Local organizations say the scale of disaster in Pakistan is beyond comprehension: one-fifth of Pakistan is under water, 20 million people have been displaced and at least 900,000 homes destroyed.

While the floods have caused more devastation than previous disasters such as the Haiti earthquake or the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir, far less money is coming in. Relief agencies say they are running out of resources.

It's harder to raise money for disasters that play out over time rather than hit all at once, aid groups say. Another reason may reflect reluctance on the part of donors, including Pakistani-Americans.

Yet two Northwest organizations that suffered attacks recently in Pakistan have been among the first to rush to its aid.

K.M. CHAUDARY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Villagers in central Pakistan flee their homes last week due to heavy flooding.

Federal Way-based World Vision now has a team in place in Pakistan that is working to provide water, hygiene, shelter and food to 300,000 people in areas hardest hit by the flood. It has opened five emergency health clinics to treat people with waterborne diseases, and hopes to offer cash for work programs and set up safety shelters for women and children.

Mercy Corps, headquartered in Portland, says it is working in the Swat Valley to provide clean water to 25,000 people a day via water tanks, high-volume filtration units and water purification tablets. Its 20-person team is also distributing food kits and tools to help in the clean up. The organization plans to expand relief efforts into Sindh Province.

World Vision and Mercy Corps both suspended operations in the country following attacks earlier this year. Six World Vision Pakistani staff members were killed in March when gunmen stormed their offices in Mansehra, and four Mercy Corps Pakistani workers were abducted in February on the road near Quetta. One was later killed and the other three released.

With a 24-year history in Pakistan, Mercy Corps resumed operations just days before the floods hit, said spokesman Joy Portella. Its aid workers in the Swat Valley led the way, saying
'"We have to respond to this," she said, but getting restarted has been very emotional.

World Vision estimates it will need $20 million to respond to the disaster.

Early on, "it was unclear just how massive the needs were because it was difficult to reach some of the hardest-hit places," said Randy Strash, the group's fundraising expert for disaster response. "Now, we know that millions of children and families need our help."

So far it has raised $478,000 in private donations in the U.S. and is applying for more in government grants, and a total of $2.8 million globally, less than 15 percent of its goal.

World Vision raised 50 times more for Haiti in the first two weeks after the earthquake than it has for Pakistan, Strash said, yet ten times as many people are now affected in Pakistan.

Other groups assisting in Pakistan include Medical Teams International, which is shipping medicines and supplies to the country, and the Jolkona Foundation, which works through a local partner called Barakat. Barakat works primarily in refugee areas with a focus on girls education.

Here is a searchable database with more information on groups working in Pakistan.

Look for a story by Seattle Times reporter Janet Tu later this week on local community efforts to help.

United Way of King County said it has raised $101.2 million through its annual campaign, making it the leading United Way in the country for fundraising.

Donations were about flat with last year's total of $101.8 million. The organization has consistently ranked number one even as totals have fluctuated with the economy. In 2008, the total raised was $116 million, following a record $121 million in 2007.

The drive ended June 30 with former Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Scott Carson as its chairman. The United Way credited him for helping keep the campaign on track despite "an extremely difficult fundraising climate."

"This hasn't been an easy climate for businesses or non-profits alike," said Jon Fine, the United Way of King County's chief executive.

One change from last year was a decrease in unrestricted funds given directly to United Way. More donors designated funds to specific programs and organizations that United Way supports. Of the total, donors gave United Way $35.5 million in unrestricted funds this year, down from $41.1 million last year.

The United Way wants to keep growing its pool of unrestricted funds, said spokesman Jared Erlandson. Those funds help it respond quickly when new issues arise, such as last year's shortage of emergency food supplies, and coordinate with companies, governments and other nonprofits, he said.

The organization is focusing on volunteers to help people in need and to offset operating costs, which are about 3.2 percent of the organization's budget. This year, for example, more than 600 volunteers prepared 14,000 federal tax returns at no charge for low and middle-income families.

"There is no better way to communicate United Way's impact in the community than to have someone see it first hand as a volunteer," Fine said.

Next year's campaign is being led by Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and SonoSite General Counsel Kathy Surace-Smith, who are married. Contributions from Microsoft, Boeing, Safeco Insurance Foundation and The Seattle Foundation have helped them raise $9 million so far.

Three of four Mercy Corps employees abducted in Pakistan in February have been released, Mercy Corps CEO Neal Keny-Guyer said today.

"We are very happy and relieved to inform you that three members of our Pakistan team have been released after nearly five months in captivity," he wrote in a statement. "All three are unharmed and are being reunited with their families in Pakistan."

Relief mixed with grief over the death of the fourth employee, a 52-year-old driver with nine children, at the hands of the kidnappers in mid-June. The group was abducted Feb. 18 as they were driving to an office in Quetta, in the southwest.

The BBC reported that pro-Taliban gunmen had sent Mercy Corps a videotape of the employee being murdered and demanded a ransom of $1.2 million or else the remaining three would also be killed. The report quoted Dr Saeedullah Khan, head of Mercy Corps operations in Quetta, saying the Pakistani government had done little to help free the hostages.

The three employees freed are Dr. Syed Asif Abbas, 50; Iftikhar Shafiq, 34, and Beeburg Suleman, 27. The men, all Pakistani nationals, were working with local district health officials in Balochistan province to implement health programs.

"While we celebrate the safe return of our three colleagues, we are still mourning the loss of our fourth abducted team member, Habibullah, who was killed by his captives earlier last month," Keny-Guyer said.

Mercy Corps learned of their release from their families.

"We don't know the identities of the abductors, or exactly why they were taken," spokeswoman Joy Portella said. Family members and tribal elders were negotiating with the captors.

As for the future of its operations there, Keny-Guyer said Pakistan programs are still suspended and undergoing review.

The Portland-based organization has been working in Pakistan since 1986 on health, economic development and emergency relief programs.

"While we remain deeply committed to the people of Pakistan, the safety of our team remains our number one priority," he said. "We need to ensure that, if our work continues, it can be done effectively and without putting our team at risk."

World Vision suspended its operations in Pakistan in March after gunmen attacked its offices and killed six Pakistani employees in Manshera district north of Islamabad.

The system of U.S. foreign aid is broken, Seattle experts on development issues say. Now local non-profits, businesses and educational institutions hope to have a direct impact on how it's fixed.

To start, the U.S. needs a national strategy to clarify the goals of foreign aid, trade policy consistent with those goals, an easier process for small businesses to participate and support for international education programs.

KRISTI HEIM/SEATTLE TIMES

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (left) speaks to audience members at a forum on global development at Seattle University.

Those recommendations from Global Washington, a Seattle association of 120 groups working in the field of global development, were released today and discussed by U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell and others in a forum at Seattle University. The full report is here.

Cantwell said she and Sen. Patty Murray requested the recommendations last fall and will take them to back to Washington D.C. to contribute to the ongoing debate over how the U.S. should change its policy for foreign assistance.

Among the problems: flooding the market with food aid from overseas and causing local crop prices to drop, and trade tariffs that end up costing poor countries much more than the aid they receive.

In 2006, for example, the U.S. gave $120 million in aid to Bangladesh and Cambodia, while at the same time collecting $853 million from them in import duties. This report has further details.

Effective foreign aid can improve economic conditions and help fight terrorism, Cantwell said. Though the U.S. contributes less than 1 percent of its federal budget to foreign aid, polls show spending on aid is unpopular nationally, she said. More accountability of the funding is needed to measure and show results.

Washington is home to about 200 non-profits working on global development issues in 144 countries, according to Global Washington. They include global health, clean water and sanitation, food security, poverty and education.

"These are some of the most basic and life sustaining issues that demand involvement of us as a nation and certainly involve us in Washington state," Cantwell said.

Global Washington recommended that foreign aid be aligned with United Nations Millennium Development Goals, that USAID have autonomy from the departments of State and Defense, and that aid be based on priorities of local recipients and proportionally targeted to countries that are the poorest and most in need.

"We have the technology, we have the people and the passion. We need a structure for coordinating it and measuring the impact," said Yvonne Harrison, assistant professor of non profit leadership at Seattle University, who helped write the recommendations.

Washington is uniquely positioned to comment, Cantwell said, with almost 5 percent of all Peace Corps volunteers, the highest percentage of any state, as well as America's most diverse ZIP code -- 98118 in Rainier Valley, where people who speak 60 different languages now live.

Seattle's impact on the other Washington is already being felt in the number of people with positions in the Obama administration, including former Gates Foundation agricultural development director Rajiv Shah, now head of USAID, former Washington Gov. Gary Locke, now Commerce Secretary, and Travis Sullivan, a former Boeing executive now Locke's chief policy advisor.

Maura O'Neill, Cantwell's former chief of staff, now works under Shah as chief innovation officer at USAID and spoke at the Seattle event.

"My role is to be on the hunt for new breakthrough ideas and put innovative partnerships together," she said.

One of them was a $10 million partnership USAID recently announced with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop mobile banking in Haiti. O'Neill said the project may be expanded globally.

Another is a USAID partnership with Coca-Cola to connect Haiti's mango growers to the drink maker's supply chain to provide juice for drinks under the Odwalla brand, she said.

USAID is working with U.S. companies in Indonesia, the third largest carbon emitter in the world, to develop new business models to reduce deforestation for palm oil production.

It sounds a bit like an X PRIZE for telecom.

The U.S. government and the Gates Foundation have created a $10 million fund to give cash awards to companies that start new mobile financial services in Haiti. In the short-term the program aims to speed the delivery of cash to earthquake victims by humanitarian agencies and overseas remittances. In the long term the goal is to lay the groundwork for advanced mobile banking services that leapfrog conventional banking.

Modeled on the success of services such as Kenya's M-PESA, mobile money is considered safer than cash and can encourage savings.

The first company to launch a mobile money service in the next six months will receive $2.5 million, and the second operator launching within 12 months will receive $1.5 million. Another $6 million will be divided between the operators that perform the first 5 million transactions, based on the number they carry out.

USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah teamed up with his former employer on the project.

The Gates Foundation is putting up the $10 million, while USAID said it will offer $5 million worth of "technical and management assistance and other funding," through its existing Haiti Integrated Finance for Value Chains and Enterprise (HIFIVE) project.

More than a third of Haiti's bank branches, ATMs, and money transfer stations were wiped out in the earthquake, causing cash shortages. Even before the quake, less than 10 percent of the population had ever used a commercial bank, Shah said.

One company planning to compete for the prizes is Voilà, a subsidiary of Bellevue-based Trilogy International Partners. Pierre Liautaud, vice president of product development at Trilogy, said that Voilà is actively pursuing mobile banking initiatives in Haiti.

The company has operated in Haiti for a decade and worked closely with the Gates Foundation to help them understand the Haitian market and the challenges of executing mobile money programs there, he said.

Mobile phones are far more common in Haiti than landlines, but only about 40 percent of the population has a mobile phone, though the number has been growing fast in recent years. The three mobile service providers are Digicel, Comcel (Voilà), and Haitel.

Benefit concerts tend to be one-time events, but a Seattle group wants to use performances in a new way to unite music and philanthropy.

MARIANGELA ABEO

Ryan Abeo, a.k.a. Ra Scion of the local hip hop duo Common Market, has a new solo project named for superhero Victor Shade and will perform in the inaugural Gigs4Good show.

Team Up for Nonprofits aims to support Seattle philanthropy by producing "Gigs4Good," a series of concerts, each one benefiting a different non-profit. Producer Ryan Hodgson and a group of friends and colleagues started Team Up last year with the goal of giving people of any age a chance to meet and network with like-minded people, enjoy performances and contribute to a meaningful cause for the cost of a concert ticket.

Team Up for Nonprofits will kick off its fund raising efforts tonight with a concert at the Hard Rock Cafe that will benefit Seattle Against Slavery (SAS), a grassroots group working to fight human trafficking. Tickets are $25 at the door.

Ryan Abeo (Ra Scion) along with Alexei Saba Mohajerjasbi (Sabzi) formed Common Market, a duo that describes its music as "a critical, unapologetic world view that change is not only necessary, it is inevitable, and can only come about through having love for and serving the people."

Tonight Ra Scion headlines as Victor Shade, along with DJ B-Mello, Project Lionheart, Sol and Dice.

Next month, another interesting benefit concert will feature Starbucks General Counsel Paula Boggs, who is also a singer and songwriter, celebrating her debut CD "A Buddha State of Mind." She's donating all proceeds from the June 26 concert at EMP Sky Church to radio station KEXP.

Is Microsoft an incubator for social entrepreneurship?

Over the years, plenty of people have retired from the company to start a second career in philanthropy or to create new enterprises that address social issues.

Microsoft alumni have founded and supported more than 150 non-profit organizations and social ventures working around the world, according to its alumni foundation.

Employee giving and company matching funds totaled almost $90 million last year (employee charitable donations and volunteer time are matched up to $12,000 a year).

Such support has moved well beyond a fringe benefit. To attract the next generation of employees, making a social mission part of the company's DNA has become a vital recruiting tool, said Lisa Brummel, senior vice president for human resources. (She's seated at far left with four employees active in philanthropy)

It's also something she sees as an advantage over competitors.

"There are certain companies that give their employees 20 percent time to spend internally to make the company better," she said, referring to Google. "And there are some companies that give their employees 20 percent time externally to make the world better."

Brummel spoke last week at a first ever Microsoft Accelerator Summit, a round table discussion with media and non-profits focused entirely on corporate citizenship. The participants ranged from an employee of less than two years to CEO Steve Ballmer.

"If you go to employees and say why do you work here.. at the end of the day people buy in and participate in their own mind in our vision and they want to make a difference in society," Ballmer said.

