Steve Haley's blog

I haven’t always worked for Mercy Corps. Just before I joined the organization for a job in Iraq, I was studying mathematics in Italy. Before that, I was a captain in the U.S. Army after graduating from West Point. I guess you could say I jump around a little — which could explain why strange things happen to me, but today…

So backtrack, oh, 12 years or so. To say I was lucky with my first assignment in the army is an understatement — Vicenza, Italy. I had a great group of friends for my lieutenant years:Rich, Emily, Matt, Ahmed and Gavin, among a number of others. What an amazing time of exploring Europe and life together: road trips, ski trips, beach trips and a little bit of work in between.

But whether skiing in the Alps, drinking good Italian wine or doing intense training rotations in Germany, there was always time for a little philosophizing and storytelling. The bonds you develop, not just as soldiers together, but also as a group living far from your homes, is almost like family.

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It was a particularly active night in Misrata. Windy, cloudy and every 15 minutes or so....boom!

We were too far from the city centre to feel the blasts, but remembering each time that the blast was on or next to someone's house is difficult...

Silence. The bombardment stopped.

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My first long boat trip. I normally don't suffer from motion sickness but, on this trip, I was a little nervous. Fifteen hours and much work to be done on the boat — then even more work once we hit the ground.

I didn't want to take any chances, especially when I started feeling my head get a little heavy. I was also a little afraid from the stories I heard of the last return trip: 1,100 people on the boat and everyone who wasn't sick from the motion was sick from those that did get sick (blogs are supposed to be descriptive, but I'll avoid it here).

That’s about the most lighthearted opening possible for a blog about a place like Misrata, Libya. Misrata is, at the same time, the front line and the last line in an intense conflict. It is the last remaining city in the west of Libya actively fighting the Gaddafi regime. The people are literally backed in a corner on the sea, fully aware that they have no where to run.

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"...go down in the city, and the sun shines on the bay..."

Darkness. What? Huh? Where am I?

In a van. On my way to Libya. I fell asleep.

What's that sound? Ah, my cell phone.

Country code 88?

Satellite phone. Fadl!

"Hey man, I made it."

Breathe.

My colleague Fadl had been on a joint humanitarian mission to Misrata — the sieged city in western Libya where most agree the people have the greatest need, but humanitarians have been unable to access. Fadl had gotten on a boat 36 hours before together with the International Organisation for Migration and the Libyan Red Crescent to deliver humanitarian assistance and evacuate people stranded by the fighting.

It was a more uncertain situation that I'm used to sending someone into, and while we did everything possible to prepare for every contingency, hearing his voice and knowing he was back in international waters made me, well, breathe easier.

Can't wait to see him tonight and get his assessments.

After I give him a hug!

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Editor's Note: "Tomorrow's Leaders" is a four-year scholarship programme that provides young people from around the Middle East and North Africa an opportunity to study in a top Arab university while developing their leadership skills through community service and exchanges. Mercy Corps, with the help of the Qatar Foundation, is providing skills training and leadership experience opportunities to supplement their development. Fadl Moukadem, a Mercy Corps Project Officer from Tripoli, Lebanon, is traveling with Country Director Steve Haley, author of this blog entry.

Mercy Corps' team in Libya drives across the desert during their ongoing humanitarian assessment. Photo: Steve Haley/Mercy Corps

Hey Tomorrow's Leaders!

I hope all is well in Beirut and Byblos, as well as for your families in your home countries...

I rarely get to spend much time with individual programmes, but I had planned to spend a lot with all of you. Your energy and your purpose is the stuff dreams are made of for people like me — who grew up far from history, and far from the events of the world.

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Amazing that at Mercy Corps, despite being a diverse group of people scattered around the world, we come up with some remarkably similar ideas.

Take our founder Dan O’Neill’s idea of raising money for Mercy Corps by bypassing a few haircuts. (By the way Dan, I go to something called a "barber." Costs me £9, and I get every penny’s worth.)

Well, I decided to raise money in a similar fashion but perhaps a little more extreme.

We graciously and vehemently appreciate the generosity of our private donors who allow us to operate effectively and efficiently on a wide range of programmes. Often however, here in the field we’re pursuing government grants for very particular programmes. Occasionally, various donor countries will release a “call” that lines up with our mission and we decide to submit a proposal. When it happens, life stops.

Going out stops.

Working out stops.

Dinner outside the office stops.

Thoughts about anything and anyone else stops (as most of my friends and family can attest to – sorry everyone!!)

