On an average night more than 2,100 Syrians cross the border into Jordan, seeking refuge from the violence and instability in their own country.

It’s the new normal, the head of a large humanitarian aid organization working in the Za’atari refugee camp told me recently. “We’ve come to expect several thousand refugees each night.”

March 15 marks the second anniversary of the Syrian revolution. According to the United Nations, in those two short years more than 70,000 Syrians have been killed and over 3 million have been uprooted from their homes. Some 2.3 million are internally displaced, and another million are refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, and Egypt.

Bedouin Hospitality

According to the Jordanian government, more than 400,000 Syrians now live in Jordan, a country of only 6.5 million people with a long history of welcoming refugees. Because of the harsh desert climate, the Bedouin have long offered a minimum of three days of hospitality to anyone who passed by their tents.

“The house is always opened to guests,” says Dr. Kamal Abu Jaber, the former foreign minister of Jordan and son of a Jordanian Bedouin father and Palestinian mother. “Once you eat bread and salt together you are bound together as family.” To call a Jordanian “generous,” he adds, is the highest compliment.

Well over half the population of Jordan is made up of newcomers who arrived during the past 60 years. Jordan has opened its arms to 2.7 million Palestinians (the original refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars, and their descendants); half a million Iraqis; thousands of Somalis, Sudanese, and Libyans; and now hundreds of thousands of Syrians.

“It’s a miracle that this poor country can do this,” says Abu Jaber.

Za’atari Refugee Camp

In early March, I visited the sprawling Za’atari refugee camp only six miles from the Syrian border and just outside the northern Jordanian city of Mafraq.

All new Syrian arrivals in Jordan are brought first to Za’atari. Those few who are fortunate enough to find a Jordanian citizen to sponsor them are free to leave the camp, which is surrounded by a high fence and guarded by Jordanian security. Others must stay in the camp.

The camp is now home to as many as 140,000 Syrians. No one seems to know the exact number. The situation is fluid and volatile by anyone’s definition. There are frequent protests and riots.

Photo: ACT Alliance/Paul Jeffrey

According to aid workers, many of the refugees come from middle-class households and are quick to express frustration about the camp’s limited services and fragile infrastructure. In spite of heroic efforts, U.N. and aid agencies are simply not able to keep pace with the thousands who arrive daily.

Za’atari is in the middle of a high-altitude desert that is cold and wet in the winter and stiflingly hot with sand storms in the summer. Newcomers live in tents. Eventually families are transferred to small one-room “caravans.”

The main street of the camp is packed with pedestrians and lined with vendors selling fruits, vegetables, household supplies, and even washing machines.

Eighty-eight-year-old Um Omar (names have been changed for security reasons) welcomed us in her 10-foot-by-15-foot caravan with no furnishings except mats on the floor. She served us tea, with heaping plates of bananas and oranges.

Um Omar came to Za’atari from Dara’a five months ago, along with two grown sons, who carried her across the border, and a gaggle of grandchildren. Dara’a is where Syria’s revolution began in March 2011, when several young boys were arrested for painting graffiti about Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.

Um Omar’s grandchildren do not go to school because it is too far away from their caravan. Indeed, the camp is so massive that many residents no longer live within easy walking distance of schools, medical facilities, or other services. Her son, Omar, fears that the Syrian regime might fire Scud missiles at Za’atari because it is so close to the border.

Urban Refugees

But contrary to popular images, the vast majority of Syrians in Jordan do not live in refugee camps. Most arrived before Za’atari was opened in late July 2012.

These “urban refugees” live with Jordanian families or rent small rooms or apartments in cities like Amman, Irbid, Mafraq, and Zarqa. Sometimes three or four families live in an apartment with only three or four rooms.

More than 75 percent of the Syrian refugees in Jordan are women and children. Many arrive traumatized by the violence they have witnessed in Syria. In addition to feelings of isolation and trauma, refugees express fears about meeting their current needs and uncertainty about the future.

Some 316,000 Syrians have registered or are in the process of registering with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), qualifying them to receive rent assistance, medical care, access to Jordanian public schools, and other humanitarian aid.

Yet as many as 100,000 Syrians have chosen not to register, some out of fear that there will be reprisals from the Syrian government.

Humanitarian Responses

The UN and aid agencies estimate it will cost $1 billion to cover the costs of Syrian refugees in the region just for the six months from January to June 2013.

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), an international humanitarian agency of Anabaptist churches, partners with local agencies in Jordan to distribute shipments of MCC relief kits, school kits, and blankets; dispense infant milk powder, diapers, and children’s shoes purchased in local markets; and provide non-formal education and psychological-social support to the refugees.

Since 2005, MCC has also partnered with Caritas Jordan, a humanitarian nongovernmental organization affiliated with the Catholic Church, supporting an innovative HIV- and AIDS-awareness project, a revolving loan fund for low-income Jordanian students, and distribution of school kits and milk powder to vulnerable families.

With tensions increasing between Jordanian host communities and an increasingly diverse and vulnerable group of Syrian refugees, Caritas has added a peace-building component to its services, training teams of Syrian refugees and Jordanians to work together to provide an effective response to the crisis.

Another key role for MCC is to share stories and needs of the refugees in the United States and Canada. Many refugees are eager to share, but do not wish to have their pictures taken or to give their full names, fearing the Syrian regime will retaliate against them.

Still Working with Refugees

Caritas Jordan was established in 1967 to respond to the refugee and humanitarian crisis caused by the Six-Day War in neighboring Israel-Palestine. Some 45 years later, it is still working with refugees. Guided by the vision of affirming the dignity of every human, with a special concern for the poor, Caritas offers services to Christians and Muslims.

“We look at the refugees’ needs and try to answer it,” says executive director Wael Sulieman.

Caritas Jordan works closely with local churches, often using parish facilities as distribution centers. The organization has registered more than 75,000 Syrian refugees at its centers in Amman, Husson, Irbid, Madaba, Mafraq, Ramtha, Salt, and Zarqa, doing family needs assessments before distributing humanitarian assistance and providing medical and educational resources.

Caritas tries to avoid duplicating services provided by UNHCR. “Our work with the vulnerable Jordanian families has never stopped,” says Sulieman. “Nonetheless Caritas gives a helping hand to any refugee community who needs help, beginning with Palestinians in the 1960s, Iraqis in the 1990s, and now with Syrians.”

The Burdens of Hospitality

Such hospitality has its costs.

Whether or not they work for humanitarian organizations, “Jordanians are heavily involved in serving and hosting the Syrians,” says Wafa Goussous, director of the Initiative of the Heads of the Orthodox Churches of the Middle East. “With the heavy load that Jordan is taking, part of the load is definitely carried by its citizens.”