Employees are running non-profits of their own, including the Jolkona Foundation, Givology and CRY America. Xiang Li, a Microsoft product manager and co-founder of education non-profit Givology, said the prospect of making a difference is more important to her than a higher salary.

"The amount of effort I see our employees doing is quite remarkable," Ballmer said. "We want to make sure we enable and support and encourage that."

In fact, the new organizational model that a younger, globally connected workforce demands is one that blends social and commercial goals, and attracts talent with visionary leadership and social mission, Seattle author Rob Salkowitz writes in his book "Young World Rising."

One of the key questions for any company, though, is how to align doing well for society with its business goals.

For Microsoft, areas where the two converge include health, science, education, workforce training and bridging the digital divide, Ballmer said.

In a project called PhotoDNA, for example, Microsoft researchers teamed up with Dartmouth College computer science professor Hany Farid to create a way to identify and filter out known images of child pornography from search engines, based on matching their digital fingerprints provided by law enforcement agencies.

Another project involved deploying 200 sensors throughout the Brazilian rainforest to measure temperature, water vapor and solar radiation, collecting data and designing systems to visualize the effects of climate change.

The Web site Microsoft Hohm helps people calculate their energy use and find ways to conserve, and it's planned in the future as a tool to help manage information about when and where to recharge electric vehicles.

The company's legacy of philanthropy took inspiration from Mary Gates, the mother of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and a leader of United Way. "It spread starting from Bill and his family to the company and it sort of became part of our culture," said Pamela Passman, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel (pictured above).

This year, the company ranked 14 on a list of the 100 best corporate citizens by Corporate Responsibility magazine, which evaluated performance on a range of issues such as environment, climate change, employee relations, human rights and philanthropy. Despite the generally favorable review, CR gave Microsoft a cautionary "yellow card" for its involvement in antitrust cases brought by the European Union and U.S. state governments.

Tim Cranton, associate general counsel who worked on the PhotoDNA project, described what he finds unique about the company's culture.

"Microsoft employees truly believe they can change the world with software, even sometimes in an arrogant way, but there is an abiding belief that we can change the world."

I wanted to understand what Ballmer thinks about the legacy of philanthropy in the company and what he plans to do with his own wealth.

"I don't start with what are we giving away but what are we trying to accomplish and what can we get done," he said.

Partnerships with NGOs around the world are key to that strategy, and they include groups such as NetHope, CARE, TechSoup and Goodwill Industries.

On the question of his own philanthropy, Ballmer said he wants to be anonymous and private. "My own world's my own world, so I continue to treat it that way," he said.

While he supports the kind of giving Microsoft is doing, he sounded more pragmatic than visionary. "If you stack it up next to the world's problems, it's got to be money that ignites action."

So what impact are these efforts having on business and society?

For one thing, by investing in IT training programs for unskilled workers, the company gets a lot more feedback about how its products can be improved, said Akhtar Badshah, senior director of global community affairs.

Microsoft is investing significant resources in a program called Unlimited Potential, which combines technology, education and economic development to improve conditions for the billions of people at the middle and bottom of the global economy.

Like many high-tech heavyweights, the company is providing resources to seed its next markets.

"There is no guarantee that that any one high-tech company will benefit in a direct way," Salkowitz writes. Their investments could end up developing fertile markets for their competitors, but it's not worth the risk of standing by while others gain a foothold, he contends. Either way, the beneficiaries are local consumers, businesses and entrepreneurs.

Nalini Gangadharan, chair of the CAP Foundation, said IT training programs funded by corporate partners have helped raise the marriage age in parts of India where more than half of girls traditionally get married before the age of 15.

"Before, girls were sitting idle and married off," she said. "Today the girls are saying as long as it's safe and secure, they are able to hold jobs and have decision-making status in the family. That is one of best outcomes."

Ten years ago a group of Northwest volunteers sent their first container of bicycles to Ghana. Now the Village Bicycle Project is preparing to send its 100th container, having delivered 45,000 bikes and 15,000 tools and trained more than 7,000 people how to use them.

The program was started in Ghana after the country removed import duties on bicycles in the mid-90s. The goal is to improve lives of people in rural areas who would otherwise have to walk hours each day.

MARY JAYNE CASSIDY

Women in Ghana learn to ride used bikes donated through the all-volunteer Village Bicycle Project.

The group collects donated bikes from all over the world, but many of its core supporters are in Seattle, including Bike Works. On Saturday, the all-volunteer organization will be loading its next container in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle and is looking for help to collect bikes, take them apart and pack the container.

Village Bicycle Project pays for the cost of shipping by selling bikes that are in good condition through two partners in Accra, said board member Meg Watson. Those partners set aside one-third of the bikes for the training programs in villages and sell the rest wholesale from their storefront shop.

Once bikes are trucked to villages, free training classes are held to maintain and repair bicycles. People who participate the training can then purchase one of the bikes for about $20, half the normal price, Watson said.

"Selling bikes is part of a development model that prevents bikes being horded by the powerful, and makes them more available to those who can best use it to improve their economic circumstances," she said.

The project works with Peace Corps volunteers, who host its programs, and has reached about 60 communities throughout Ghana. It also holds advanced repair workshops to train people to set up small repair businesses.

The next step is increasing the number of women in the program and expanding to Sierra Leone, Watson said. About 30 percent of the participants are women. In Sierra Leone, where volunteer Brittany Richardson recently taught 500 school girls how to ride bikes.

"The people of Sierra Leone were begging for bikes from Brittany, so we are sure an eager market awaits us," Watson said.

Guidelines for how to donate bikes can be found here.

The ARAS Foundation of Sammamish has collected more than 2,500 bikes for the project and has a bicycle drop-off event on May 15. For more information: www.villagebicycleproject.org

Jacqueline Koch, a Seattle-based writer, photographer and native French speaker, is senior communications officer for the non-profit Merlin USA, an international medical relief organization. Since 2005, she has documented and reported on Merlin health programs and medical emergency response in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Myanmar and Kenya. She is now in Haiti, where she wrote this post describing the health situation in a rural village a few months after the Jan. 12 earthquake.

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We're headed to Petit Goave, a town 70 kilometers west of Port-au-Prince, to meet a team of health workers operating a mobile clinic for eight rural villages. I pass Leogane on the way, where some of the earthquake's greatest damage is on display: 80 percent of the buildings are destroyed or damaged, reduced to piles of dusty cement blocks and mortar.

The streets are busy, filled with vendors and the to-and-fro of the local public transport called "tap tap." Like poppies growing along a stretch of asphalt, local crews in bright red and blue UNDP (United Nations Development Program) t-shirts line the side of the road, removing debris with brooms and shovels. A sign of promise amidst the grey, gritty rubble.

MERLIN/JACQUELINE KOCH

An elderly woman washes clothes in a plastic tub, gathering water from a leaking pipe at the church behind her, damaged in the earthquake.

The coordination of the mobile clinics is done out of a small hotel room. The team--one French project coordinator, one British country health director and the Haitian health staff of two doctors and four nurses--camp on hotel grounds in tents.

From my tent, I can smell the sea, but I have yet to see it. We are busy packing and organizing medicines and supplies to leave at 7:30 a.m., while the day is still cool. In a three-car convoy we trade the commercial hustle of Petit Goave for the quiet foothills overlooking the tranquil waters of Étang Miragoane.

On a rocky track, better fit for the increasing number of donkeys I see, people carry jerry cans of water past decidedly smaller homes. The local version of wattle and daub gives them a gingerbread-house quality. Some are painted pink and white, others green and red. Outdoor kitchens dot the yards defended by strutting roosters. We still have another hour and a half to go, but we have already reached rural Haiti.

MERLIN/JACQUELINE KOCH

Patients seeking health care at Merlin's weekly mobile clinic in Arnoux. About 200 people arrived and 160 patients were seen over the course of the day.

We arrive at Arnoux, a village of 10,000 people likely to be isolated again by landslides or floods when the rainy season hits. It has suffered minor earthquake damage but is definitely feeling the impact. More than 1,000 displaced people from urban areas have returned to this community, living on very thin margins.

"We have many health problems because of the lack of food," Val Dieux-Sauveur, the health agent for a local farmers' group, explains. "If you announced you were giving away free food, everyone from the village would turn up."

Arnoux's "main square" is a dusty lot for the few cars that survive the treacherous journey here. It is anchored by the health clinic (dispensary), a building that has lost its purpose. There is no electricity, no running water, no staff. Dieux-Saveur tells me that once a government nurse visited regularly to see patients here. But six months ago, he stopped coming. He found a paying position abroad.

MERLIN/JACQUELINE KOCH

Drs. Antoine Bruneau and Carolle Alexandra Steriling examine Rosena Felix, 14. Haiti has a very young population--40 percent are under 14 years of age.

Mothers, children and elderly people walk several hours to get basic health care or to a hospital if serious illness strikes-- if they can afford to go. Many cannot. So they live with chronic ailments that might seem simple, but without diagnosis or treatment can become life-threatening. Many kids here have scabies. Should bites get infected, they can abscess, developing into deadly septicemia. A feverish child might have the flu, or it could be the onset of malaria. Plasmodium falciparum, commonly known as "cerebral malaria," is the most common strain here.

We set up a nurses' station, a doctors' consultation room, an area for the dressings nurse and a pharmacy outside. Among the 200 or more people that turn up over the course of the day, most are dressed as if they are going to church for Easter Sunday. Girls parade in fluffy pink dresses, toddlers march around in shiny patent leather Mary Janes, mothers cradling their infants have donned colorful hats and brightly colored bead necklaces.

"You can tell it's a big deal to them," said our Haitian translator Augusta Paul, who used to manage a Wendy's in New Jersey. "They don't often get to see a doctor, so it's a special occasion. They want to dress for it."

A quiet girl stands out from the crowd of patients. Rosena Felix, 14, is tiny for her age. Weak and clearly malnourished, she also complains of severe migraines that make her vomit and unable to keep any food down. Her symptoms puzzle the doctors, who become completely perplexed when she faints during her consultation and seems to have a small seizure. The medical team refers her to Notre Dame Hospital in Petit Goave. Supported by medical aid organizations, doctors there can assess her condition, order tests and provide the necessary treatment.

We transport Rosena and her mother, Roselaine. She lost her husband in the quake and put her three other children, including a nursing baby, in the care of a neighbor during her absence. When we get to the hospital and coordinate Rosena's admission to the pediatric ward, I notice the girl has changed her clothes. She traded a red t-shirt and shorts for an empire-waist dress, brown with colorful circles on it, tied back with a sash. She too has dressed for the occasion: meeting a doctor who might help put an end to the painful migraines that are robbing her of her health.

The next day, country health director Lizzy Berryman, who is also a nurse, visits Rosena and gives me an update "They've run tests and done an X-ray," she reports. "They found that she had suffered a skull fracture in the recent past, most likely the cause of her symptoms." Rosena will be put on a nutritional plan, given anti-convulsants, and then monitored weekly by the mobile clinic to see if she responds to the medication and gains weight.

Lizzy says she feels hopeful that Rosena's health will soon be back on track. And all it took was an X-ray.

Jacqueline Koch, a Seattle-based writer, photographer and native French speaker, is senior communications officer for the non-profit Merlin USA, an international medical relief organization. Since 2005, she has documented and reported on Merlin health programs and medical emergency response in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Myanmar and Kenya. She is now in Haiti, where she wrote this post describing efforts to rebuild from the perspective of a local field hospital.

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Each day, we are 12 people cramming into a little minibus that leaves the office/housing base located at Delmas 83 on the edge of Port-au-Prince. Departure time is 7:15 am, an early start to avoid getting stuck in the city's infamous and stultifying traffic. I've joined the medical and surgical team who've come to treat emergency trauma patients, injured in Haiti's January 12 earthquake. They are working at a field hospital that opened January 20 and was established on abandoned tennis courts.

We make our way through a dusty urban landscape radically redefined by the earthquake's seismic spasms. The landmarks of our daily journey to the hospital reflect the scale of disaster and the start-and-stop pace of recovery: a four story building flattened to resemble a stack of plates; a neighborhood blanketed in the flimsy patchwork of blue and white plastic tarps, and a side street housing a colony of tents, baking under the hot tropical sun.

JACQUELINE KOCH

A large chunk of concrete tore away much of the tissue from Claudine Souffrant's wrist. The 15-year-old needed specialized treatment at Merlin's surgical field hospital, including a skin graft to try to restore function to her hand.

Now two and a half months since the earthquake, the dissonance between the utter destruction and the push toward rebuilding a stronger Haiti leaves me overwhelmed at the enormity of the task ahead.

Red spray paint announces a call for help alongside the new address for thousands of homeless people: "S.O.S. Refugee Camp Delmas 40-B." Yet on the same sidewalk, street vendors are spearheading a rebound in the economy. At a brisk pace they sell burgundy red sugar cane sticks, fried bananas, button-down shirts, and an expansive collection of oil paintings. The paintings are perhaps the most ironic among the goods for sale, illustrating scenes of a serene, pastoral and verdant Haiti. There's no hint of the nation's spiral to the near-bottom of the Human Development Index. There's no evidence of the 1.2 million people who are now out of their homes, struggling to cope with the lack of clean water, food, and shelter--or the new misery the approaching rainy season will bring.

When we get to the field hospital, the medical team fans out to various ward tents for morning rounds. The facility is fully equipped with one operating theater--housing two tables allowing the team to operate on up to two people at a time-- four ward tents with beds for 40 in-patients, and a separate area for out-patient treatment services providing basic health care for as many as 300 people a day.