Usually they give us 4-6 weeks to write our proposals. In early May, the U.S. government, through USAID, released a request for applications (commonly referred to as “dropping an RFA”) for a large education programme in Lebanon, and for me ... grooming stopped.

I challenged myself to put all other things in my life aside, including shaving. My colleagues constant mocking was simply fuel to keep burning away at this proposal. A daily reminder that nothing was more important than submitting the best proposal possible … as it got closer it was more like an hourly reminder.

I also think there was an intimidation factor for the other fine organisations submitting proposals: “Wow, Steve is really taking this seriously!” Oddly enough, 17 years ago as a junior at Tualatin High School outside of Portland, I tried the opposite tactic at the Oregon High School Swimming Championship by shaving my whole body (including my head) – not sure which was worse.

Well, we submitted the proposal today, so I get to finally remove my hairy face covering, but I thought I’d share it before it comes off.

Out of my ordeal however I did get another idea for a possible future fundraiser – because if I had a nickel for every time someone told me to shave in the past two months, I’d easily have surpassed Dan’s £24 haircut.

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After 10 years outside of the United States, I don’t often think about U.S. holidays — to me “Labour Day” is May 1st — but occasionally I get reminders of holidays from friends and family. Such as the occasional reminder of “Happy Birthday” or the more common “You forgot my birthday.”

However I also get the semi-annual reminders of a previous life from a wide variety of friends and family (Veterans Day and Memorial Day). Yes, I am actually a veteran — and obviously one of the lucky ones to be sitting here writing. We choose Memorial Day to remember the other ones — most whom would probably have been more impassioned and eloquent when describing their friends and colleagues and comrades who gave the ultimate sacrifice for what they believe in.

Yesterday in my regular online searches of Lebanese ideas, I found an old (albeit very politically motivated) blog entry that I thought made a good point about remembering the ones we’ve lost. Why do we remember certain martyrs with shrines and huge memorials, and others fade quickly into obscurity for anyone except those that were close to them in life? If they are lucky, they might get a Facebook page dedicated to them where their family and closest friends will be the only ones to visit and remember them.

Then there are those who are not forgotten but whose losses we don’t commemorate because WE don’t believe in what THEY died for. We pray for the souls of the ones we lost “on our side” but soldiers of all battles and beliefs deserve the same prayers and thoughts.

So this Memorial Day, I’d challenge everyone to a simple task of remembrance…

1. Go to a Memorial Day website (for example CNN’s page about casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq — or one dedicated to 'your' martyrs).
2. Find one name of a young man or woman who doesn’t have a picture listed for them.
3. Search Facebook for their memorial page.
4. Leave a message for their family.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 for someone who died for a cause you don’t believe in.

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I just read one of my favorite expat blogs, in which a young woman described her love affair with airports — their smell, their energy, the sense of change, of unknown beyond. The ultimate global crossroads.

While flying back to Beirut today, I realized that my heart didn’t skip a beat as far as airports were concerned.

I didn’t embrace you as I walked through customs, or, as I stood in line far too long behind an annoying tour group.

I didn’t think that my grande caramel macchiato tasted better with you than it does in any other Starbucks.

I didn’t wander the whisky counter at the duty free (just to look of course).

I didn’t stand up taller when I saw you thinking, ‘I’ll be in a different country soon!’

But it’s not my fault, Airport, you no longer give me that sense that I’m on my way to an amazing journey… no, you give me FOUR pat downs prior to my completely average macchiato (one of which was far too personal). You really have lost that lovin’ feeling.

Maybe it’s no one’s fault. Maybe we’ve just gotten to that point in our relationship where the passion is gone — it happens. I’ve seen you 13 times this month. I need my space – you’re crowding me.

It’s become utilitarian – a partnership. I know my life is better with you in it, but I have to admit that, today, I had impure thoughts about a train station. (And why can’t this region calm long enough to build a few?)

The thing is, I envy this young woman and the excitement she still gets from you. I envy that she can still enjoy your very presence, while I keep one hand on my Netbook and one on my Blackberry. I frantically look for a connection, only to remember that I am more efficient when not connected — and wish I had turned off Skype before connecting. I type while I walk — I’m now one of those people that other people blog about while "people-watching" and thinking "I wonder if his report is really so important."

Well, that young female blogger in her first year as an expatriate — a 23-year-old freshman of sorts. It’s puppy love. I’ll ask her to blog about you again in 10 years — we’ll see if she still feels the same.

Luckily I still have my work to keep my passion alive as my relationship with airports comes to a close.