The influx of refugees is straining Jordan’s budget and infrastructure and, in some cases, increasing social tensions between the refugees and Jordanian host communities. Some Jordanians have begun to complain about rising food and housing costs they believe are linked to yet another wave of refugees. Jordan’s Economic and Social Council recently reported that the cost of hosting the refugees for the past 18 months exceeded $833 million, representing about 3 percent of Jordan’s gross domestic product.

More than 29,000 Syrian children are enrolled in Jordanian public schools at a cost of $19.8 million. Still, some Syrians report being turned away from public schools due to overcrowding. And according to MCC partner Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), many Syrian families cannot afford to send their children to public school kindergarten, for which the fees have not been waived.

Photo: ACT Alliance/Paul Jeffrey

But many refugees don’t simply want hand outs. When one JRS staff member recently encouraged a Syrian woman to register with UNHCR so she would qualify for a range of benefits, she responded, “I don’t want 50 Jordanian dinars (about $70 US) from UNHCR. I want to work!”

The need for employment has strained the Jordanian economy as well. So far 38,000 jobs have been offered to Syrians, contributing to growing unemployment rates in Jordan. Some wealthier Syrians are moving their businesses to Jordan, creating stiff competition for Jordanian companies.

“Syrians are managing to cut production costs by operating from apartments, hiring refugees, and avoiding taxation,” garment factory owner Ebrahim Hadad recently told The Media Line.  “Syrians are welcomed; this country is comprised of refugees,” Hadad continued. “However, they are hurting our businesses. I am unable to compete with them.”

But many refugees with fewer resources report that they are often exploited by Jordanian employers and made to work long hours at low wages because they do not have work permits. Some married Syrian women work at low-wage farms. Syrian male heads of household in Amman are reported to work in low-wage jobs as bakers, construction workers, and security guards. According to Caritas Jordan, Syrian youth are often spotted as street peddlers, beggars and market helpers, instead of attending school or summer camps.

Balancing the needs of Jordanians and refugees is critical. In order to reduce tensions between refugees and the resource-stretched host communities, the Jordanian government now requires 30 percent of international humanitarian aid be made available for vulnerable Jordanian families.
And hospitality is not without risks.

Jordan has long had a reputation as one of the most stable countries in the Middle East. But some analysts say ferment is growing. They fear that the new influx of Syrian refugees might push Jordan’s tottering social stability over the edge.

Others fear that groups like al-Qaeda will infiltrate the refugees and attack targets in Jordan. There are also reports of skirmishes on the Syrian-Jordanian border, as Jordanian forces help refugees enter the country and the Syrian regime responds.

Still, Jordan continues to follow an open-door policy and provides health care and access to public education for Syrians who register with UNHCR.
Some Syrians express optimism that they will be able to return home soon. Others believe it will take many years, just as has been the case with Palestinians and Iraqis still living in Jordan.

“They all wish the fighting in Syria will end tomorrow,” says George Akil, a program manager for Caritas Jordan. “They are all eager to go back to their homes once the fighting ends.”

While some Jordanian officials hint that they may eventually close the border, Dr. Abu Jaber, who now heads the Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies, disagrees.

“There is no way by our tradition, our culture, or our religion that we can close the door,” he reflects. “How can you close the door when women and children are suffering and without food?”

But with thousands of Syrians continuing to arrive every night, and with UNHCR estimating that 660,000 Syrians will be in Jordan by the end of 2013, it will take another miracle for this small country to absorb them all.

J. Daryl Byler is a regional representative for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC),  based in Amman, Jordan. He blogs at cindydarylbyler.wordpress.com. MCC implements disaster relief, sustainable community development, and peace-building projects through local partners in 60 countries.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: In Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, Bob and Diane Gayer and their sons Jarek and Clay are doing a little Christmas shopping. Not at the mall…at their church! Long’s Chapel United Methodist Church sponsored an Alternative Christmas Market, where various booths offered gift ideas that supported local and international charities. Diane says projects like this help her family set a different tone for Christmas.

DIANE GAYER: It’s a very tricky time for the family.

CLAY GAYER: Expensive.

DIANE GAYER: It is expensive, and we live in a real “me” societ,y so the children always think of themselves first. And as a parent, you want them to think of others.

LAWTON: The tradition of giving Christmas presents is often tied to the magi, or wise men, who according to the Bible story brought precious gifts to the baby Jesus. But many Christians say that tradition has gotten out of hand. According to the National Retail Federation, Americans will spend $563 billion for Christmas 2012. The average family is expected to shell out about $750. The federation also forecasts that this holiday season, consumers will be spending the highest amount ever on gifts for themselves. Amid all the shopping frenzy, more and more church leaders are speaking out against self-indulgence and consumerism.

REV. MIKE SLAUGHTER (Ginghamsburg Church): It’s kind of hijacked the whole idea that Christmas is about Jesus’ birth and honoring Jesus with the priorities that Jesus would have in the world, especially amongst marginalized people. But what we’ve done is made it more about us, and it’s become kind of one of the biggest, gluttonous feast days on the Christian calendar.

LAWTON: Rev. Mike Slaughter is lead pastor of Ginghamsburg Church outside Dayton, Ohio, and author of the book, “Christmas Is Not Your Birthday,” in which he urges people to consider what Jesus might like for his birthday.

SLAUGHTER: What we need to see in Christmas—regardless of what religious background or no, no religious background—is the purpose of Jesus was to serve the needs of the world.

LAWTON: To that end, for the last eight years, Slaughter has issued a Christmas challenge to his congregation:

SLAUGHTER: We’ve simply said whatever you spend on yourself, bring an equal amount for a focus we have in our community or the world.

LAWTON: Through what they call the Christmas Miracle Offering, the church has built 243 schools and 19 clean water facilities in Darfur and a health clinic in South Sudan. He says children have been among the most enthusiastic supporters.

SLAUGHTER: That’s one of the things that surprised me the most. I really thought we were going get pushback from kids, that kids would not understand this. And what happened was the kids began to worry that if they got presents, other children would die. I was shocked.

LAWTON: The church also supports several projects to help the local community, which has been hard hit by the economic downturn. There are GED programs, jobs programs, and food pantries. Marcia Florkey directs the church’s outreach ministry called New Path.

MARCIA FLORKEY (New Path): We’ve been really blessed because we have a lot of folks here who are really concerned about their neighbors, who really want to do all they can do to love their neighbors.