The specialized surgical team, an orthopedic and plastic surgeon, have the combined skills to better treat the grave but common injuries that result from earthquake disasters: complex bone fractures, severe crush injuries and extensive tissue loss. Each of these injuries can lead to secondary, life-threatening infections, so the aim is to save lives and limbs. It's a nascent approach for medical emergency response sector, but has clearly led to better outcomes. With restored function and mobility in their limbs or hands, patients will have a better quality of life once they fully recover.

JACQUELINE KOCH

Emmanuel Etienne, 21, lost his right leg in the earthquake. His family lives about three hours from Port-au-Prince, but he's staying in the capital to await a prosthetic and physical rehabilitation from Merlin and Handicap International.

While trying to avoid unnecessary amputations, the surgical team is also working with a number of amputees who need ongoing follow-up care so their wounds can heal properly and in such a way that it works well with a prosthetic limb. Upon opening, the Delmas 33 field hospital filled rapidly with patients transferred from city hospitals that were damaged, overwhelmed and under-resourced. Many patients had already undergone amputation surgeries under extreme emergency conditions, as did the mother of one of our staff. Trapped in the rubble and unable to get out, her husband was forced to cut off her leg with a machete to save her life. She is just one of thousands of people who were teetering between life and death in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. While Haiti's government estimates that there are 4,000 new amputees in this country, other organizations working here put it higher.

At the field hospital, we have amputee patients ranging in age from 2 years old to 52 years old. Emmanuel Etienne, 21, was transferred after he lost his right leg just below the knee. Plastic surgeons have performed a skin graft to make sure the wound closes and heals nicely in order to fit well into a prosthetic leg. Emmanuel understands that having prosthesis will be key to living something closer to a normal life without his right leg.

"I just got into high school (secondary school) and I have two more years to go before I can go onto university," he said, adding that he'd like to study medicine. But he worries that the earthquake tragedy has stolen these hopes.

We've been working closely with partner organizations to help each patient rebuild their lives amidst great uncertainty. For each patient like Emmanuel, there is a considerable coordination effort to ensure they have a plan for follow-up treatment, physical therapy, rehabilitation and the prosthetic limb they need. In Haiti, already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and grappling with high unemployment, young men like Emmanuel will be vulnerable in the scramble for a job and resources.

World Vision is the world's largest Christian charity that works in some of the poorest and most politically unstable places on earth. It also educates and employs local women. All those factors make it a potential target for extremists.

But as our story today shows, attacks on aid groups in general have been on the rise, and in these regions of Pakistan, some are wondering whether the dangers might force them to close down operations.

MARY KATE MACISAAC/WORLD VISION

A mother in Afghanistan and her children spend hours each day shelling pistachio nuts. Eight kilograms net less than one dollar.

Mercy Corps, which works on health, education and small business development for women, in addition to emergency aid to displaced people, has four missing employees in northwest Pakistan. It suspects they have been kidnapped, an all too common danger for aid workers.

In parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, aid organizations have had to hide women who participate in vocational training programs -- for their own safety -- because working outside the home could get them punished.

Two women were among the six killed and another two women were injured in the attack Tuesday on the office in Oghi, a remote town in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. Although no group claimed responsibility, police suspected Taliban militants may be behind it since the town had been a major militant training center. All of the employees of the office, including those killed, were local Muslims.

The New York Times reported the assailants shouted at the aid workers that they had been "forewarned to stop spreading immodesty."

"Sadly there are elements within the area who view any form of social change, education or health programs associated with the outside world as a threat," said Sam Worthington, who heads InterAction, the largest coalition of U.S.-based international nongovernmental organizations.

But more evidence shows why it's important not to give up. Economic development, and especially empowering women and girls, may be one of the most successful tactics in the fight against terrorism. Sometimes the tribal leaders themselves request, and protect, schools.

If those programs do leave the area, Worthington said, so do the vital services that were never there before, including "the first access to a classroom for girls, the first chance to have children immunized against diseases, the first chance for mothers to have pre- and post-natal care."

Martine Pierre-Louis hasn't been getting much sleep, and she suspects that other members of the Haitian diaspora are having the same problem.

She moved to the United States as a teenager 35 years ago but left a large extended family behind in Haiti. After the earthquake, her emotions traveled back in an instant to her loved ones and her childhood home.

"Literally we are traumatized thousands of miles away," she said.

She was fortunate that her family survived, but the immensity of the tragedy haunts her.

"What I keep saying to myself is that one lifetime is not going to be enough to grieve," she said. "I know that no matter when I die I'll still be grieving this."

Now director of interpreter services and community house calls at Harborview Medical Center, Pierre-Louis has been thinking about the about longer-term challenges of putting the country back together.

"The interest and energy and willingness to give that's present right now -- how can we harness that in the long run once all of the bodies have been cleared and all of the people who can be saved have been saved?"

People in Haiti have a kind of dignity that makes it difficult to accept so much outside help, she said.

ANGEL VALENTIN/GETTY IMAGES

Parishioners during Sunday Mass in Miami's Little Haiti pray in support of the earthquake victims.

"There's a sense of self that we feel, at least I feel, is lost. In everything that is going on there's a sense of loss that is so great we feel we're losing ourselves. It's a fear.

Pierre-Louis received an email from a Seattle friend who had moved to Haiti to do relief work before the disaster. She read the letter to me.

"Today we don't ask where do you live, it is more likely name of the street, or public place where you are sleeping. We don't say anymore so and so is dead; instead, so and so is lucky to be alive. I ran into a man who used to work for us. He lost nine members of his family, but he said he is lucky.

I met a couple who lost an 18 year-old daughter, yet open up their yard to the quake victims.
I have a co-worker who is still waiting for his wife to come back home from downtown. She went to run an errand and never made it back.
How can we ever be OK? But we must move ahead.
Haiti is a country made of people, and those who are still standing must do everything to continue."

Then she told me about a childhood friend who made it through the first earthquake unscathed and went in search of food for her family. She was struck in the leg by an object that fell in one of the many aftershocks, and her crushed leg was immediately amputated.

"People's nerves are frayed, and they are really, really traumatized," Pierre-Louis said. "There's great need for psychological support."

Pierre-Louis is working with a team in Seattle to prepare information and services to help survivors of psychological trauma, translating it into Creole and making it suitable for Haitian culture. She has been a Haitian Creole and French interpreter for over a decade, and is a founding member and past board member of the Society of Medical Interpreters and the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care. She also sings Haitian lullabies.

"Haiti will need all of the good energy and resources and time that donors can give," she said.

At Harborview she works with people from all over the world, "people who have experienced their own national tragedies," she said. Recently her colleagues have begun to share more about their own stories of living through war and disasters.

"I work with these colleagues daily, but for them to let me know that they also have had the experience of devastating loss and that is something we share. For me it's just one example of the amazing kindness I've experienced."

She's also been finding that there are more Haitians in the local community than she ever thought. "People are getting in touch with each other. The week of the earthquake, she got a call from a nurse who works in the King County tuberculosis clinic. She said 'I'm from Haiti. I'm a nurse. Can we talk?' When she came over she gave me a hug that lasted such a long time."

People like Pierre-Louis, who have medical expertise as well as an ability to bridge language and cultural gaps, will be needed more than ever before.

"What I would like to provide support with is in caring for the community I can care for right now -- the local Haitian American community," she said. Because in the future, she adds, "We will each be needed to step up in one way or another to serve Haiti."

By Hal Bernton

A Seattle couple who survived the Haitian earthquake and then worked to help treat the wounded will speak Sunday at Town Hall in a benefit for the relief effort.

SCOTT COHEN

Sarah Wilhelm and Jesse Hagopian.

Jesse Hagopian and his wife, Sarah Wilhelm, whose experiences splinting bones were chronicled in this Seattle Times article, will be joined by Rep. Jim McDermott, King County Councilmember Larry Gossett and other speakers in a forum that will run from 4 to 6 p.m. There will be a dinner break and then a benefit concert that begins at 7 p.m. at the Great Hall.

The suggested donation is $20, and the proceeds will go to Partners in Health and the International Training and Education Center for Health, a University of Washington-based organization that operates in Haiti.

A roundup of some of the other Haiti-related activities is here.

Local fund-raising events, volunteer drives, non-profit campaigns and other efforts to help Haiti continued this week.

Tonight Seattle Greendrinks, SeaMo, ReVision Labs and Global Washington will jointly host a benefit for Fonkoze, a microfinance and development organization in Haiti working on emergency relief and long term reconstruction. A suggested donation of $20 includes live music, 6 to 9 p.m. at the Pike Brewery. Details are here.

Fonkoze board member Melanie Howard, Charlene Balick of the Grameen Foundation and a volunteer recently returned from Haiti will talk about the current situation and ongoing relief efforts. The brewery is donating 25 percent of its receipts from food and drink to Fonkoze.

Seattle non-profit InterConnection is looking for donations of used laptops with Pentium 3 or Pentium 4 chips and accepting them by mail or drop off (shipping is free for donors). InterConnection is working with World Concern to get the equipment into schools, hospitals and NGOs in Haiti that have lost hard drives and laptops and have no resources to replace them.

ELSA/GETTY IMAGES

Wide receiver Pierre Garcon of the Indianapolis Colts celebrates with the Haitian flag after the Colts defeated the New York Jets.

The non-profit NetHope managed to bring Internet connections to NGOs working on the ground in Haiti this week through a long-distance WiFi network it set up in Port-au-Prince. Frank Schott, NetHope's global program director, operated a kind of command center from his home in Bellevue to coordinate efforts. NetHope is now providing Internet access through a shared hub to CARE, Save the Children, Concern and Catholic Relief Services, among others. The group is made up of 28 of the world's largest humanitarian organizations.

Brown Paper Tickets, a company based in Fremont that donates five percent of its profits to charities, added a microfinance partner in Haiti to its list of beneficiaries. Ticket buyers can direct part of the ticketing fee to one of three categories, and FINCA, which operates village banking in Haiti, will receive a portion of the proceeds.

The Mobile Giving Foundation announced that mobile donations have surpassed $33 million. The foundation has continued to add non-profits to its platform and now enables mobile phone users to send donations to 25 different organizations in the U.S. and Canada that are working on relief to Haiti.

Corporate donations surpassed $122 million two weeks after the earthquake, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Business Civic Leadership Center. About 300 companies have contributed to relief efforts, and 49 of them have donated $1 million or more.

Today the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported that more than $528 million has been raised in total for U.S.-based non-profits. Here's a list of relief groups and the amounts they've received.

Mercy Corps created a new way for people to raise money with personal fund-raising pages, designed by donors with personal messages and photos and used by schools, companies and other groups to give together. Mercy Corps said it has raised more than $500,000 from the pages so far.

Initial relief turned to grief for Trilogy International Partners as it learned that five members of its wireless subsidiary in Haiti were killed in the earthquake or its aftermath.

The largest U.S. company in Haiti, Bellevue-based Trilogy provides mobile phone service through its Voilà subsidiary, which has about 575 employees.

Company executives initially thought the local workforce in Haiti had escaped without casualties. An inspection by its head of security following the earthquake found that all five of its buildings in Port-au-Prince remained intact, and the earthquake happened before the office closed for the day. Many employees returned to work Wednesday.

Yet a few days later Trilogy learned that five employees had died and about 35 others remain missing, said Carol Wilson, Trilogy's international compliance director.

Dozens of employees lost immediate family members and about 95 are without homes. The company's offices were filled with people camping out on the floor, Wilson said. The company is posting regular updates on the situation in Haiti here.

Trilogy engineers managed to get its network back up last Wednesday and it remains the only operational cellphone service in Port-au-Prince, but "the issue is congestion," Wilson said. Huge volumes of traffic are straining the network.

The company set up the non-profit Voilà Foundation to direct donations to relief efforts. Trilogy Chairman John Stanton and his wife, Theresa Gillespie, have pledged at least $1 million, and Trilogy International Partners has pledged $3 million.

A group of structural engineers flew from Seattle to Haiti today to go through the buildings to check further for structural damage.

Groups from soccer fans to music lovers and microfinance supporters are organizing events around Puget Sound to raise money for Haiti relief efforts.

On Thursday, Jan. 21, Casuelitas Caribbean Cafe in Belltown will serve Caribbean snacks and Haitian rum punch from 6-10 p.m. Proceeds go to to earthquake relief in Haiti through the Florida Association for Volunteer Action in the Caribbean and the Americas (FAVACA), a nonprofit helping people in the region for more than 25 years. Benefit includes sale of Haitian steel oil drums and a raffle. Details are here.

On Saturday, Jan. 23, Sounders FC fan club Gorilla FC will host a fund-raising event at the George & Dragon pub in Fremont with midfielder Steve Zakuani and defender James Riley as a benefit for Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti Earthquake Fund. Details are here.

On Sunday, Jan. 24, Seattle restaurants are teaming up to hold a dine around Seattle event to raise money for NetHope and other relief organizations. More details are here.

On Thursday, Jan. 28, Seattle Greendrinks, SeaMo, ReVision Labs and Global Washington will jointly host a benefit for Fonkoze, a microfinance and development organization in Haiti working on emergency relief and long term reconstruction. Suggested donation of $20 includes live music, 6 to 9 p.m. at the Pike Brewery. Details are here.

On Thursday, Jan. 28, a benefit concert and auction called "Seattle Helping Haiti" will be held at the Moore Theater with proceeds going to the American Red Cross. Details are here.

I'll be updating this post as I learn of other events.

Do you have a story to share about Haiti? We're putting together a collection of first person accounts here.

_____________________________________________________________________

Previous events

On Monday, Jan. 18, the Nectar Lounge will host a benefit party, "Haiti We Stand," for Convoy of Hope.