We can still be friends.

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When we think of the number of governments deciding on the future of the world’s economy, I’ll vote more is better (i.e. G-20 is better than G-8 is better than G-1). When it comes to G-force, it is entirely situational. If you are on a rollercoaster at Six Flags, then more is better, but if you are on my plane that just took off from Guatemala City, more G’s was not so fun.

However, having just taken part in Mercy Corps’ Good Governance Gathering (G-3) in Guatemala, I think three was the ideal number. So what did we talk about at the three-day “G-3,” in a country with 33 volcanoes, three of which are active? (I read Dan Brown’s last conspiracy book on my flight, by the way.)

Led by our fearless facilitator, Alisa Oyler, a small mixed group of professionals (plus me) tackled the core issues about Mercy Corps’ history in good governance work (turns out it a lot more than even our group had expected!), and — more importantly for an innovative organisation — we wrestled with the future of good governance programming.

The lava on Pacaya volcano was hot, but not as hot as the Good Governance Gathering! Photo: Mercy Corps

Governance has a wide swath of definitions, but centers around the process by which decisions are made in an organisation or government. Good governance generally implies — among other things — a transparent, accountable and participatory process.

Ruth Allen, Mercy Corps’ good governance guru, went home with a plethora of notes to fine tune a framework which will be included in the forthcoming Good Governance Guidebook. If the Guidebook is anything like Ruth and her team’s last outing (the Guide to Community Mobilization Programming), then it will dramatically help with our organisational learning, centered around good governance programmes.

More than anything, the G-3 gave us the opportunity for some team building among this community of practice within Mercy Corps, and a chance to demonstrate how seriously we take good governance by sending bigwigs like Bill Farrell and Jim White — who are both Mercy Corps Vice-Presidents — to participate. As much as I’m an advocate of online communication, nothing beats some face-to-face storytelling to really learn our trade.

(And, as for storytelling, you might want to stay tuned for an upcoming blog entry entitled “Bill and Jim’s Excellent Adventures,” about their uncanny knack to be at the location of history as it unfolds.)

Pop quiz: How many G’s were in this blog entry?

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I hate microphones. It generally means I am speaking to so many people that it too impersonal or too important.

My most recent adventure with a microphone was a conference about transparency and accountability, primarily in the private sector — a major obstacle to development in Lebanon. Mercy Corps’ Vision for Change emphasizes the requirement that public, private and civil society sectors work together for communities to develop into more secure, just, and productive societies. Nowhere could this be more true than in Lebanon, where a strong business community and struggling central government make corporate buy-in to change essential. The unfortunate reality of Lebanon is that its system of corruption actually functions, but also functions to exclude a large number of the nation’s population from the opportunities of its active and vibrant enterprises.

Fouad Zmokhol (right) gave a really good speech at the Transparency and Accountability conference we co-sponsored. As you can tell by the look on my face, it was a little intimidating to follow his talk. Photo: Mercy Corps Lebanon

So comes the big question — how do you convince those who have been successful in the existing system that it is in their interest to change the system? That’s exactly what we tried to do in coordination with the American Lebanese Chamber of Commerce with a conference on Transparency and Accountability: Key Factors in Development.

My role along with my co-panelist, Fouad Zmokhol, was to give examples of success stories where civil society and private sector tackled corruption together. Mr. Zmokhol, a successful Lebanese businessman and active board member of the Lebanese Transparency Association, started us off with the hard truth — there are no success stories.

We both brought some optimism to the bleak past however, with the idea that the formula for success is out there somewhere — and our collective minds will find it, but in order for a sustainable programme to work, civil society organisations and for-profit businesses need to look for areas of mission convergence. That means we need to find a programme that is not only mutually beneficial to both partners, but also meets the social mission of the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the profit mission of the company.

Impossible? Not really.

Our Guatemala team found an innovative way to connect small farmers to a huge market in collaboration with mega-store Walmart while providing Walmart to a more efficient local source of produce. Locally, here in Lebanon, we designed a (yet unfunded) programme in coordination with local businesses, including HSBC Bank, which would expand our current programme for integrating people with disabilities into the job market through directed job training programmes. Our mission of greater inclusion meets human resources managers’ mission of finding qualified new team members.

What the successful model will be for collaboration on transparency will be, I don’t know — but the conference gave all of the parties interested in finding a solution the chance to meet and begin to exchange ideas. And, with people like Fouad Zmokhol looking for answers with Mercy Corps, I have no doubt we’ll find it.

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