LAWTON: In recent years, several international humanitarian organizations have been sponsoring projects to help others at Christmas time. For example, through Operation Christmas Child, Samaritan’s Purse urges people to pack shoe boxes of gifts for needy children. Since 1993, the group says it has delivered more than 100 million boxes around the world. Now, more local churches are also calling for a new, more spiritual look at Christmas gift-giving.

CARDINAL DONALD WUERL (Archdiocese of Washington): (in video) Come and experience the joy and peace of Christ—the perfect gift at Christmas. Merry Christmas.

LAWTON: The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington has an initiative called “Find the Perfect Gift.” The United Methodist denomination has launched a million dollar campaign called “Reclaim Christmas.” In Lake Junaluska, Pastor Chuck Wilson wanted Long’s Chapel to be part of it.

REV. CHUCK WILSON (Long’s Chapel United Methodist Church): We know that we’re not going to completely debunk American consumerism. But we do encourage great participation by just placing before our people dozens and dozens of opportunities for giving.

LAWTON: Many of those opportunities were represented at the alternative market in the fellowship hall. Families like the Gayers could buy fair trade coffee and chocolate to benefit United Methodist relief efforts. Or they could give a donation in someone’s honor to build wells in Africa. At one table, members of a church missions team sold purses made by a woman they met who runs an orphanage and school in Kenya.

JULIANNE WILSON (Long’s Chapel United Methodist Church): It’s really neat when people come over here and buy them. And they can give them as gifts. So, you know, this is going all the way to help some kid maybe have lunch or breakfast or get an education.

LAWTON: Eleven-year-old Jarek and his ten-year-old brother Clay both bought necklaces from a mission that works in Africa.

JAREK GAYER: It’s a win-win for everybody because I really like this necklace, but the money goes to more…

CLAY GAYER: A good cause.

JAREK GAYER: Yeah.

LAWTON: The Gayer family also buys gifts for needy local children through a program called Christmas Angels.

BOB GAYER: Jarek delivers gifts with me on the day that we deliver for Christmas Angels. And he gets to see that, you know, sometimes life isn’t always as nice as he has it at home.

JAREK GAYER: It’s fun but it’s like, life-touching because it’s like you know that, OK, I have all this stuff and when you go to the person’s house, it’s just like (makes a surprised face), Huh! It like, it just like touches your heart.

LAWTON: This year, Long’s Chapel also worked with the group Stop Hunger Now to pack meals that will be shipped overseas. In one afternoon, the church put together more than 10,000 meals for Haiti. Clay says for him, that’s the real meaning of Christmas.

CLAY GAYER: Christmas is not mostly about yourself. It’s mostly all about giving.

LAWTON: Pastor Wilson says behind all their efforts is a desire to honor what they believe is the ultimate Christmas gift: Jesus coming into the world.

C. WILSON: We believe in this important kind of theological concept called the Incarnation, that God came and got with us. God brought himself in the person of Jesus and placed himself before us and came in the form of a child.

SLAUGHTER: As a Christian to me one of the greatest miracles, you know, we talk about the miracle of the resurrection, but the greatest miracle to me is the whole idea of the Incarnation, is that God would reveal God’s self in a humble human being.

LAWTON: And Rev. Slaughter believes that’s indeed a birthday worth celebrating.

I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: Early each morning in the chapel of St. Damien’s Children’s Hospital, the shrouded bodies of infants—and one adult on this day—are counted, the names written down for prayers that follow at daily Mass.

REV. RICHARD FRECHETTE: Anybody that dies in our arms, as they say in Creole, in our place, then their body is first brought to the chapel so that the very next Mass we have the prayers for the dead and for their peace and for the transformation of their life to eternity and for the strength and courage of their family.

DE SAM LAZARO: Father Rick Frechette spends much of his day attacking the infant mortality he sees so literally each morning. He’s the founder of one of the largest medical care facilities for children and many adults in Haiti. It’s grown by necessity, often out of tragedy. Frechette is a member of the Community of Passionists, a global Catholic order, and he began 25 years ago with what seemed a more straightforward mission: a shelter and school for orphans. Today, 800 children are housed at several centers. This one, taking in the overflow, functions out of converted shipping containers. The shelter’s young managers themselves grew up here. Billy Jean is one. He was brought at age three to NPH, the orphanage’s local acronym. Today, he works to master English and is in law school.

BILLY JEAN: My mother became pregnant very early, about 16 years old, and my father took off, and then my mother couldn’t take care of me. She heard about NPH and she decided to put me there…

DE SAM LAZARO: His mother visits occasionally, he says, but the orphanage is very much his family.

REV. FRECHETTE: That’s our goal, to restore the family over one generation, to raise the children together so they have memories of their own childhood, restored childhood, and that later in life they become aunts and uncles to each other’s children and their family regenerates after a generation. That’s our goal, so we have community of families that have been broken by tragedy.

DE SAM LAZARO: The tragedy of Haiti’s AIDS epidemic, beginning in the nineties, brought big change for the organization and Frechette himself. HIV was bringing in very ill children that the orphanages were ill-equipped to care for.

REV. FRECHETTE: That really engraved itself hard on my memory. Seeing such terrible things and honestly not having a clue, not having a clue as to what to do.

DE SAM LAZARO: Frechette received permission from his order to go to medical school, a multiyear commitment which he completed in his mid 40s. Back in Haiti, his newly-acquired expertise, combined with astute fundraising, resulted in a modern pediatric hospital. It expanded with a new building in 2006, the largest of its kind in the country, with a 22-bed center for neonatology.

DR. JACQUELINE GAUTIER (Medical Director): Neonatology is a luxury for Haiti.

DE SAM LAZARO: Dr. Jacqueline Gautier is the medical director.

DR. GAUTIER: We have central oxygen. We can offer CPAP, which is external ventilation.

DE SAM LAZARO: (to Dr. Gautier) So on any given day, you have 22 kids in here who would not have lived were it not for this facility?

DR. GAUTIER: Correct. All the 22s are not very intensive. Half of it. Half of them.

DE SAM LAZARO: Many of these premature births result from conditions like hypertension or diabetes in the mothers. For them, a maternity unit was added in 2010 after the capital’s major hospital for high risk pregnancies was destroyed.

DR. GAUTIER: Fortunately, 2010 we were not really damaged by the earthquake. It was a few cracks. A few cracks only.

DE SAM LAZARO: The quake did not damage this hospital, but it quickly overwhelmed it.

DR. GAUTIER: The yard was transformed into a trauma center. We had patients everywhere.

DE SAM LAZARO: In a few weeks, Frechette says the decision was made to use donations that were pouring in to start a new adult hospital. Ten months later, a cholera ward had to be added after the deadly outbreak that killed nearly 5,000 people in its first year.

