Welcome to the Capital of Compassion

The next time you brave Interstate Five traffic between Portland and Seattle think about this: you are traveling a highway linking more organizations - representing more assets focused on ending poverty and human misery - than anywhere else. You are, in effect, on a highway of hope to the capital of compassion. The sum total impact of these organizations makes our region the world leader in compassionate action to those in need. Added to that are local institutions and companies involved in public health and medical research on diseases – the afflictions that rob people of hope and aspiration – which together with outreach/action organizations create synergies unique to Seattle, the likes of which cannot be found anywhere else on this planet. A notable example blending the distinction between research and aid is PATH, located next to the Ballard Bridge – where cutting edge medical research is targeted for maximum effectiveness on behalf of the most poor. On their board of directors, alongside leading international health researchers, is Steve Davis – CEO of Corbis. His involvement illustrates the essential difference which contrasts strategies emanating from the major world capitals and Seattle – it is folks like Steve Davis, who are entrepreneurial and know how to read a balance sheet – that are defining the “Seattle difference” in outreach on global issues.

In Oregon, groups with decades of experience – Mercy Corps and Northwest Medical Teams International the largest among them, annually bring almost $500 million combined to relief and medical outreach. Federal Way’s World Vision may very well become the largest non-government organization (NGO) of all, this year closing in on the $1 billion annual threshold. Global Partnerships, led by Magnolia’s Bill Clapp – and World Concern in Shoreline, round out some of the most notable organizations in our midst. Magnolia-based Sister Schools is added to that group of fledgling organizations working to leverage sustainable development strategies with regard to education in Africa. In the final analysis, much of the effectiveness of these organizations will be delivered by breakthrough strategies exemplified by PATH and the Grameen Technology Center in Seattle, part of the Washington DC based Grameen Foundation USA.

To that is added the service club Rotary International, and their largest single group – known as downtown’s “Seattle Four” – that have made global eradication of polio a centennial goal for the organization. That might be enough to merit the title as Capital of Compassion – but overarching everything is a family compared to the Medici Empire of the Renaissance and Enlightenment Eras: Bill & Melinda Gates and their nonprofit foundation. If all of this were a great chemistry experiment, the Gates Foundation would be both catalyst and reagent in one – making things happen with a view toward expansive synergies. But the world is long-past the need for experiment: the outcomes will determine prognosis for overall health of this planet in the twenty first century.

The Medici family, as some of the first grand capitalists of Europe – created splendor that awes visitors to Florence, Italy to this very day. As commoners pioneering techniques of finance and accounting – they accumulated wealth in excess of many royals of the time. Over the generations they came to be seen as royals themselves.

The only accurate comparison between la familia Gates and Medici is that they acquired unprecedented wealth – quickly. Though many a business book author has stretched the comparison beyond reason - this much is true – their successes were unprecedented for the times they lived in. And, of course, their shared status as subjects of enduring fascination – which is a burden I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

There is a remarkable difference between them, of course. And it is a difference with a powerful symbol, born of the wish of the Gates Foundation’s founders to give away the vast portion of their wealth in their own lifetimes. That is the key. That they have targeted those most in need around the world should get your attention. Still, they cannot have any success in a vacuum – and they know it. Money alone does not solve problems.

In order to truly understand the special status of our region because of these organizations, it is important to understand what they have documented: hope is a motivator. Ask veterans in developing world relief and aid work what can happen when people have health care and nutrition: opportunity for a new focus upon adding quality to their family’s lives through education – and ditching the eons-old trap of having children as a form of life insurance. Meaning, if you might survive long enough to be elderly, the only reasonable plan would be to have enough children first that might survive long enough to take care of you. This creates a cycle of poverty and over-expanding population beyond the economic or environmental carrying capacity of the developing world. In turn this has fed cycles of famine and epidemic. Such has been the way of human history. Until now.

The world-focused organizations of our region have a common goal: to create a new paradigm. It is a realization long in the making. When Franklin Roosevelt gave the State of the Union address to Congress in January 1941, our nation was about to be thrust into a massive military conflict on many fronts around the world – so horrible that almost 300,000 Americans would lose their lives. Yet against that backdrop Roosevelt set forth a bold vision for our planet, a speech which has come to be known as “The Four Freedoms”:

In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world
founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression –everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way-- everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants - everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no
nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any
neighbor - anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.

In many ways the people of all the world-focused organizations of our region, with their unprecedented resources and inter-weaving goals, together comprise the staff of a visionary former president. In other ways as well, the only unrealized component for success of these groups is you. All of this work and all of the money - will have been wasted if people’s hearts won’t be changed. In the end, it is people’s hearts which are the catalysts – the change agents determining success or failure on this small blue planet. As Yahoo! Executive Tim Sanders says in his bestselling book of the same title: “Love is the Killer App.”

By your participation in the consortium of caring represented by these diverse groups with common goals, there is a chance – still only a chance - for inward reflection on that Fourth Freedom to become outward action. In order for this to happen, you and I are all front-line leaders – our community simply must take hold of these values and imbue them as the very fabric of our shared experience. I invite your thoughts. The world relies on our actions.