On Tuesday, Jan. 19, Seattle-based World Concern and radio stations SPIRIT 105.3 and PRAISE 106.7 are holding a drive and looking for volunteers to take calls from the broadcast studios in Shoreline. Training will be provided. Contact Jacinta Tegman at World Concern (206) 546-7524 or jacintat@worldconcern.org

On Wednesday, Jan. 20, Re-Bar will present "One World: A Benefit for the Victims of the Earthquake in Haiti," to benefit the American Red Cross and Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti. More details are here.

On Wednesday, Jan. 20, Lucid Live Jazz Lounge and other venues along University Avenue in the U District will hold a benefit with live music to support the efforts of Lucid owner David Pierre-Louis. With help from Seattle's jazz community, Pierre-Louis traveled to Haiti last Thursday to locate his mother in Port-au-Prince and bring emergency supplies. He's expected to be at the Seattle benefit to raise more funds for relief efforts. Details are here.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported today that corporate donations to Haiti relief efforts have grown to $60 million. So far more than 120 companies have contributed to the cause, and 22 of them donated more than $1 million each.

Combined with record giving from individuals using social media and technology, and contributions by non-profits, help to Haiti is on track to be one of the largest relief efforts ever.

InterAction, the leading alliance of U.S. humanitarian and development groups, said today that organizations have committed and raised a combined total of $100 million to support the relief work.

Microsoft pledged at least $1.25 million in cash and in-kind donations to relief efforts in Haiti today as its disaster response team is reaching out to help relief agencies. Microsoft encouraged its 55,000 U.S. employees to make donations, which the company matches up to $12,000 per employee.

Akhtar Badshah, senior director of global community affairs, said Microsoft was also working through the organization NetHope, a network of large relief agencies and technology companies, supporting efforts to restore power and communications in Haiti.

So far, 1,600 Microsoft employees have contributed more than $280,000 to 100 non-profits working in Haiti, which are matched by the company.

California-based biotech Amgen, which has a research center with several hundred employees on Elliott Bay, said it will donate $2 million toward relief efforts. The Amgen Foundation will also use a disaster relief web site for staff around the globe to contribute funds to designated organizations, and the foundation will match them dollar for dollar.

"It is amazing to see how many companies have responded to the urgency of this tragedy," said Stephen Jordan, executive director of Business Civic Leadership Center at the U.S. Chamber. "We are encouraged by the early outpouring of support but we are well aware that this is going to be a marathon, not a sprint."

Other leading donors were:

--Digicel ($5 million) Digicel is the largest wireless service provider in Haiti (the other is Bellevue's Trilogy) and Digicel lost two of its employees in the earthquake.
--Trilogy International Partners ($3 million, plus $1 million from Chairman John Stanton and his wife, Theresa Gillespie).
--Deutsche Bank ($4 million)
--General Electric ($2.5 million)
--Citigroup ($2 million)
--Credit Agricole S.A. ($1.45 million)

The full list is here.

On Monday Starbucks announced a $1 million donation from The Starbucks Foundation to the American Red Cross for Haiti.

The non-profit Mobile Giving Foundation is now supporting text message donations for at least 17 different humanitarian organizations helping Haiti. Donations of $5 and $10 made by text message have now surpassed $20 million. A list of the organizations accepting mobile donations is here.

Eliminating the usual processing time for mobile donations, Verizon Wireless today said it transmitted almost $3 million to the American Red Cross for Haiti relief efforts, which represents the dollars pledged by its customers via text message donations so far.

Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air set up a program for frequent flier members to donate their miles to charitable groups involved in the relief effort in Haiti. Between now and Feb. 15, up to 5 million miles donated to the program will be matched one-for-one by the airlines.

The RealNetworks Foundation is donating $50,000 to Medical Teams International (MTI) for earthquake relief in Haiti. Nordstrom donated $50,000 to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development Fund.

PCC Natural Markets (PCC) made a $25,000 donation to the American Red Cross.

The Hunger Site and GreaterGood.org sent $125,045 to Partners in Health today, a combination of online donations received through GreaterGood.org and contributions given by The Hunger Site and GreaterGood Network stores.

Amazon.com has a box on its homepage for contributions to Mercy Corps' Haiti relief efforts, which had helped channel close to $500,000 from customers by Friday afternoon. The Gap Foundation donated $150,000 and offered to match employee contributions, Best Buy contributed $100,000, Western Union $50,000 and Nike $25,000.

Bellevue-based wireless service company Trilogy International Partners, which operates in Haiti through its Voilà subsidiary, is providing the Mercy Corps team with a base of operations in Port-au-Prince.

In partnership with ITT, Mercy Corps will deploy five high-capacity water filtration units to provide much needed clean water in Haiti, and ITT is contributing a $100,000 donation, plus a double match for employee gifts.

Donations to U.S. groups' relief efforts in Haiti have reached $78 million and climbing, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

For people thinking of contributing, here are a few resources with tips for safer and more effective giving.

Charity Navigator has put out a list of organizations working in Haiti, their history of work there, what they are providing and their charity rating. Clicking on the name of the organization provides details such as a financial report and how much the top executive is paid.

Another good resource is the Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance, which lists charities working in Haiti that meet its standards, and has a special section with advice on giving by text message.

In our region Philanthropy Northwest and Global Washington are both updating their Web sites with news about local donations and local organizations working in Haiti.

The FBI warned on Thursday that scam requests for donations are likely, reminding Internet users who receive appeals for money in the aftermath of Tuesday's earthquake in Haiti to apply a critical eye and do their homework. The FBI advised:

--Don't respond to unsolicited emails
--Be skeptical of anyone representing themselves as a survivor needing help through email or social networking
--Verify non-profits through independent Internet searching rather than following links
--Make contributions directly to known organizations
--Don't give out personal or financial information to anyone who solicits contributions

How did you choose which organization to support?

Wireless industry veteran John Stanton has worked all over the world and experienced the devastation of hurricanes and other crises at home and abroad. Nothing compares to Haiti, he said.

The earthquake hit a country already burdened with unreliable infrastructure, political instability, deforestation, poverty and homelessness.

"The tragedies there prior to Tuesday were so enormous that the notion that Haiti would be the country that would suffer this devastating earthquake, it's hard to believe," said Stanton. "It's just beyond imagination how many bad things have happened to Haiti."

Stanton is chairman of Trilogy International Partners, which provides a third of Haiti's phone connections through its wireless service Voilà. With 500 employees, Voilà is one of the largest employers in Haiti, and Trilogy the largest U.S. investor in the country, having worked there for a decade, Stanton said.

Trilogy was fortunate that its building did not collapse and its employees seem to have all survived, Stanton said. "An astonishing number of our people reported for work yesterday and this morning," he said.

CRIS BIERRENBACH /ASSOCIATED PRESS

A man uses a cell phone as he holds a person's hand after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake, the largest ever recorded in the area, rocked Haiti on Tuesday.

Trilogy CEO Brad Horwitz arrived in Haiti today to assess the situation and support the company's local staff. In addition, Trilogy operates in the Dominican Republic, so it has been able to send supplies over by land from the adjacent country.

Traditional landlines are almost non-existent, so wireless service is critical for both basic communications and emergency relief work. In fact, locals in Haiti said people who were trapped under debris have called out for help from their cellphones, the Associated Press reported.

"We are essential infrastructure on a normal day," Stanton said. "In times of crisis the most important thing is getting our system back on the air, which it is."

Wireless companies are constantly monitoring their service, so they were among the first to learn about the earthquake.

Within hours, Trilogy chartered a plane from Miami carrying 14 engineers, along with radios, batteries and water. They were able to land in Haiti early Wednesday morning with help from the U.S. State Department and Kenneth Merten, the American ambassador to Haiti. They knew that relief workers needed the wireless network running to do their jobs.

That's not easy in a country without a functioning electrical grid in normal times. All of Voilà's cellular towers run on diesel generators. The damage had knocked out a line between fuel tanks and generators. Getting trucks to deliver fuel and repair lines was a challenge across Haiti's damaged roads.

Though the service was down for much of Wednesday, local staff and the engineers from Florida worked feverishly to get it restored by midnight last night.

With growing demand from aid workers and people getting back in touch with loved ones, "the network is going to get swamped," Stanton said. The company was working to prioritize calls for rescue crews.

About 30 percent of the cell sites remained damaged, some simply out of fuel and others buried under tons of rubble, Stanton said. Crews worked to repair them, but the situation was still unpredictable. With aftershocks "a bridge there yesterday might not be there tomorrow," he said. "Our ability to keep the system up is obviously limited by our ability to get fuel to every site that depends on it."

Looking longer term, with Haiti's fragile foundation and the enormous challenges ahead, "there's almost an unlimited amount of things that have to be done," Stanton said.

Trilogy, which received an award from the U.S. State Department last month for making a positive impact on the Haitian economy, will continue working with the micro-enterprise it created to provide opportunities for local entrepreneurs and with its partner, musician Wyclef Jean's Yéle Haiti foundation, to improve education, Stanton said. Voilà is Yéle Haiti's largest corporate sponsor and has been since Yele launched in 2005 with a $1 million donation from the company.

_________________________________________________________________

Mobile technology was proving important to Haiti in another way.

The earthquake has been "a watershed event," said Jim Manis, CEO of the Mobile Giving Foundation, a Bellevue non-profit which provides the platform for people to send donations by text message and pay for it on their monthly bill.

In the last 36 hours, more than $7 million was raised for earthquake relief through mobile donations, which "exceeded all money we've raised through mobile giving since we began" in 2007, he said.

The foundation is processing donations for a dozen charities helping Haiti, including International Medical Corps, the Clinton Foundation Haiti Relief Fund and Yéle Haiti, the foundation run by Wyclef Jean. Donations have come in at a furious pace.

At the peak, "we hit 10,000 messages per second last night," Manis said. Since processing the donations can take 90 days, Manis said he has been working with companies such as Verizon to push funds through faster. Carriers may decide to pay the donations as soon as customers pledge, rather than after billing, he said.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is making its first grant in response to the earthquake in Haiti -- $1 million to Catholic Relief Services (CRS) to aid its initial relief efforts, including immediate food, shelter, water, sanitation, health and other needs of people affected by Tuesday's earthquake.

UPDATE: On Friday, the foundation made a second grant -- $500,000 to Partners in Health (PIH) for immediate- and medium-term medical care through its existing 10 health facilities and temporary mobile clinics. The grant will also help pay for medical supplies, tents, blankets, water, and other essential items. Partners in Health has worked in Haiti for more than 20 years to bring medical care to poor communities.

CRS "has experienced personnel and a stock of emergency supplies in Haiti," the Gates Foundation said in a statement today. Catholic Relief Services personnel in Haiti were struggling to make sure that their 300 staff members are safe and accounted for, as well as beginning relief operations by preparing food supplies to be brought in Friday from the Dominican Republic. The CRS blog has some details about the situation on the ground.

"The humanitarian conditions are catastrophic, and much more will need to be done to address the immediate situation, as well as support the sustained recovery efforts in the weeks and months ahead so that people can rebuild their lives," the Gates Foundation statement said. "The foundation is continuing to monitor the situation and exploring additional opportunities to provide support for the relief efforts."

The largest private charitable foundation says it approaches emergency relief by trying to assist organizations that deliver food and clean water, improve sanitation, provide medical attention and shelter, and prevent or minimize outbreaks of disease.

It listed 10 relief groups actively working in Haiti for people looking for organizations to support.

The new face of U.S. foreign assistance stared into my living room from the TV screen, looking very familiar. There was Rajiv Shah, the former Gates Foundation agricultural development director, being interviewed by Jim Lehrer about Haiti.

Just when I was getting ready to write about how Shah must prepare to tackle things like streamlining bureaucracy, localizing programs and funding, and strengthening support for democratic governance (no pressure), along comes the biggest disaster in two centuries, striking an already fragile nation 700 miles from Miami. Now Shah, 36, is leading U.S. relief efforts just six days after being sworn into office.

COURTESY OF USAID

Rajiv Shah is sworn in as USAID Administrator as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Shah's family look on. Shah had supported her presidential campaign.

It's interesting to think that Shah was chosen to head the organization after the humanitarian physician Paul Farmer pulled out of the running last summer. Farmer, chairman of Harvard Medical School's Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, had dedicated so much of his life to improving health conditions in Haiti through Partners in Health that he would have seemed almost destined for that moment.

At Shah's swearing in ceremony, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lauded his passion, vision and quiet humility, his degrees in medicine and business and experience with the Gates Foundation. "He brings determination and an unwavering belief that anything is possible," she said.

Shah, in turn, said that belief "was founded on our country's rich experience turning crisis into progress."

Shah talked about the necessity of reforming USAID to create stronger local systems in the countries it helps, staying focused on tracking progress and elevating the position of women and girls. Now more than ever the world has the ability -- and the technology -- to create massive improvements in the human condition, he said.

"We find ourselves in a unique moment of opportunity," he said. "A powerful consensus has formed that development is vital both to our national security and the shared interests of an interconnected world."

On TV tonight Shah looked like he hadn't slept in a long time. He talked about President Obama's commitment to focus U.S. efforts around saving lives in the first 72 hours after the quake, working with various branches of the federal government and in partnership with other countries to be as effective as possible. He projected a steady, smart and genuine presence.

Shah's first major test is also an opportunity for the country to show a struggling neighbor how it intends to redefine its role in the world.

It was clear the earthquake wrought devastation on a massive scale. Time saved meant lives saved. Two wireless companies in Bellevue went straight to work, one to repair its mobile network in Haiti and the other to channel funds to relief workers using text messaging.

In a country where traditional landline service is almost non-existent, more than a million Haitians rely on the mobile service Voilà for communications. That service is provided by Bellevue-based Trilogy International Partners, which received an award this year from the U.S. State Department for its decade of work in the impoverished country.