REV. FRECHETTE: So we kind of mushroomed out in response to all of these problems. I think the surprise to everybody, including to us, is that we could do it all pretty much without batting an eyelash. And the real wonder of it, to tell you the truth, this is a country of no infrastructures practically, and it’s a country of failed NGOs.

DE SAM LAZARO: He says three years after the quake, despite billions of dollars given to thousands of NGOs—non-government organizations—the rebuilding has been painfully slow.

REV. FRECHETTE: There’s too much disjointedness. It’s goodwill, and it should be recognized fully as that and appreciated, but it doesn’t get channeled in a way that makes sense, and in fact it’s a way that gets disruptive.

DE SAM LAZARO: Many smaller NGOs, often church-based, have come and gone as their funding allowed. Bureaucracy has slowed larger agencies as they’ve planned major projects in housing, clean water and sanitation. Some 360,000 earthquake victims remain displaced in tent camps. For it’s part, Frechette’s organization took in $9 million in earthquake-related donations. Its approach now is focused on community.

RAPHAEL LOUIGENE (Project Manager): (translation) Organizations come in with their own ideas and do things their own way. The way that Fr. Rick works is we don’t come into a community and give our idea of what to do and how to do it. We listen to the community, listen to their needs because they know them the best, and then we work together to accomplish it.

DE SAM LAZARO: In the sprawling Port au Prince slum called Cite Soleil, the group is partnering with the community to build homes to replace the sea of shacks and squalor. They’re simple two room structures built on the principle that if you wait to do things right, nothing will get done for years, prolonging the suffering.

REV. FRECHETTE: The way that we look at it and explain it to our donors, we’re investing in the purchase of time. You know, they’re simple block structures, we make most of the blocks ourselves. They’re simple aluminum roofs. It’s more towards normal than anything that they have known, but we’re just buying time while the people with big money and big plans, an interwoven network of organizations can do a proper urban development. That’s what we’re doing.

DE SAM LAZARO: They’re also doing health care here. A new facility is being built in Cite Soleil. All told, about 1,800 Haitians work for the mission begun by Frechette. Hundred of thousands have been served in orphanages, schools and hospitals. Funding comes from private individuals, foundations, and government grants. This year, Frechette was awarded the one million dollar Opus Prize, given to a faith-based social entrepreneur by the Minnesota-based Opus Foundation.

Frechette himself does not see his work in charitable or heroic terms.

REV. FRECHETTE: Rather than saying, I gave you this chance, I say, I was fortunate. I had that chance. It came to me. I didn’t make it. And we want that same chance to come to you so that we have the same chance. We’re people who care by being the bridge between resources that have benefited us in our life for our education and well-being, and we just want to be the bridge for letting that happen by people who have their own capacity and dreams.

DE SAM LAZARO: A long road, he admits, where success is built one small stretch at a time.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Cite Soleil, Haiti.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Much of the East Coast is still grappling with the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. The storm affected at least 17 states, caused massive flooding, and left millions without power. Religious leaders, including Pope Benedict the 16th, prayed for the victims and for a strong recovery. And many faith-based groups quickly rallied to help those impacted by the storm—among them, the North American Mission Board, the relief arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. Mike Ebert is the Mission Board’s vice president for communications. He joins us from the board’s headquarters in Atlanta Georgia.

Mike, welcome. Let me begin with inviting you to talk about the extent of the SBC’s efforts here. How many people do you have? What are you doing?

MIKE EBERT (Southern Baptist Convention): Well, Bob, we have 82,000 trained disaster relief volunteers, 15,000 disaster relief units, and we will by Monday be at a 400,000 meal capacity. So we’ll be preparing 400,000 hot meals to be served to victims and other first responders, and that will be kind of the beginning point for us. We’ll see where it goes from there.

ABERNETHY: I heard on the radio the mayor of Hoboken a couple of days ago pleading for people in the neighboring towns to come bring them food. Do you hear that kind of thing?

EBERT: We do. We’ve been watching the reports like you, and we do have several of our people on the ground already, and so that’s why just as this is an historic disaster for the United States, it’s going to be a historic response for Southern Baptists. We’ve mobilized every mobile kitchen unit we have east of the Rockies, so that’s how big of a response this is going to be.

ABERNETHY: And people are coming from where, all over the country?

EBERT: Really, we have units as far away as Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, who are on their way now. We have 15 kitchen units that are already set up and preparing hot meals.

ABERNETHY: What’s the priority? The meals?

EBERT: Right now the priority is the meals, because so many people have been—well, they’re just not even in their homes. They’re in shelters, or they’re without power, and that could remain the case for another three weeks. But after that, we also have other units that will come in and help with tree removal so people can get power restored; help with mud-out work for homes that have been flooded. So it’s a very comprehensive response.

ABERNETHY: Is the government doing so much that there’s not much work left for the private groups, or is there plenty of work for you?

EBERT: Plenty of work. It’s very much a partnership. We work very closely with FEMA. We have a representative in their D.C. office; same with American Red Cross. We have a representative there. So it’s very much a partnership between Southern Baptists, the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and we all work together very well and with local governments.

ABERNETHY: And quickly, Mike. It’s a spiritual relief program as well as a material one, isn’t it?

EBERT: Sure is. First we want to relieve the physical suffering, but secondly we do have chaplains that come in with every unit so they can be there for spiritual counseling, spiritual encouragement. This very much is just as much a physical crisis as it is a spiritual and emotional crisis for people.

ABERNETHY: Mike Ebert of the Southern Baptist Convention. Many thanks.

EBERT: Thank you, Bob.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: It’s lush, verdant fields are a food basket for the Philippines. But Mindanao is also a tense, highly militarized place. Tens of thousands of people across this Indiana-sized island have been forced to flee their homes for squalid camps.

On paper, there’s a ceasefire in the long-running insurgency in this most Muslim region of the Philippines, a predominantly Christian nation.

Nonviolent Peaceforce Monitor: “Died on the spot, the girl…”

DE SAM LAZARO: However, the threat of sporadic fighting is never far away. Two days before we got here, this six-year-old child was caught in a cross fire….

DE SAM LAZARO: Taking notes on incidents and conditions in the camps are unarmed observers—foreign and local—with a group called Nonviolent Peaceforce.

Monitor: How many families are still in Luanan?

Translator: There are still 104 families staying here. We go to our farms during the day but come back here at night.

DE SAM LAZARO: The presence of these monitors and their constant interaction deep inside communities is credited with helping prevent flareups, lower the number of skirmishes, and preserve the precarious ceasefire. They are praised both by the Philippine army, which patrols some areas of the island, and the main rebel group that covers the rest: the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The Front’s roots lie in a movement by ethnic Moros who are Muslim. It initially sought independence but over the years has moderated the demand to greater autonomy from Manila.

