received a
little certificate in a cleft stick from the British embassy 2000 miles
away, saying that he was the first British citizen to be born in the Republic
of Niger," he smiles.
Africa remains an important influence on his life, though Brendan Gormley
says that he is not prone to nostalgia. "It's clearly been a very powerful
influence and I still love it dearly and get very depressed about the situation
there," he says. "At best we've been trying to slow a down-escalator."
Awarded an MBE in 2001 for his work with Oxfam, he thinks he is unlikely
to move abroad again. "I'm not a very settled person so I think I could
up sticks," he says. "But family and friends are so important
that I can't see us rushing off into the sunset." He and his wife,
who is a physiotherapist, live in Oxford, from where Mr Gormley commutes
to London each day on a motorbike.
He joined the DEC in 2000 and is clearly proud of the organisation and excited
by its potential, and is now advising embryonic DEC models in Australia,
Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Taiwan. He would also
like to see other charities in the UK unite to form their own equivalents
of a DEC, creating, for example, an umbrella body for cancer charities or
charities for the elderly.
Of the dozen DEC member charities, four of them - Cafod, Christian Aid,
Tearfund and World Vision - are run on Christian principles. Gormley believes
that agencies of faith play a crucial role in humanitarian aid.
"What I notice from where I sit is, for instance, that Cafod has worked
a very good relationship with Islamic Relief because there is a shared language
and vision," he says. "In a strange way faith-based agencies,
because of the polarised world we live in, because many of the crisis points
currently happen to be in Islamic parts of the world, have found that the
situation has turned to their advantage.”
Ten years ago, he explains faith-based agencies found it difficult to demonstrate
that they were impartial and that they worked on the basis of need. "I
think there's a much better understanding now, and they've found ways of
working that actually mean that they can reach people that perhaps non-faith-based
agencies may have difficulty reaching," he says.
The DEC tsunami appeal has now closed and since our meeting Brendan Gormley
has made a trip to Indonesia where he visited member agencies to discuss
the on-going relief effort. Meanwhile, the committee must brace itself to
respond to the next major world disaster. Once again it is campaigning for
donations for the less glamorous and engaging but infinitely more calamitous
problem in Sudan, where two decades of civil war have left two million dead
and four million displaced, ten times the figures counted for the tsunami.
Just an eighth of the money raised for the tsunami has been generated by
the Darfur appeal.
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A FORMER monk with the White Fathers who tours Europe on a motorcycle is
now in charge of distributing £74M. among British Aid Agencies working in
the countries affected by the Indian Ocean earthquake.