THONY BELIZAIRE/APF/GETTY IMAGES

Haitians carry injured in Port-au-Prince, as planeloads of rescuers and relief supplies headed there in a massive relief operation.

Trilogy said members of its crisis task force were one of the first aircraft to land this morning at the Port-au-Prince airport to assist on-the-ground efforts.The earthquake wiped out much of the infrastructure in the most densely populated part of the country. Its local team could travel only by foot because roads were so heavily damaged.

Senior management of Trilogy, its Haitian wireless operation (Voilà) and its Dominican Republic operation (Trilogy Dominicana/Viva) began a disaster recovery plan and formed a special task force to secure the safety of its 500 local employees and assess damages, the company said in a post today on its Web site. Within hours the team determined its buildings were intact and its staff located.

"Voilà's network continued to operate for several hours through the aftershocks before we were forced to shut down the switch to maintain its integrity until our generators and cooling systems were back online," the company said in its post. "We have restarted our generators at the main switch and are in the process of bringing our network back up. Once this has occurred, we will be focused on managing traffic and adding capacity as rapidly as possible to aid the humanitarian efforts in Haiti."

TRACIE MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Trilogy Chairman John Stanton was given a global citizenship award from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for his company's work in Haiti, including a micro-enterprise that helps local entrepreneurs earn money and a partnership with musician Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti foundation to support education.

In Bellevue, Jim Manis at the Mobile Giving Foundation quickly worked to roll out text message- based fundraising efforts. Manis founded the non-profit to help other non-profit organizations receive donations through text messaging campaigns. I profiled the foundation here.

People can text a keyword to a designated short code and make a donation of $5 or $10 to any of several organizations working to help Haiti. Every penny of the donation goes to the charity, and the amount appears later as a charge on the donor's mobile phone bill.

The Mobile Giving Foundation said it has already raised about $375,000 today, through the following campaigns:

• Text the word "Yele" to 501501 to donate $5 to the Yele Foundation, the leading contributor to rebuilding Haiti founded by Wyclef Jean.


• Text the word "Haiti" to 25383 to donate $5 to the International Rescue Committee


• Text the word "Haiti" to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross.


• Text the word "Haiti" to 45678 (In Canada Only) to assist the Salvation Army in Canada.



Amazon.com established a box on its homepage today where customers can contribute to Mercy Corps' relief efforts.

Other groups engaged in ongoing relief efforts in Haiti include:

Partners In Health, Boston, www.pih.org
Mercy Corps, Portland, 800-852-2100 or www.mercycorps.org
Medical Teams International, Portland, 800-959-4325 or www.nwmedicalteams.org
American Red Cross, 800-733-2767 or www.redcross.org
World Concern, Seattle, 800-755-5022 or www.worldconcern.org
World Vision, Federal Way, 888-511-6548 or www.worldvision.org

Ugandans could face the death penalty for being homosexual, according to a bill under consideration in the Ugandan parliament. The Anti-Homosexuality Bill can be traced back to remarks by several American evangelicals, as today's story details.

The bill has drawn worldwide outrage, and well known U.S. Christian leaders have condemned it as "un-Christian."

Seen from a global health perspective, the implications for addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic are dire and could reverse the country's previous successes. The legislation would impose the death penalty for active homosexuals living with HIV.

Doctors treating HIV-positive gays could also be prosecuted for "aiding and abetting homosexuality," and some are clearly afraid.

World Vision, the Christian relief agency which has worked in Uganda since the mid-80s, said the legislation could undermine its work by stigmatizing people in communities it targets, according to Rudo Kwaramba, World Vision Uganda national director.

"Uganda is one of the first countries in which we started HIV education and prevention programs," Kwaramba said in a statement. "One of World Vision 's prevention models aims to reduce any stigma which may deter people from seeking to know their HIV status."

World Vision President Richard Stearns has been instrumental in getting more evangelical churches involved in addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Such churches had been reluctant to help before because they regarded AIDS as a gay disease, or opposed condom distribution.

Kwaramba said World Vision is committed to working in Uganda regardless of whether the legislation is passed. However, to comply with the law, they could be forced to report homosexuals to the authorities.

The largest private international aid agency, World Vision has more than 500 staff members in the country.

As in other nations, "World Vision's work in Uganda is community-based and child-focused; the sexual orientation of those we serve, or those with whom we collaborate, does not arise," Kwaramba said.

Like a rider through a treacherous mountain pass, Greg Mortenson negotiates through seemingly impossible obstacles to find safe passage for his schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, choosing hope over fear and calling his only real enemy "ignorance."

Mortenson visited Seattle Tuesday and Redmond this morning to talk about his new book, "Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan." I spoke with him by phone on Tuesday while he awaited his flight from Portland. The Pacific Northwest is his biggest support network, where his champions hail from public libraries and book clubs to military bases and places of worship. His group Pennies for Peace carries on the work at home through programs for youth, teaching them about the world and how their philanthropy can make a difference. People in the Snohomish School District held a district-wide drive and raised more than $50,000.

The mountain climber and humanitarian founded the nonprofit Central Asia Institute, which has created 131 schools with the goal of advancing girls' education in rural Afghanistan and Pakistan.

COURTESY OF GREG MORTENSON

Greg Mortenson (third from right in back) with tribal chiefs from Urozgan province in southern Afghanistan, a Taliban stronghold where his institute established the first girls high school.

In "Three Cups of Tea," he writes about building schools for girls in the rugged mountains of Pakistan, while his new book focuses on neighboring Afghanistan.

Mortenson, 51, gives the mountains of remote Afghanistan the motto of his native Montana, "The last best place." There he found "a combination of courage, tenacity, hospitality, and grace that leaves me in awe," he writes. Such places often "represent the best of who we are and the finest standard of what we are meant to become."

I asked him how he manages to maintain his safety, let alone build girls schools, in Taliban strongholds:

TARA BISHOP

Author Greg Mortenson, son Khyber and daughter Amira in Gultori war refugee girls' school in Pakistan.

Establishing trust with local leaders is key, he said. "The Pashto word menawatay means the right of refuge. It means you will protect a guest with your life. Your honor in the tribal group is measured on your ability to provide hospitality for your guest. We have to take a lot of precautions, but my kids and wife do go to several places in Pakistan and Afghanistan."

(He was kidnapped and held for eight days in Pakistan in 1996.)

"Primarily we've tried very hard to work with the elders and we've put them in charge. The communities run the schools. When I am passing between two different feuding clans we'll sit there in the middle of nowhere and wait, and a military commander, a commandant, will send his emissaries. We'll have cup of tea and they will pass me off."

"It's absolutely imperative we build relationships..." As Mortenson's voice trailed off, he said he would call right back after passing through airport security in Portland. It took a lot longer than he thought. The U.S. Army veteran, whose advice has been praised by military commanders such as Admiral Mike Mullen and General David Petraeus, was detained again.

"Every time I come back into the country it's really difficult," he said later. "My passport is somehow marked. They ask me where I've been. I have to go into a special room. I don't look forward to coming back here for that reason."

Why choose to work in the remote Wakhan Corridor in Afghanistan?

"Our mission is to promote and set up schools, especially for girls, in areas where there is not education, generally in areas of physical isolation, religious extremism, conflict and war or natural disaster. Wakhan is the most remote. I think what really drew me there 10 years ago in 1999 a dozen Kirghiz horseman came over. They traveled six days a week, 16 hours a day on horseback. They were sent by their tribal leader to ask me to build a school in their region, the most isolated area in Afghanistan. You need to go in a jeep four days over rugged mountain and another three to four days by horseback over precipitous trails."

Why is girls' education the answer?

"Educating girls at least to a fifth grade level reduces infant mortality, and where I work about one out of three children dies before the age of 1. It reduces the population explosion. I think of all the problems in the world today -- we have global warming and wars -- I think there's just too many people on the planet. The number one way to reduce people is female literacy.

What I have seen is people coming home from the bazaar and they have vegetables or meat wrapped in newspaper. You'll see the mother very carefully unfolding a newspaper and asking her daughter to read the news to her. It's very empowering for a woman in an isolated area to read the news.

When mothers have an education they are less likely to encourage their sons to get into terrorism or violence. The Taliban's primary recruiting grounds are illiterate and impoverished societies. Most educated women refuse to allow their sons to join the Taliban."

On Afghanistan today:

"In the year 2000 there were 800,000 mostly boys in school, a Unicef figure. Today there are 8.4 million children in school including 2.5 million females. This is the greatest increase in school enrollment in any country in modern history. This is something few Americans are aware of.

Unfortunately the bad news is in the last three years in Afghanistan, the Taliban have bombed, burned or destroyed over 1,000 schools, and 850 schools in Pakistan. Ninety percent of the schools are girls schools. I think the reason they are bombing girls schools is because their greatest fear is not a bullet. It's a pen."

TERU KUWAYAMA

A school in a remote part of Afghanistan created by the Montana-based non-profit Central Asia Institute.

On what he teaches in the schools:

There are 131 schools now, plus another five dozen tent schools in refugee camps, serving 58,000 students (most of them girls): "Reading, writing, arithmetic, social studies. Elders come in twice a week and do storytelling to children...also hygiene, sanitation and nutrition. Since there's no health care, we teach teachers how to screen for vitamin deficiency, polio. We teach five languages by fifth grade, including Arabic and English, Dari in Afghanistan and Urdu in Pakistan and Pashto, and they also speak their tribal tongue. We are required by both countries to teach Islamiat studies, two to three hours a week studying the Koran and Islam. We teach kids to read and understand Arabic -- that's the difference between [our schools] and extremist madrasas. They teach how to read Arabic but not understand it. When you understand the Koran, there's nothing that says girls can't go to school. The two worst sins one can commit are killing someone and committing suicide. The real enemy anywhere is ignorance."

Does he still get threats here?

"I still get hate mail. I get threats. I've had threats all over the country. Our house was smashed by supremacists. People don't like the fact that I'm helping Muslims out. [Other] people don't like that I'm talking to the military. My wife says if people on the extreme right and extreme left don't like you, then you're doing the right thing. Americans are really great people. We're compassionate and courageous. There's too much emphasis on fighting terrorism, based on fear. If we promote peace, it's based on hope."

Did you manage to hear Mortenson's talk last night or read his books? Please share your thoughts.

The Obama administration has found yet another job for Rajiv Shah, the former Gates Foundation executive who has spent the past five months at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

DEAN RUTZ/SEATTLE TIMES

Shah, 36, has been nominated to head the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), according to reports quoting unnamed U.S. officials.

Shah was running the Gates Foundation's agriculture development program when he was tapped for the agricultural post as Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics, as well as chief scientist, at the USDA.

Shah holds degrees in medicine and economics. A health care policy adviser on Al Gore's presidential campaign, Shah joined the Gates Foundation in 2001 where he worked as policy analyst and senior economist and developed an innovative program for vaccine financing. He served as director of strategic opportunities and deputy director of policy and finance for the global health program. While in Seattle, Shah served on the boards of the Seattle Public Library and the Seattle Community College District.

Meanwhile the top job at America's foreign assistance program has gone vacant for nine months at a time when the program and the Foreign Assistance Act need serious revamping, development experts say. The USAID's international affairs budget request for 2009 was close to $40 billion.

The Gates Foundation has shown its growing clout in the capital with Bill Gates among Obama's first visitors to the White House, influencing education policy, and Bill and Melinda Gates recently appearing before policy makers in Washington D.C., calling on them to maintain the U.S. commitment to foreign aid and global health funding.

Why Shah? It helps that he has already gone through the official vetting process, which has put off other candidates.

Senators John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Dick Lugar, the committee's top Republican, last month urged Obama to speed things up, saying that efforts to support the president's development agenda were being "hampered by a leadership vacuum" at USAID.

Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist and co-author of the book Half the Sky, said the inhuman reality many girls face in the world became crystal clear when he purchased two girls from a brothel in Cambodia for about $200 each, and was given receipts.

"It's no exaggeration to talk about this as truly slavery," he said, speaking to the World Affairs Council tonight at Town Hall.

At the peak of the transatlantic slave trade, about 80,000 people were sold. Today there are 800,000 women and girls being trafficked around the world, he said.

Anywhere from 60 million to 100 million girls have disappeared from the world's population because of female infanticide and inadequate care for girls' health, Kristof said, showing photos of a skeletal child being treated in a feeding center, whose brothers were well fed and healthy.

"Every kid in the feeding center was a girl," Kristof said.

But he argued that even small interventions can transform the situation, and education is the best place to focus resources.

The U.S. has spent $11 billion in aid to Pakistan since 9/11, money which has accomplished "next to nothing," he said. If some of it had gone to education, the impact would be felt by now.

Bangladesh, by contrast, invested in girls education after it split off from Pakistan. Now there are more girls in school than boys, the country is doing relatively well and tackling its remaining problems with home grown solutions such as microcredit.

Supporting local grassroots movements for female education and economic opportunity is one way Americans can encourage change without forcing their cultural values on others, he said.

He finds the rise of social entrepreneurs a revolution that will change the world.

People want to engage in causes larger than themselves because it makes them happy, he said. Asked how he remains hopeful in the face of so much suffering, Kristof said it's because he witnesses so many selfless acts by people working in terrible conditions to save lives.

But when he comes back and sees "people who express their humanity by buying the latest car or having the latest iPod -- that is truly depressing," he said.

He advised young people to travel abroad, go outside their comfort zone, be embedded in the home of a local family.

Some people ask him why we should care about the fate of people in other countries many miles away.

"When you actually see a girl in a Cambodian brothel with her eye gouged out you don't ask that question."