(to MILF member): Do you consider yourself Filipino?

RASHID LADIASAN (Secretary, MILF): No. No. By citizenship, yes; by nationality, no. I am a Moro by nationality.

DE SAM LAZARO: Mindanao has known conflict for centuries, beginning with resistance to the Spanish colonists and more recently, resistance to the incorporation of this island into the Philippine republic. That happened in 1946. And since then migrants from other islands have come here and today those mostly Christian settlers outnumber the mostly Muslim original islanders by better than two to one.

Journalist Glenda Gloria, who wrote a book about the Mindanao conflict, says its as much about economic inequality as religion. She says much today’s problems trace back to the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who ruled from 1965 to 1986.

GLENDA GLORIA (Author of Under the Crescent Moon: Rebellion in Mindanao): The Marcos government instituted a lot of government policies that oppressed the minority Muslims, that took them away from the economic and political pie, and after that the abusive military really violated human rights just to run after these rebels who wanted to separate from the republic at that point.

DE SAM LAZARO: That sowed the seeds for radicalization among some rebel fighters, she says. By the 1990s, a regional Al Qaeda affiliate called Abu Sayyef began to thrive.

(to Philippine officers): Is Abu Sayyef growing?

Philippine Officers: As far as we are concerned, it’s not growing. They are still confined. Just one of the successes of our government security forces in that portion of Mindanao.

DE SAM LAZARO: Philippine officials say they’ve largely defeated Abu Sayyef as a military threat, helped by US advisors who remain in the region. And recent governments have made progress toward a peace treaty, offering greater autonomy and control over the island’s resources to the Moro people. And officially there’s a ceasefire. However, between splinter rebel factions and clashes among rival warlords the ground reality is still unsettled.

NP Monitors: The military has set up a camp. Does that still not give you enough confidence to be staying there at night?

DE SAM LAZARO: Back at the displaced persons camp, community leader Abdul Manan Ali said armed groups continue to pose a threat.

ABDUL MANON ALI: I think families are still insecure about the situation…

DE SAM LAZARO: A few minutes later, the monitors were relaying the citizens’ concerns to the Philippine military, which is in charge of security in this region.

LT. COL. BENJAMIN HAO (Philippine Army): Some of the members of community are suggesting to bring my platoons nearer. I have no problem with that. The problem is bringing military into the community might cause another problem, so we have to study this some more.

DE SAM LAZARO: Among the many shortages, trust is a major one, and that’s a void that both sides agree the foreign civilians are filling.

LADIASAN: Only unarmed civilian protection monitors would be effective, because our people have been traumatized. If they only see government and MILF working for civilian protection, there is no impartiality.

MAJ. CARLOS SOL (Philippine Army): Since they are foreigners the perception could be they are neutral compared to local organizations that are involved in the peace process.

DE SAM LAZARO: Regardless of their faith.

MAJ. SOL: Regardless of their faith. I think the Nonviolent Peaceforce is a mixture of Hindus, Christians, and Muslims.

DE SAM LAZARO: The group is now based in Belgium but was started in Minneapolis. Co-founder Mel Duncan, who was in Mindanao during our visit, says his earliest inkling that the concept might work came in the eighties. He was living in Nicaragua where he’d gone as a peace activist during the civil war there.

MEL DUNCAN (Founder, Nonviolent Peaceforce): What we found over a seven-year period was none of those villages were ever attacked when there was an international presence. This was at a period of a war where 50,000 people were being killed.

DE SAM LAZARO: Refining and putting the idea into practice took years of studying of similar attempts, he says, including an ill-fated one during Bosnia’s civil war.

DUNCAN: In the mid-90s, there was an effort fnear Sada in Sarajevo where people primarily from Europe had been recruited, many of them not trained, and they came into a situation where they in fact drew artillery into the areas where they were trying to protect and they made a lot of problems in terms of having to be taken out.

DE SAM LAZARO: In contrast, monitors hired by Nonviolent Peaceforce are full time and salaried—about $1500 per month. They come to stay, hire local staffers and work with local civic groups. Raghu Menon, trained as a lawyer in India, says it makes a big difference.

RAGHU MENON (Monitor): As you will see, there are no fences, no guards outside our office in spite of the fact that Pikit, where we are based, is considered a dangerous place by most Filipinos. But because we are living in the community, which supports our work, which understands our work, I think we draw a lot of our security from that.

DE SAM LAZARO: Long before they deploy, the group spends months studying the conflict, meeting the key players, and forging partnerships with citizen groups.

DUNCAN: We have to engage with local partners who can understand things in ways that internationals will never be able. War is complicated, and so is peace. And we’re always learning at this and that’s–we have to remain humble and this is not a tool that fits every situation and that will rid the world of war.

DE SAM LAZARO: The group’s first deployment was in Sri Lanka during its civil war, where Duncan says it was particularly effective in rescuing child soldiers. Besides Mindanao, monitors now serve in South Sudan and Georgia. And he hopes they can serve in more conflict zones soon.

DUNCAN: We certainly could provide effective protection in Myanmar. In Kyrgyzstan. Perhaps in Syria as the conflict unfolds.

DE SAM LAZARO: Nonviolent Peaceforce’s annual budget of $7.5 million comes from the UN and governments from several developed nations, though not the U.S.–Duncan says “not yet”–and among its merits could be the price tag. Duncan says an unarmed civilian costs about half what the UN pays to deploy a typical armed blue-helmeted soldier.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro on the Philippine island of Mindanao.

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: He was to the United Kingdom what John Kennedy was to many in the United States: a dashing, young, urbane leader who embodied hope and change and who could put words together like no other politician of his time.

Prime Minister Tony Blair speaking in Parliament: And I may say if we take the whole period of this government, we have spent far more on our national health service than the Liberal Democrats ever asked us to.

HUGH O’SHAUGHNESSY (Author): He is a master of rhetoric and the spoken word, and he uses that for his own very prosperous interests.

SEVERSON: When Blair left office five years ago, after serving longer than any other Labor prime minister, he was almost as out of favor as he had been popular when he was elected, largely because of the Iraq war. But his name could open doors and pocketbooks around the world—and has.

Blair moved from Number 10 Downing Street to this mansion in central London, where John Adams once resided as U.S. ambassador. Now this place doesn’t have enough space to house Blair’s multiple endeavors and charities. But none seems more important to Blair than the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

His business ventures and philanthropy range from consulting with developing countries about how to improve systems of government to programs designed to get more young people involved in sports. But Blair appears especially energized by what he calls his “counter-attack” against religious radicalism.

TONY BLAIR: The big issue of our time actually is this, is trying to deal with this extremism based on a perversion of religion and how you get peaceful coexistence between people of different faiths and cultures.

SEVERSON: How do you?

BLAIR: Well, I think by establishing platforms of understanding between people of different faiths and cultures so that they learn more about each other and through knowledge I think, comes the possibility of peaceful coexistence. I think where there is ignorance there’s usually fear, and where there’s fear there could be conflict.

SEVERSON: Blair serves as the international community’s envoy to the Middle East, a place divided by, among other things, religious extremism.

BLAIR: Now some people take the view, including many people I know, that, well, the best thing is take religion out of everything. But you won’t take religion out of everything. Religion’s there. It’s a fact. Faith is a fact. And many people are motivated to do immense good by their faith.

SEVERSON: The Faith Foundation in central London is fairly buzzing with young do-gooders out to save the world. One program they’re coordinating here is called Face-to-Faith. It’s now in 400 schools around the globe, connecting high school kids of different faiths by video conferencing. Face-to-Faith is now in 20 countries, including the U.S.

RUTH TURNER (CEO of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation): Some of our schools in Utah have had incredibly meaningful encounters talking to young people, for example, in San Francisco, and even within the same country there’s such a diverse set of views about religion.

SEVERSON: Blair has a connection with the poverty stricken nation of Sierra Leone dating back over a decade to the horrible bloodshed of that country’s civil war. He sent in British troops who were successful in quelling the violence but not ending the poverty, the misery, or the death rate from the plague of malaria.

Dr. Josephine Muhairwe is a team leader for another branch of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation operating in third world countries like Sierra Leone.

DR. JOSEPHINE MUHAIRWE: Every third child who dies dies of malaria, and for every four adults who are admitted one of them is admitted because of malaria.

TURNER: So we decided to put together a program that could literally save lives so that religion was saving lives rather than taking them. We train imams and pastors and priests. They give sermons on Friday or Sunday to their congregations, they pick key people from their congregations, we train them, they train others, so it’s a cascade training program, and these multifaith teams of Muslims and Christians go door-to-door in their local communities teaching the families as to how they can protect their children from malaria.

SEVERSON: Sierra Leone has a population of about eight million with only about a hundred doctors to treat them all. But many thousands could be saved with something as simple as a malaria retardant net to cover their beds at night.

It takes more than just specialized nets to beat malaria. It’s education in their proper use and other basic health measures like getting rid of stagnant water. That education now begins with pastors and imams. To back up their message, the Blair teams rely on passages from the Quran and the Bible.

DR. MUHAIRWE: Over 95 percent of people in Sierra Leone are affiliated with either church or mosque. So the networks are wide and they are people of authority within their community, so the people listen to them, so that in itself, the model in itself is quite sustainable.

SEVERSON: Blair says so far the program has reached over 800,000 people in Sierra Leone.

BLAIR: This is not just about promoting action on the anti-malaria front. It’s also about trying to give a sense of faith as something that motivates people to acts of compassion rather than acts of conflict.

SEVERSON: Blair raises money for his foundations through fundraisers like this event in New York. It was organized by Blair team members who are Jewish and Christian. In this case they’re working with Sikhs as well in support of a Sikh-based project in Africa. But most foundation funds come from direct contributions small and large and from himself. He collects huge fees as a consultant to corporations and to countries and can command $200,000 for a speech. Blair’s name has cache, although perhaps not what he imaged as a guitar-playing student who modeled himself after Mick Jagger.

As prime minister his duties included participating in the appointment of Anglican bishops and archbishops. Six months after he left office, Blair converted to Catholicism, his wife’s lifelong religion. He says during his 10 years in office, he prayed about decisions and found solace in church.

(to Tony Blair): I’ve always been fascinated by yours and President Bush’s relationship, and I’ve always had the impression that faith had a lot to do with it, that the two of you were both men of faith, and that that in many ways drove you in your decisions.

BLAIR: We are both people of faith. But your faith can give strength when you’re taking a very difficult decision to try and do what you think is right. In that sense it can be of assistance to you. But it can’t tell you what is right, unfortunately.

SEVERSON: Did you ever talk about your faith, or did you ever pray together when you were making these decisions?

BLAIR: No. No, we didn’t. I mean, we talked about faith more generally, just as two people who know each other well, but no, not in relation to the decisions.

SEVERSON: He says he holds former President George W. Bush in very high regard.

BLAIR: Whether people agree or disagree with him, or with me indeed, is another matter, but as a leader to deal with, and I think you’d find most of the leaders who dealt with president Bush at this time, again, whether they agree with him or disagree with him, found him to be someone of genuine integrity.

SEVERSON: Unfortunately for the former prime minister, many in his own country would not say the same of him. It’s been almost ten years since the Iraq invasion, and still there are newspaper stories with negative headlines about Blair’s role in the Iraq war.

O’SHAUGHNESSY: I will never forget what he’s done, and you would have to hold me over hot coals several times before you get me to vote for him again.

SEVERSON: Hugh O’Shaughnessy is a noted British author on developing-world issues who, like many, felt betrayed when Blair led the country into war.

O’SHAUGHNESSY: People still keep in their minds the way he treated public opinion. He brushed public opinion aside and launched into this illegal, cruel and lawless war.

SEVERSON: Blair continues to believe that history will vindicate him on Iraq and is convinced that his Faith Foundation will help calm a troubled world.

BLAIR: It’s not political ideology that‘s going to disrupt us, but it could well be religious or cultural ideology. And that’s why the concept of people across the faiths working together is so vital and so fundamental to a peaceful and successful twenty-first century.

SEVERSON: And that’s what you mean by religious “counter-attack”?

BLAIR: Correct.

SEVERSON: Whatever his critics say of him, the former prime minister hopes his legacy overall will be that he contributed to world peace, not war.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in London.

FATHER PAOLO DALL’OGLIO (Deir Mar Musa Monastery): I think that we need the protection of civilians that are involved in the civil war in some parts of Syria, especially on the Orontes River and in Damascus. So we need the protection of UN forces, and for this we need the agreement between US and Russia, in the first term. And we really hope that seeking the protection of people, Russia will accept to send, that the United Nations send forces for this. Then we need non-armed forces to help for the democratic transformation of Syria. it is the will of the people. But for this we don’t need an invasion; we just need people to be allowed to build the Syria they want.