What happened to the girls he bought out of slavery five years ago? Kristoff said he stayed in touch and still visits them. One is married to a good husband who doesn't know her past. The other went back to the brothel temporarily to feed her meth addiction, and later married a police officer. But now the brothel no longer exists. U.S. government pressure on Cambodia to crack down on trafficking made it risky and expensive, so the proprietor turned it into a grocery store.

Journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn set out to write a book. By the time they were done they had managed to ignite a movement. In "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide," they compare emancipating women to the abolition of slavery.

The statistics stop you cold: one million children forced into prostitution every year; three million women sold as sex slaves; more women likely to be maimed or killed by male violence than by cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war combined.

Traveling around the world, the husband-and-wife team profile individual women who are among those forced into sex trafficking and prostitution or faced with appalling health conditions. Even more remarkable, though, is how the women overcome those circumstances and go on to change their lives and help others.

Using the Web and TV, including an appearance on Oprah, to spread their message, Kristof and WuDunn invite people to join the cause of fighting poverty and extremism by educating and empowering women and girls. One local non-profit is organizing book clubs around the country to encourage activism. Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize-winner and New York Times columnist, will visit Seattle next week, talking with educators and giving a speech Thursday at Town Hall, sponsored by the World Affairs Council. He will discuss how our own national security, as well as the prosperity and stability of the world, is tied to the well being of women.

In the week leading up to the talk, I will be featuring perspectives on the issue from local organizations and individuals working on behalf of women around the world. Do you know of one such remarkable person or group? Please share your thoughts and suggestions.

COURTESY OF NICHOLAS KRISTOF

Nicholas Kristof met a group of young refugees who had fled from Darfur in a visit to a refugee camp on the Chad-Sudan border earlier this year.

A: Gendercide is a term to describe the way millions of women and girls die around the world because they don't get the same access to food and health care that males do. It's common when food is scarce to feed sons and starve daughters, or to take a sick son to the doctor while feeling a sick daughter's forehead and saying, "Oh, she'll be better tomorrow.'

Q: At what point did you decide to go from an observer to someone taking an active role in this issue?

A: I went into journalism in part because I wanted to have an impact, but it's a delicate balance - you can't march in as a crusader into a school board meeting you're covering. But we wrote Half the Sky not so much to inform people as because we wanted to shake people up and help address these issues.

Q: What is it that causes so many societies around the world to oppress women?

A: Traditionally, what mattered in many agricultural societies was physical strength, and men tended to have more of that. In addition, conservative sexual mores and taboos about menstruation sometimes led women to be further cloistered, which eroded the ability of women to contribute to the family - and thus devalued them further.

Q: Will eliminating oppression mean that humans have to overcome something in their nature?

A: Oppressive attitudes are often embedded in culture, but we can change them. After all, Sheryl's grandmother had bound feet, and Sheryl certainly doesn't.

COURTESY OF SHERYL WUDUNN

Sheryl WuDunn won the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Lifetime Achievement with her husband, Nicholas Kristof, for chronicling human rights in developing countries. Her grandmother grew up in China with bound feet.

A: Empowering women tends to lead to faster economic growth, which in turn tends to undermine extremism and reduce civil conflict. In addition, there's some evidence that countries that marginalize women tend to be more likely to have the macho values of a boy's locker room or an armed camp and are more prone to violence - bringing women into the picture tends to result in more security.

Q: Can you give an example?

A: One example is Pakistan and Bangladesh. They used to be all the same country until Bangladesh split off in 1971, and at that time Bangladesh seemed utterly hopeless. Kissinger described it as an international basket case. But the one thing Bangladesh did was invest in girls, especially girls' education, and today Bangladesh has more girls in high school than boys. All these educated girls then poured into the labor force and were the pillar of the new Bangladeshi garment industry, which buttressed the economy and undermined fundamentalists. All those educated women also reduced birth rates and supported civil society organizations that promote development, like Grameen and BRAC. There are other factors at play as well, but it's fair to say that partly because it educated girls, Bangladesh is more stable and less prone to terrorism and violence than Pakistan itself.

Q: You make the argument that Westerners don't invest enough in changing culture, and connect the boom in Muslim terrorists with the broader marginalization of women. If Muslim women are oppressed but don't feel they are, how can Westerners effectively change that?

A: Sheryl's grandmother probably didn't feel oppressed when her feet were bound, but with education people began to see things differently. It doesn't work for Americans to denounce other cultures as barbaric, but promoting education does have an effect, and so does supporting those within a society who are seeking change. For example, we would be more effective in the Muslim world if we did less speaking through the megaphone ourselves and did more to support women leading the way for change in those countries.

Q: You gave your own blood to try to save Prudence, a woman in Cameroon, only to watch her die when the doctor could not be found. How did that affect you?

A: It was so frustrating. I could have wrung that doctor's neck, although it wouldn't have done much for my humanitarian credentials. I knew intellectually that one woman dies a minute in childbirth, but to see it happen so unnecessarily in front of you - that shakes you, galvanizes you and is hard to walk away from. "Half the Sky" is partly a legacy of that experience and others like it.

Q: Half the Sky refers to a Chinese saying by Mao, whose Communist revolution helped emancipate Chinese women. Yet because of the preference for male babies, China today has a dangerous gender imbalance --119 male births for every 100 girls. This suggests that even revolutions sometimes fail to change entrenched cultural beliefs about the role of males and females...

A: Changing cultures doesn't happen overnight, and the son preference is deeply embedded within Chinese society. But there's no question that China has made vast progress in creating opportunities for Chinese women, and eventually I think that imbalance will right itself. South Korea used to have a similar imbalance, and now it is correcting itself as parents realize that daughters have certain advantages.

Q: Regarding health spending and women's well being in developing countries, is too much money going toward fighting specific diseases like AIDS and malaria and not enough into maternal health programs? Would we be better off eradicating fistula than malaria?

A: It's hugely important to fight malaria, and I don't think we should walk away from that. In the case of AIDS, there's a general recognition that it was a mistake to channel resources just to AIDS while leaving women to die in childbirth unless they also happened to have HIV. We need to do a better job of supporting health systems generally, and improving maternal health tends to do just that.

Q: How do you and Ms. WuDunn, practically the power couple of gender equity issues, divide your own work on the book?

A: With previous books, we wrote different chapters. This time, I wrote the subjects and Sheryl wrote the predicates. No, no, just kidding. We shared the writing and edited each other. Just as couples grow to look alike, so does their writing.

Q: All the publicity surrounding the book and movement has made you something of a celebrity (Indeed you've traveled with a celebrity, George Clooney, to Darfur refugee camps). Is this helpful to your cause?

A: I'm not remotely a celebrity, and I tend to stay away from conferences because I learn more in villages. I'm a deep believer in the need to get out and travel and talk to ordinary people and truly listen to ordinary people. But where there is interest from TV, I welcome it. I've traveled with Ann Curry of NBC to Darfur and Pakistan, and the upshot was that NBC Nightly News did a show on maternal health. A film crew did a documentary about me for HBO, to air next year, and there were times in the Congo with them that I could have wrung their necks, if it wouldn't have undermined my image as a humanitarian. But now I'm so glad they came and did the documentary, because it helps shine a light on atrocities in Congo. And shining a light is the first step to making a difference.

Author appearance:
"Saving the world's women: An evening with Nicholas Kristof," Thursday, Oct. 15, Town Hall, 1119 Eighth St., Seattle; Doors open at 6:30 p.m., program begins at 7 p.m.; cost: $40 members, $60 nonmembers, $40 students; preregister online at the World Affairs Council Website or call 206-441-5910.

People in the Democratic Republic of Congo have suffered and inflicted on each other atrocities that are impossible for many outside the country to imagine.

The country has been called the "worst humanitarian disaster since World War II" by the International Rescue Committee, a place where 5 million people have died as a result of war, hunger and related consequences over the past decade. Women's bodies have been the battleground.

PHOTOGRAPHER/SOURCE

Dr. Jo Lusi and his wife Lyn Lusi are founders of HEAL Africa, a nonprofit organization with U.S. headquarters in Monroe that trains health professionals in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In eastern Congo, the worst hit region, military groups prey on the local population, using rape as a weapon.

In the heart of this crisis, a doctor and his wife operate a hospital and 28 "safe houses" to treat, counsel and shelter women and girls brutalized by the violence.

Dr. Jo Lusi, a native of Congo, and his wife, Lyn Lusi, who is originally from Britain, founded the non-profit HEAL Africa, which provides medical care and training for local health workers in the country's rural clinics.

Traveling from remote Goma, in eastern Congo, the Lusis visited Seattle recently, where they have a small U.S. office in Monroe.

"We come here to bring the message of congratulations from the girls to the people who are supporting us," Jo Lusi said. "We want to encourage those who are ready to help and to say Seattle people, you are great! The job is not finished."

A local women's group provided funds for two safe houses, and the group also received matching grants from Microsoft and Boeing, whose employees donated money, and support from Quest Community Church.

The story is not all bad in Congo, Lyn Lusi said. She and her husband have seen volumes, living and working there since 1985.

"This is time to tell people that the work is going well, in spite of all the bad news everyone hears," she said. "We can't stop the war, but we can be present in the communities, helping communities organize and take care of what they can, using the resources they have available."

As an example, she told the story of a girl who had been raped and dared to go to a safe house and talk with a counselor despite urging from her mother to keep quiet.

The girl was taken to the hospital for treatment and she continued to press for justice. The rapist was publicly tried, and the courthouse so crowded the trial had to be held outside. When the man was convicted, there were cheers.

"The foundation of any society is our trust in the system," Lusi said - trust that is slowly being rebuilt one case at a time. "We want to build on the strength of everybody's desire to have a functioning community."

Four years ago Jo and Lyn Lusi asked Judy and Dick Anderson, whom they had met in Congo, to start an organization in the U.S. that could support them. So the Andersons did, working initially from their log cabin in the woods in Snohomish County, where they lived in between humanitarian missions overseas.

After HEAL Africa was mentioned in the bestselling book "Half the Sky," Oprah Winfrey linked to it as one of 8 organizations helping women rape victims listed on her Web site.

"It's like David among the giants," said Judy Anderson.

To cope with the volume of traffic, supporters at Microsoft hosted HEAL Africa's site, which had received 20 online donations today within hours of Oprah's show.

Much of the violence in Congo is fought over minerals, and the area where HEAL Africa works is rich in them.

"Wherever there are minerals there is violence," Lyn Lusi said. "We're cursed by our wealth in Congo."

Everyone with a cell phone may be tied to the conflict.

The mineral coltan is used to make a heat-resistant metal powder called tantalum, a key component in everything from mobile phones to computer chips to stereos and VCRs, as this story describes.

A campaign called The Enough Project examines how demand for electronics products such as cell phones and laptops is helping to fuel the violence and seeks action by President Barack Obama, electronics companies, consumers and Congress to try to end the conflict.

Ross Donaldson went from a comfortable life as an American medical student into the front lines of the fight against Lassa fever, a neglected and deadly disease in central Africa. Now a doctor, he has written a book about his experiences called The Lassa Ward. Donaldson gave a talk at UW today and is appearing in Seattle Wednesday at the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce and also at Elliott Bay Books. I had a conversation with him about some of the lessons he learned and wants to share.

Q: What did the experience teach you about how make an impact in global health?

A: When I got there I started doing hands-on medical care. One of conclusions I came to is how much bigger impact you can make through training local health care workers, so it's sustainable when you leave and multiplies your impact when you are there.

Q: What do you want people to know about Sierra Leone (where he traveled with the group Merlin to work in a remote hospital)?

A: The situation is quite stark. It's the last country in the world when it comes to health care outcomes. It's really a human rights issue. When I was there 1 out of 8 women were dying in childbirth. In the U.S. it's like 1 in 8,000. I spent a lot of my time going between the maternity ward and the Lassa ward.

Q: You didn't get Lassa fever yourself, did you?

A: No, thankfully I didn't. The day after I got back to L.A. I came down with a serious illness, myocarditis, an infection of the heart. About a third of people die from it, a third are permanently injured and a third recover fully.

My mentor Dr. Conteh I really think is the hero of the book. He's a physician who spent his whole life taking care of patients through wards and at the Lassa ward. Dr. Conteh had worked there close to a decade and had been OK. All it takes is one slip one day. Resources at the hospital are limited, so he was drawing blood from a pregnant woman. A glass vial broke and he cut himself and died from Lassa fever about 5 to 7 days later.

Lassa is one of four communicable hemorrhagic fevers, similar to Ebola or Marburg. Lassa comes from rats originally. In parts of the area people eat rats as a food source -- essentially there's no other protein in the diet. Every once in a while they will eat a rat with Lassa.

Q: Eating rats and dying from fever says a lot about the overall situation.

A: It really connects how important economic prosperity is with health and how the two are intertwined, and also with the political situation. They were fighting over diamonds essentially. I went out into the field -- Merlin had projects for public health outreach - to just tell people not to eat rats, we won't have the initial outbreak and peoples' lives will be saved. I somehow naively thought this would be an easy message to tell. The older men would look at me and say I've been eating rats for years and I'm fine and there's no way I'm going to stop. At first it seemed very foreign to me and then I realized it's similar to conversations I've had here around cigarette smoking. It's part of human nature not to want to change.

Being an advocate for health is a very important part of what I do and what I think physicians should do. Doctors get a lot of the credit but the truth is medicine is really a team effort. It's really the whole system that deserves the credit. When there's a breakdown, it's really the system that needs strengthening so you can bring up the level of care.

Q: Do you think health aid to Africa has been effective?

A: As long as I have been doing this work, there have been debates about the vertical, horizontal or diagonal approach to health programs. In some ways a continuing dialogue is very beneficial to the aid and insuring you're getting the most out of it. Overall I think the aid community is doing a lot of good but continually striving to make sure you're doing the most good is the ethical and moral thing to do.