The Syrians are suffering, because of the sanctions, economically. Many of them have been obliged to leave their own home. We have, I think, more than 2 million, more than 2 million Syrians are not living in their normal homes, have been obliged to leave. Most of the Syrians are afraid. So many have lost their children. They have people in prison. They have been shot by torturers. So we are a very pained people, and we beg the solidarity of the people of the world and of USA in a very particular way.

The fight for freedom will be transformed in a civil war, and this will create space for all kinds of extremisms and crimes against humanity and disasters. So it is the responsibility of the international community, of the global civil society, to come and take care and assist the transformation of Syria, in collaboration with the Syrian civil society.

Syria is, for example, one of the oldest countries that has received Christianity. All the Christians of the world, they are in a debt to the church of Syria. Syria has been one of the place where Islam has developed its most high qualities. All the Muslims of the world are in debt with Syria. Syria has been the place also for Jewish community. I think the Jewish community of the world should take care of Syria, and Syria has been one of the mothers of civilization, of the Mediterranean civilization and the human civilization, so please take care of Syria.

The monastery is still in Syria, thank God, and they are receiving people and acting for reconciliation and peace, and I think they are a good seed for a good Syria coming soon.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: At eight a.m. each day, the weigh-in begins at a regional health center. Babies are weighed and the girth of their arms is also measured, a color-coded proxy for malnutrition. There’s still the odd green, or normal. Children in the yellow zone are most common. In a few weeks many more will fall, like Amina, into the red. More tests followed to assess her condition before Amina was transferred to the emergency feeding center 10 miles away. It’s near capacity, and the medical supervisor expects they’ll begin pitching expansion tents much earlier this year.

DR. HASSAN AOUADE: In May, our admissions were up more than ten percent from 2011, and that usually means our June and July will be really bad. The peak is usually in August.

DE SAM LAZARO: Ironically, the frequency, the very routineness of such crises could contain the damage in Niger this year, certainly compared to the last famine in 2010.

BISA WILLIAMS (U.S. Ambassador to Niger): This is not like the situation in 2010. I think we are better prepared, and I think it is because the government of President Issoufou really did alert the community very early. They sounded the alarm as far back as October, September of last year.

DE SAM LAZARO: Unlike earlier governments, which denied or downplayed famines, Williams says President Mahamadou Issoufou, elected to office early in 2011, has declared food security a top priority.

PRESIDENT MAHAMADOU ISSOUFOU: I remember the first big drought in 1973-74. Then again in 1984 we had another one. Since then, the time between droughts has been getting shorter, and I believe this is attributable to climate change.

DE SAM LAZARO: The president said he wants to take Niger beyond its chronic food emergencies.

PRESIDENT ISSOUFOU: That’s why we have created the 3N initiative—Nigeriens helping Nigeriens. It’s a structural response to the food crises that are consistently linked with our recurrent droughts. We are convinced that drought does not need to mean famine.

DE SAM LAZARO: A key part of the 3N program is to expand a greening initiative that began two decades ago. This former French colony is land-locked. The Sahara lies in the north, and it has steadily crept south, turning farmland—arid to begin with—into desert. International aid groups like World Vision have led the effort, sharing the president’s goal of going beyond humanitarian aid.

MICHEL DIATTA (World Vision): If you see the humanitarian response, it just come and respond to a need. But the long-term programming is something that really matters for World Vision. That is why FMNR is one of these initiatives that is mainstream in all of our programs.

DE SAM LAZARO: FMNR stands for Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration. It begins on barren patches like these, where World Vision and others have launched temporary employment projects.

ABDOULAYE SALEY: They give us food to dig these holes. We get four kilos of maize and six kilos of beans. This land is very dry, and they told us it will have trees. We can have better crops and fodder for our animals.

DE SAM LAZARO: The shallow, half-moon shaped depressions they’re digging trap rain water and tree seeds. It’s hard to imagine anything sprouting in such conditions. But in non-drought years there’s just enough rain to transform the land, and it’s already happened in a wide swath of southern Niger.

CHRIS REIJ: If you look around you, not a single tree that you see here has been planted. It’s all coming from seed stock in the soil, or coming from trees that were cut in the past, and the root system is still alive, and given chance to emerge, it will grow, or from seeds from the manure that livestock deposited here.

DE SAM LAZARO: The trees have kept desert sand storms at bay and returned land to productivity, says Chris Reij, a Dutch scientist who has worked in this region since the 1970s.

(speaking to Chris Reij): So this is a crop, it doesn’t look like much because it looks like it’s coming out of a desert.

REIJ: This is millet, which is one of the main crops here. And it has just been sown probably two weeks ago. But in three months time, it will be about one and a half to two meters high, and this whole field will be lush green.

DE SAM LAZARO: In the old days he says farmers used to clear their fields of trees or sapling. Under colonial laws, trees were state property, seen as a timber or forestry resources. Drought and rapid population growth added to the cutting, creating a virtual desert visible in this 1975 U.S. Geological Survey satellite picture.

World Vision Video: The leaves on the soil will protect the crop from drought. It will hold the moisture in the soil. Too easy!

DE SAM LAZARO: Chris Reij and a colleague, Tony Rinaudo, began championing agroforestry and a model for protecting trees on farmland that they saw practiced by a farmer in Burkina Faso, Niger’s western neighbor. Their work was picked up, among others, by World Vision, which produced this video. Farmers like Sakina Mati were employed to spread the word.

SAKINA MATI: We began using this technique in 2006, and it has worked well for us.

DE SAM LAZARO: One of the key goals was to dispel a commonly held notion that the payback is years away.

REIJ: Even in the first year you need to start pruning. The tree develops a trunk and starts developing a canopy, so even in the first year you already have some benefits—the leaves and some twigs that women can use as firewood in the kitchen. And by year two or three, certain trees will be taller than you and me.

DE SAM LAZARO: The leaves form livestock fodder and trap moisture in the soil. Improved soil fertility can mean better harvests, and already some villages have surpluses.

The surpluses have been gathered into a grain bank in Dansaga and about 20 other villages that are part of one aid group’s pilot project. Drought took a severe toll on the harvest last year, they say. But it hasn’t translated to famine.

WOMAN: The grain bank is helping us a lot. It is keeping our children fed until the harvest comes in.

REIJ: In a sea of difficulty, we find here examples where a surplus, a grain surplus, has been produced in the drought year 2011.

DE SAM LAZARO: Reij says Niger could some day become self-sufficient in food if villages like this are replicated on a large scale. But that “sea of difficulty” makes it daunting. Experts say it will require education and family planning. Literacy is just 30 percent, and the average woman bears seven children—a rate that will triple Niger’s population of 16 million by 2050, offsetting any gains in food production.