Q: What would you advise young people who want to work in this field?

A: I have noticed over the last couple years there has been a huge upturn in people interested in global health, and I think that's fantastic. It really is going to take a lot of bright young minds to deal with these problems. The money might come or go, but if you have a good feeling about helping other people that's not something you're going to lose in a recession.

For students it's important to get some kind of skills they can help out with and also to get some experience in the field. Information and opportunities are available on ReliefWeb and Devex.

Is the $8 billion the U.S. spends on foreign aid for global health worth it?

Bill and Melinda Gates say they've seen proof that it is. They're starting a new campaign today called "Living Proof" to convince Americans that their money has been a good investment, saving millions of people in developing countries.

Their message is that those children and adults are surviving and leading more productive lives, "living proof" that U.S-supported initiatives to fight malaria, AIDS, and other diseases are working.

The Gates Foundation has started a major ad campaign that will run over the next five weeks, aimed primarily at policy makers in Washington DC.

Cynthia Lewis, a senior program officer at the foundation, said the couple was struck by the disconnect between the optimism and progress they saw on their trips and the pessimism they were hearing about when they came home.

"When we talk to people in America they don't know where their money has gone or that it's working," achieving major declines in child mortality, she said.

Following media images of crying and emaciated children that helped the world see the problems of poverty and disease, this campaign will show the other side, featuring people like a woman with HIV in Ethiopia who gets treatment, starts her own barber shop and teaches others about HIV/AIDS while they're sitting in her chair.

"For quite a number of years people who advocate have focused on the need," said Iain Simpson, a global health spokesman for the foundation. "That's been a very effective campaign. What we've forgotten collectively to do is come back and say these investments we asked you to make have had a fantastic impact on peoples lives."

The U.S. government spent about $30 billion on foreign aid since 2008, about 1 percent of the U.S. budget, and of the total foreign aid, about $8 billion goes toward health programs.

The U.S. approach to foreign aid has been criticized by various groups, including Global Washington, which asserts that it needs to conform to local priorities and be more transparent.

The programs that will be highlighted by the Gates Foundation include the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which is credited with saving an estimated 1.2 million people by expanding access to HIV prevention and treatment.

Programs supported by U.S. foreign aid delivered 88 million insecticide-treated bednets to protect young children from malaria, life-saving TB treatment programs in 41 developing countries, malaria prevention and treatment for 32 million people and fortified food for tens of millions of children in developing countries, according to the campaign.

Lewis acknowledged it was a difficult case to make to Americans even before the economic downturn hit.

"We think if more Americans learn about progress in global health, they'll be inspired to maintain these investments--even in difficult economic times--so that we can do even more," Melinda Gates said in a statement.

How did a tiny non-profit in Fremont attract the attention of a global pharmaceutical giant, a multinational beverage company, governments from India to Senegal and a $1.4 million investment announced this morning by a European venture fund?

COURTESY OF VILLAGEREACH

Women in Mozambique walk for miles and wait for a rural health center to open. The health center is among those supported by Seattle-based VillageReach. .

VillageReach has figured how to get health care into the heart of remote communities that others haven't managed to reach -- the so-called "last mile" -- and pay for it with a for-profit energy business.

With billions of dollars being spent to develop new vaccines, bridging the last mile can mean the difference between lifesaving drugs getting stuck in a bottleneck or reaching the people who need them most.

VillageReach applied a logistics model for delivering and tracking vaccines in remote settings similar to the way UPS might deliver its packages. In fact, VillageReach hired a veteran UPS employee to help improve its operations and industry partnerships.

COURTESY OF VILLAGEREACH

A health center in rural Mozambique is powered by propane supplied by Vida Gas, a company half owned by Seattle-based VillageReach.

The problem typical in developing countries is that medical supplies from big donors like Unicef reach the capital or nearest port city, and national authorities distribute them as far as the provinces, but that's where they sit waiting to be picked up by local health workers -- when they have the time and transportation.

"It's as if your mail is only delivered up to Olympia," said VillageReach President Allen Wilcox.

VillageReach moved that work from a collection-based system to one with dedicated distributors, freeing up health workers to focus on treating patients.

VillageReach worked with the government in Mozambique to set up a fleet of seven trucks and seven field coordinators whose sole job is to get vaccines, equipment and medicines to 261 rural health centers. VillageReach helped acquire some of the vehicles initially, but the trucks are owned and operated by the government health authority.

The field coordinators return to two central offices that have laptops and Internet access, and upload information into an online database. They report what supplies were distributed, how many vaccines were given out and how much inventory was left.
VillageReach has been able to assemble a detailed picture of what is happening at each health center with updates every two weeks, said John Beale, strategic development director, "so we can see the trends for better or worse."

VillageReach can then share the online data with partners in Seattle and with policy makers in Geneva. The management information system VillageReach has developed is receiving a 2009 Tech Award from the Technology Museum of Innovation in Silicon Valley. In Mozambique its program has helped boost vaccination rates from 68 percent to 95 percent, according to an independent study cited by the non-profit.

In a country like Mozambique, where cars and even bicycles are rare, people walk for miles to reach medical care. It's important they find something at the end of the road, said Beale. "The greatest benefit we provide is community confidence in the health care system."

The non-profit supports its work with a propane gas business that also powers much needed refrigeration for the medicine.

The population of northern Mozambique lives largely off the electrical grid. Less than 10 percent of the country has electricity, so most people cook and heat with charcoal or wood.

VillageReach needed energy for critical health services such as sterilizing equipment, helping mothers through childbirth at night and keeping vaccines cold. Propane was their only viable fuel option.

Being entrepreneurs, they launched a company called VidaGas to supply it themselves. The alternative would have been to use donations to buy propane, Beale said, but once those dollars ran out, so would the cold chain upon which the health system depended. "The whole program would not be sustainable," he said.

In 2002 VillageReach partnered with a local non-profit, the Foundation for Community Development, to start VidaGas. (The foundation is headed by Graca Machel, Nelson Mandela's wife. The two paid a visit to Seattle in 1999 and received $30 million for their charities from local donors.)

VidaGas sells gas to the region, offering a cleaner alternative to charcoal, and it's now the largest propane distributor in northern Mozambique. Besides supplying energy for the health system, it's fueling the hotel and tourist industries, small retailers and family homes.

VillageReach is holding up VidaGas as an example of a successful social business that supports a humanitarian mission. Harvard Business School recently published a study of its model for integrating global health programs with social businesses to benefit remote communities.

Luxembourg-based Oasis Capital today announced it will make a $1.4 million investment in VidaGas, which will allow the company to expand its services to more customers and to build additional filling stations.

VillageReach has been hired by the World Health Organization and Seattle-based PATH for a pilot project in Senegal, and by a large pharmaceutical company to conduct a health strengthening program in a remote part of India. The non-profit is also working with a multinational beverage maker to use its vast transport networks to help distribute medical supplies.

Its goal is nothing short of a sea change in global health practices.

"What is unique about VillageReach is we are trying to enhance systems that exist and leave behind a legacy of infrastructure improvements to allow the system to sustain itself," Wilcox said.

As Afghanistan holds its presidential election today, optimism has been dampened by a lack of progress in development on the ground, say leaders of a local humanitarian group active in the country.

While completing peaceful elections would be a positive step, "Afghans I've spoken with don't feel invested in these elections because they're not seeing progress or a viable government in their own communities," said Christine Beasley, country program manager for World Vision, a Federal Way-based group that has worked in Afghanistan since 2001 with a staff of 250 on the ground, mostly local Afghans.

The Christian aid organization decided to pull its 15 foreign staff members out of the country temporarily over security concerns during the election period. They plan to return at the end of August. Local staff are suspending operations and restricting their movements.

COURTESY OF WORLD VISION

An Afghan woman in Badghis Province and her children shell pistachio nuts, earning less than a dollar for every eight kilograms shelled. The province has 300,000 acres of pistachio forest.

Currently uneven distribution of aid, lack of donor coordination and some duplication of services are weakening reconstruction efforts, Anderson said.

World Vision is calling for more attention to economic development, saying civil society resources to support education, jobs, good governance and agricultural alternatives to the poppy trade are crucial to progress.

The U.S. government needs to create a clear development strategy for Afghanistan that is separate from the Department of Defense's counterinsurgency strategy, the group said.

A coordinated development strategy means, "measuring the number of children in school and the content and quality of their education, not just the number of insurgents defeated," said Rory Anderson, World Vision's deputy director for advocacy and government relations.

Gen. David Petraeus, the head of the U.S. Central Command, spoke about the challenges ahead in Afghanistan at a talk in Seattle last month. Later this month, my colleague Hal Bernton will be reporting from Afghanistan and writing a blog from there.

COURTESY OF WORLD VISION

Women at a sewing workshop run by World Vision in Herat, in western Afghanistan near the border with Iran, are the sole breadwinners for their families. Yet they can't disclose their names for fear of reprisals for working outside the home.

"An economic development strategy is not the same as a counter-insurgency strategy--although the end goals may align, the operational approaches are very different and they follow different time frames," said Anderson. "If a free and peaceful Afghanistan is the goal, forcing square pegs into round holes won't work."

Without a distinct development strategy, "the 'civilian surge' is understood to be a military surge, which by itself will not help Afghans take control of their own country," she said.

Another local group working in Afghanistan to address the effects of war is Clear Path International. In Afghanistan nearly a million people are disabled, many because of land mines, according to Clear Path, a Bainbridge Island-based non-profit that helps land mine and bomb survivors.

Clear Path supplies prosthetic devices, builds handicap access ramps in schools in Kabul, advocates for the rights of disabled and provides employment for land mine victims through its Afghan Mine Action Technology Center, which makes de-mining equipment. The center sells the products at a lower price than international suppliers charge, and it uses the revenue to support rehabilitation services. Read more about the group's work here.

Seattle-based PATH announced today it has won the world's largest humanitarian award, the $1.5 million Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, for its work creating effective health technologies for the developing world.

Hilton Foundation Chief Executive Steven M. Hilton, who introduced the award during a press conference this morning, said PATH's work helping to develop 85 technologies, along with its commitment to sharing ideas and making sure products are sold at affordable prices, have had a profound impact on alleviating human suffering. More coverage of the award is here.

COURTESY OF PATH/PATRICK MCKERN

PATH CEO Christopher Elias (left) and Conrad N. Hilton Foundation CEO Steven M. Hilton (right) tour PATH's Seattle headquarters following the announcement that PATH has won the 2009 Hilton Humanitarian Prize.

The prestigious award is well deserved recognition for the long-term efforts of its staff, who often work years before seeing the results, PATH Chief Executive Chris Elias said. PATH now has 850 employees working in 20 countries.

Its Seattle headquarters near the base of the Ballard Bridge buzzed with excitement as the news was announced this morning.

The award "will open many doors" for future goals, Elias said, and PATH plans to capitalize on the recognition to expand its partnerships around the world.

PATH will use the $1.5 million in prize money to seed an innovation fund aimed at investing in new technology and health interventions, he said. PATH will begin a five-year drive aimed at raising a total of $25 million for the innovation fund.

The non-profit has an annual budget of $250 million, 65 percent from foundations, 30 percent from governments, and 5 percent from global organizations. Only a small percent of the contributions are unrestricted, a portion Elias calls "innovation capital."

Through the innovation fund, Elias aims to raise the amount of flexible capital from about 3 percent to about 10 percent of PATH's budget.

PATH has used such capital in the past to set up an office in South Africa, which could then begin applying for grants and offering programs that had been successful in East Africa to address similar health problems. Five years later the South Africa office, focused on improving maternal and newborn health, has grown to one of PATH's largest, with a staff of more than 30 people.

"Innovation capital can respond to emerging needs and opportunities," he said.

One goal of the fund is to invest in taking technology innovations that come from 21st century scientific discoveries, such as new diagnostic tools, and applying them to affordable products for the developing world, he said.

The fund will also be used to increase the usage of essential health products PATH has developed and to expand its field presence, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, Elias said.

The Hilton Foundation will present the award to PATH formally at a Sept. 21 ceremony in Washington D.C with keynote speaker Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel laureate, founder of the Grameen Bank, and former Hilton Prize juror. PATH, which had been nominated for the Hilton award in the past, was the winner this year among about 200 nominees.

EarthWise spent 10 months building its first ferry aimed at restoring transportation and trade to Africa's largest lake. Now it's time to cut it all apart.

I wrote a story describing the unusual venture and its founders, Rob Smith and Calvin Echodu, in today's paper.

EarthWise will unveil the ferry in a celebration tomorrow before dismantling it and packing it inside four 40-foot containers bound for Kampala, Uganda, where local workers will begin the process of reassembling it.

JOHN LOK/SEATTLE TIMES

Rob Smith is heading an effort to build ferries for a new passenger service in Africa from his small boat building company in Everett.

At one time 30 percent of the Ugandan economy depended on the ferry system and the trade and travel it made possible. If some of that can be restored, Smith and his partners believe it will create jobs, increased tourism and other benefits to the region.

EarthWise will be collaborating with Columbia University and with Jeffrey Sachs' Millennium Villages project to process Jatropha, a plant used to make biofuel, as an alternative to diesel for the ferries.

EarthWise, Thain Boatworks and the Pacific Northwest African Chamber of Commerce are hosting the farewell event August 18 from 4 p.m. at Thain Boatworks, 1420 West Marine View Drive in Everett. The event is open to the public. To attend send RSVP to darcy@earthwiseventures.com.

As for the name, EarthWise plans to hold a contest among elementary schools in Uganda to name the boat after a prominent person in the country's history.