Then there are immediate, pressing needs of children like Amina. U.S. Ambassador Williams is optimistic Niger can make progress over the long term—also that a catastrophe can be avoided from this year’s famine. But she says it won’t be easy.

U.S. AMBASSADOR BISA WILLIAMS: There are at least 15 percent of children under two that are really, really hungry, so you are right, there is no magic bullet. It’s not—this is not something that has a quick fix to it. Development by its nature is a long-term process.

DE SAM LAZARO: For his part, President Issoufou says he’s acutely aware of Niger’s chronic neediness and of so-called donor fatigue.

PRESIDENT ISSOUFOU: I understand why donors would be tired of supporting our population. We ourselves are tired of needing the help, of not being able to feed our own people. For us in Niger, it’s a matter of shame not to be able to feed our children. That’s why we say: Please, don’t give us fish to eat. Teach us to fish for ourselves.

DE SAM LAZARO: Niger does have a head start. Remember the 1970s satellite picture? This one is from 2005. By Chris Reij’s count, Niger has grown 200 million trees over the past two decades—the only country in Africa to have actually added forest cover in the period.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Niamey, Niger.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: At the height of last year’s devastating famine in the Horn of Africa, Rajiv Shah, administrator of the US Agency for International Development, visited a refugee camp in Kenya. There were thousands of families who had walked for days to escape starvation in Somalia. He says one woman’s story particularly touched him.

DR. RAJIV SHAH (Administrator, US Agency for International Development): Along the way, she literally couldn’t continue to carry both of her kids, and she had to make this gut wrenching choice about which child she would carry to safety and which one she would leave behind, and that’s the kind of decision that no mother should ever have to make.

LAWTON: Shah says encounters like that bolster his conviction that the US has a moral obligation to help ease suffering around the world. It’s an obligation, he says, that’s also in America’s strategic interest.

SHAH: We’re a nation based on moral values, and when we express those values to communities around the world, we’re showing them an America that is an optimistic America, an inclusive America, and a country with whom they want to partner and not fight.

LAWTON: Shah believes faith-based groups can—and should—be key partners in the US government’s humanitarian efforts.

SHAH: We want to do our work, which is about protecting people who are vulnerable around the world and expanding the reach of human dignity, as broadly as possible. and often it is communities of faith, faith-based organizations, that are there working when the rest of the world has forgotten about people who have no other place to turn.

LAWTON: At 38, Shah is one of the Obama administration’s youngest top-ranking officials. He is Hindu and says his interest in humanitarian issues was first fostered by his parents, who immigrated to the US from India.

SHAH: When I was seven or eight years old, I don’t remember exactly when, I went to visit India, and they took me through slum communities just so I could see how people lived. And I grew up in suburban Detroit. I’d never been exposed to that before. And when you see other kids your age, when you’re seven or eight years old, living in entirely different circumstances, it affects you in a very profound way, and it has led to a constant motivation I’ve had.

LAWTON: Shah took over at USAID on January 7, 2010, just five days before the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti. He was immediately pulled into managing what would become the largest humanitarian response in history. After the quake, USAID worked closely with several faith-based organizations to provide food and shelter. Shah says he saw firsthand the effectiveness of those groups.

SHAH: Partners like World Vision or Catholic Relief Services that take the time to engage with communities they’re trying to serve, that are willing to be there for the long run, that work in partnership and cooperation with governments so that they are coordinating their efforts and getting the most out of what we—the investments we make.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA (delivering speech): I want to acknowledge one particular member of my administration who I’m extraordinarily proud of and does not get much credit, and that is USAID Administrator Dr. Raj Shah, who is doing great work with faith leaders. Where’s Raj? Where is he? There he is, right there.

LAWTON: Under Shah’s leadership, the Obama administration has increased its partnerships with religious groups by more than 50 percent. According to Shah, USAID now has 115 different partnerships with organizations of faith around the world, and he hopes to expand that even further.

LAWTON: What is it that faith groups bring to the table in these partnerships?

SHAH: Well, I think it’s a core motivation that’s driven by a desire to get results. Organizations that are committed to the outcomes, that measure results, that ensure that scarce taxpayer dollars are in fact benefiting those who are most vulnerable often are communities of faith, and we want to work with them to achieve those results.

LAWTON: Government partnerships with faith groups have been controversial. Some critics worry about the US being tied to the religious mission of a particular group or taxpayer money being used for explicitly religious activities, such as evangelizing.

SHAH: Those are not activities we support. You know, we have a very clear set of defined outcomes and results that we’re willing to finance and that we believe we can support, and, you know, frankly, if you look at the broad range of what faith community groups are doing around the world, it’s actually service.

LAWTON: Another controversial partner has been the military. Some nongovernmental groups have criticized the growing role of the US military in disaster relief, especially in areas where the US has been at war. But Shah says it can work. He cites Haiti as a model.

SHAH: Many of our NGO partners and others who had previously been sometimes nervous about working with the military came back and said, wow, they were, they were great to work with, they were so responsive to our needs and the needs of local communities and they were really there to serve. And I’m just very proud of the way American men and women in the armed services conducted themselves in Haiti, and they made us all proud.

LAWTON: Is there a concern, though, about the perception of the US humanitarian arm too linked with the military side?

SHAH: I don’t think we should be concerned about perceptions. I think we should be concerned about results and outcomes, and at times of crisis we will turn to whomever we can, whenever we can, to help save lives and protect people.

LAWTON: Shah says in an era of budget cutting, US faith leaders from across the religious and political spectrum have played an important role lobbying Congress to keep funding for programs that help the world’s poor.

SHAH: When people see that great coming together, it reminds us all that on some basic moral issues, we can stand together even in sometimes partisan environments.

LAWTON: But he admits in the current climate, it can be difficult to make the argument to maintain foreign aid funding, even though it represents less than one percent of the federal budget.

SHAH: At the end of the day when you ask Americans what we should be spending abroad, they’ll say about 10 percent of the budget. Unfortunately they believe we spend 20 percent and so we have a lot to do to communicate the fact that this is a relatively small investment.

LAWTON: Shah says resources must always be allocated for humanitarian disasters. But he says the administration wants to put a new focus on long-term initiatives as well.

SHAH: It turns out that for about a tenth the cost, somewhere between one-eighth and one-tenth the cost of feeding someone for a year, you can help invest in their ability to move themselves out of poverty.

LAWTON: And he says the government is well aware that communities of faith have vast potential resources that can be enlisted in the battle.

SHAH: There are 330,000 congregations in this country that represent–I think the top ten alone reach more than 100 million people. You know, if we could just reach a small fraction of that community, that’s our vision of success.

LAWTON: I’m Kim Lawton in Washington.