This post was written with Hal Bernton

Northwest non-profits have been making an impact around the globe, and now they're also helping to reshape the urban landscape back home.

At a time when many capital campaigns have come to a halt, two state-of-the art buildings are under construction to house the headquarters of growing non-profits.

CAITLIN CARLSON / MERCY CORPS

Mercy Corps new headquarters in downtown Portland.

Mercy Corps' $37 million headquarters building in downtown Portland isn't scheduled to open for business until Oct. 9, but reporters were given a sneak peak today.

The building, which will replace six leased offices that house 150 Portland-based staff, includes solar panels, a green roof, natural ventilation and other energy-saving features that have earned it a LEED Platinum rating - the highest of a four-tiered certification system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council.

The 80,000 square-foot headquarters will include a first-floor "Action Center" to educate people about global development issues and a space for Mercy Corp's Northwest staff, which is involved in aiding small entrepreneurs in the region. The building in the Old Town Chinatown neighborhood will give the aid organization a much higher-profile in its hometown.

"A lot of people tell us that Mercy Corps is one of the best kept secrets in Portland, and we really haven't had a way to welcome people," said Paul Dudley Hart, a Mercy Corps senior vice president. "This is what the ground floor is about."

Mercy Corps, which also has an office in Seattle, operates in more than 35 countries with a budget of more than $300 million. The new headquarters has been financed by a mix of tax credits, grants, a $7 million loan and a $10 million capital campaign that is about $1.4 million shy of its reaching its goal, according to Mercy Corp officials.

The headquarters project involved renovating and adding on to a historic Skidmore Fountain Building that first opened to business in 1892 as a center for wholesale grocery distribution. The expanded structure includes four floors of office and working space and a partial basement.

The Action Center, which will be the center of public involvement, will feature four "training towers" where students and other visitors will be challenged to help tackle development issues. When the center opens in October, the training towers will include a look at war-torn Afghanistan, climate change in Niger and land reform issues in Guatemala.

Dudley Hart said that the building's costs were dramatically lowered by the grants and tax credits, and that the end result will be a big savings compared to trying to rent space in downtown Portland. The LEED Platinum rating also will yield energy cost savings in the decades ahead, and is expected to deliver a major reduction of the building's carbon foot print.

As part of the effort to green the headquarters building, there are no special set asides for employee parking, and most of the Mercy Corps staff are expected to walk, bike or take mass transit to work.

In Seattle, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's $500 million new headquarters is more than halfway finished. The foundation was originally scheduled to move into its campus in the winter 2010, but the current home page lists a move-in date of spring 2011. The 600,000-square-foot facility, with two 6-story office buildings designed by NBBJ, covers an entire city block. You can watch the progress on this Web cam, thanks to this report.

People from the Gates Foundation recently visited Mercy Corps in Portland to take a look at the center and compare notes as they develop plans for a similar public outreach. Both of the headquarters will change the way the groups relate to their communities by giving visitors a hands-on way to explore their work.

Some fundraising campaigns have done surprisingly well even in the face of recession.

Led by Seahawks CEO Tod Leiweke, the Seahawks helped United Way of King County raise more money this year than any other United Way in the country.

The local United Way announced yesterday it had raised a total of $100.3 million in its 2008-2009 campaign ended June 30. It's the third consecutive year the organization has broken the $100 million mark.

United Way raised about $116 million in 2007-2008, according to its annual report.

Seeing the effects of the plummeting economy on poor families, United Way announced a Response for Basic Needs in November. It has raised $3.7 million for that program, supporting 6 million additional pounds of food into emergency food banks and signing up more than 1,000 people for food stamps.

Earlier this month, United Way held a Climb for the Community. Leiweke, Fine, Seahawks coach Jim Mora, United Way Chairwoman Molly Nordstrom and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell climbed Mt. Rainier to raise money and awareness for the basic needs campaign. The event raised an additional $380,000.

"The Northwest is a special place," Leiweke said.

Current and former Seahawks were involved last month in an event focused on global humanitarian work. Medical Teams International raised about $1.7 million at its 10th Annual Field of Dreams Dinner and Auction at Safeco Field. The event drew 820 guests, the largest turnout in its decade-long history.

Seahawks Quarterback Matt Hasselbeck and his wife Sarah and Horizon Air CEO Jeff Pinneo and his wife Janey co-chaired the event, with former Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren as honorary chairman.

Fund raising in such a difficult economy takes direct personal involvement and proof of financial efficiency, organizers said.

"The people and businesses here are incredibly generous, but they are also savvy," said Leiweke. They want to know that they're making a smart investment, so it helps that 96 cents of every dollar to United Way go to the community assistance programs.

With Medical Teams International, nearly 97 percent of all proceeds go directly to providing medicines and urgent care to people affected by disaster, conflict and poverty.

Organizers turned Safeco Field into a recreated orphanage in Romania with a flashing light bulb signifying a child dying every three seconds, and attendees walked over cardboard and garbage in recreated "dumps" of Mexico, where entire families live and dig through the rubbish to survive. There were also make-shift medical tents with IV's hanging from tree-branches.

Holmgren's wife, Kathy, a nurse, knows those situations well. As a volunteer with Medical Teams International, she worked in Uganda earlier this year with their daughter, Calla, a doctor, helping families forced from their homes by ongoing fighting in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo. Three years ago, Kathy Holmgren was on a medical mission in DRC while her husband coached in the Super Bowl.

The non-profit humanitarian relief and development agency has deployed more than 1,900 volunteer teams and shipped over $1.2 billion in antibiotics, surgical kits and medicines to 35 million people in 100 countries. In the Pacific Northwest, Medical Teams runs a mobile dental program for more than 16,000 patients a year with the help of 900 dental professionals who donate their time.

Seattle's global health focus on malaria is getting the support of the largest Rotary Club in the world.

The Seattle Rotary is partnering with local health non-profit PATH, which works with African governments on malaria control efforts from a base in Zambia.

With so many organizations involved in malaria-related projects -- from large humanitarian groups to celebrities to public campaigns like Nothing But Nets and corporate efforts like Malaria No More -- I wondered what exactly Rotary would be able to do. It's still tackling polio in a final push toward eradicating the disease.

STEVE RINGMAN/SEATTLE TIMES

Mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite cling to the I.V. tube in the Childrens Ward of the Morogoro Regional Hospital in Tanzania.

Seattle Rotary President Nancy Sclater, who traveled to Zambia recently to see PATH's work, explained that the malaria partnership is a grassroots effort that starts with Seattle Rotary members joining their counterparts in Zambian Rotary clubs.

"It's hands-on, connecting with people at a grassroots level, member to member and club to club," she said. While Rotary members continue to make trips administering polio vaccine, they can also distribute insecticide treated bednets.

Members will work together to deliver bednets in rural communities, teach people how to use them properly and provide basic health training on malaria symptoms and techniques to avoid it, she said. They will help develop a guidebook about the use of bednets and effective malaria prevention and treatment. Rotary is also hoping to bring African communities and businesses into the effort. Business ties between Seattle and Africa are growing.

"The health and productivity of people in Africa has broad implications globally," Sclater wrote in this message. "There is a continued perception that African nations cannot manage their business; however, there is striking evidence to the contrary."

Using proven strategies like bednets, Zambia has been able to cut malaria prevalence in children by more than half, and cut the number of children dying of malaria in Zambia by a third, according to PATH.

The disease kills one million people a year, mostly African children.

"We may be far removed geographically from children dying in Africa, but it is a cause that demonstrates the growing reputation and commitment Seattle has toward global philanthropy that will help improve the lives of people everywhere," Sclater wrote.

PATH's Kent Campbell said the scientific efforts underway by PATH, SBRI and others to fight the disease need help by community organizations on both sides.

"We need Rotary to support critical program gaps such as insecticide-treated bed nets, procurement, health education and advocacy and commodity management in Zambia that can be replicated by other clubs in other remote areas of Africa," said Campbell, director of PATH's Malaria Control and Evaluation Program.

The program can serve as a model in other African countries, connecting with Rotary's network of 32,000 clubs worldwide. The success of Rotary's polio efforts, while still not finished, is a reason for confidence about the new malaria project, Sclater said.

This week Rotary International announced it has nearly reached the halfway point in its $200 million goal to fund a final push against polio.

The funds announced today will be used to match a $350 million challenge grant recently awarded to Rotary by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, an agreement that will provide $555 million to the global health initiative within the next three years.

Dr. Paul Farmer, global health and human rights advocate and co-founder of Partners In Health, will be in Seattle next week for a free public event at the University of Washington.

By the time he gets here, he may have decided to take a new job with the Obama Administration.

Farmer will speak about the current climate of global health in a conversation moderated by Dr. Chris Elias, the CEO of PATH. Farmer is the subject of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Mountains Beyond Mountains." A conversation with him seems like a tonic for despair and apathy -- he's brutally honest about the disparity he sees, but people still come away feeling optimistic they can do something about it.

I had a chance to meet him a couple of years ago and ask him about his work.

MOUPALI DAS

Paul Farmer will speak at UW's Kane Hall on Thursday at 6 p.m..

In Seattle, he'll talk about the future of global health delivery, the challenge of multi drug-resistant tuberculosis, and how one person has the ability to make a significant contribution to global health. More details are here.

Farmer is the chair of Harvard Medical School's Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and an associate chief at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. He also spends time shuttling between PIH projects in Rwanda and Haiti. There have been suggestions recently that he will be named to a top post at USAID, which would signal a radical shift for that organization.

Arguing that health care is a human right, Farmer approaches ill health as a symptom of deeper issues of poverty and inequality. But he also expresses ambivalence.

"I move uneasily between the obligation to intervene and the troubling knowledge that much of the work we do, praised as humanitarian or charitable, does not always lead us closer to our goal," he said in a recent NPR feature. His goal? "Nothing less than the refashioning of our world."

Mercy Corps received a $10 million contribution this week from Qatar Charity for its work in the Gaza Strip. The two organizations said they will focus largely on developing economic opportunities.

Mercy Corps and Qatar Charity signed an agreement to collaborate on a large-scale cash-for-work program involving removing rubble, restoring buildings, helping fishermen and small farmers, teaching entrepreneurship skills and designing a business resource center.

The groups said the funds will also help expand the Global Citizen Corps, a Mercy Corps leadership training program for young people in the region.

CAITLIN CARLSON / MERCY CORPS

Mercy Corps CEO Neal Keny-Guyer, left, with Abdullah Al-Nameh, managing director of Qatar Charity (center) and Yousef Al-Hammadi, board member of Qatar Charity (right).

Mercy Corps has worked in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since the 1980s. Ongoing instability has crippled the economy and contributed to the highest unemployment rate in the world.

Qatar Charity, a private Islamic charity started in 1992 and based in Doha, is one of the largest NGOs in the Persian Gulf region. For Mercy Corps it is the second collaboration this year with an NGO from Qatar. In January Mercy Corps announced a partnership with Reach Out to Asia to address disasters, conflicts and economic collapse in the region.

Mercy Corps CEO Neal Keny-Guyer, meeting with representatives from Qatar Charity in Portland this week, said partnerships with Middle East-based organizations are essential in efforts to achieve stability and prosperity in Gaza.

This post was written by Sandi Doughton

Somalia is the "most dangerous place on Earth," says Matthew Lovick.

That's why it's one of the African nations where Portland-based Mercy Corps is expanding operations, Lovick told a small group of Seattle supporters Thursday.

MOHAMED DAHIR / AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Somali government soldiers engaged in a shootout with Islamic militants in Mogadishu this week. The heavy fighting in a densely packed neighborhood sent thousands of residents fleeing the capital.

"There's not a single person in this room who could go to Somalia and not be kidnapped and ransomed," he said during the informal briefing on the aid organization's Africa programs.

Even Lovick stays out of the country, though he's Mercy Corps' regional director for East and Southern Africa. All of the organization's work there, including cash-for-work levee construction to protect villages from seasonal floods, is run by native Somalis.

Mercy Corps specializes in conflict zones, where it moves in quickly to help fill immediate needs, like clean water -- but also to build roads, establish jobs programs and take other steps to get beyond the immediate crisis and push development forward, said Phil Oldham, director for West and Central Africa.

"We're not going to tread water for years on end," Oldham said.

As the need for outside help has dropped in places like the Balkans, Mercy Corps has quadrupled its work in Africa over the past 3 years. Ten African nations now account for more than a third of the group's budget.

But decades of work can be wiped out by conflict, and Mercy Corps is riding the new wave in aid work: Promoting reconciliation and peaceful conflict resolution.

Programs go beyond training communities in conflict resolution, Lovick said. Most conflicts originate in poverty and competition for jobs, money and resources. So in Kenya, for example, Mercy Corps hires young men from warring factions to work together on road-building and other infrastructure improvements.

Mercy Corps is also unusual in incorporating global warming in its programs.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where more than 850,000 people displaced by conflicts live in sprawling camps, the demand for fuel wood is decimating forests. Mercy Corps has distributed more than 20,000 fuel efficient stoves, which use half the wood of traditional stoves. And they've sold credits from the resulting reduction in greenhouse gas emissions on the European market.

At the same time, Mercy Corps is helping villages plant tree farms, to provide a sustainable, future source of firewood and protect native forests.

Mercy Corps was one of 13 NGOs expelled from northern Sudan recently, in response to the International Criminal Court's indictment of Sudanese President Omar al Bashir for war crimes in Darfur. (Some leaders of humanitarian organizations, such as InterAction chairman Charles MacCormack, thought the indictment might do more harm than good.)

The groups met last week in Khartoum with Scott Gration, the US special envoy to Sudan, but Lovick said the concerns of the NGOs are only a small part of Gration's mission.