A Discussion with Dan Starrett, Executive Director, Salvation Army World Service Office, United States

February 12, 2009

Background: Inspired as a child by the “heart to God, hand to man” values of the Salvation Army, Daniel Starrett has been working for 36 years in the Army, and is now the executive director of the organization's World Service Office in the United States. He spoke of the Army's founding in the early days of the industrial revolution in the UK, and explained the logic behind the organization's “military” structure. The Salvation Army sees healthy families as the building blocks of society, and Starrett explained how this belief is reflected in the Army's programming. He talked about the Army's theory of development, which holds that people should be empowered to identify and meet their own needs.

The Salvation Army is a unique and very global institution. Can you, for a start, tell us about how you came to work there?

It's a long story! I grew up in Las Vegas. One day, I remember well, my next door neighbor knocked on our door and asked, “Do you want to send the kids to camp?” So we went and the camp was a summer program that the Salvation Army ran for kids. I just fell in love with how the Salvation Army worked with kids and ran those camps. It was the unique marriage of a strong theology and also a strong social work aspect: “heart to God, hand to man.” I thought, “Here are people with a spiritual commitment first of all, and then a real concern for the practical needs of the people.” I joined the Army after my studies, which were mostly in business administration.

I have now been an officer in the Salvation Army for 36 years. I started out as a church pastor for 16 and a half years. I then spent 12 and a half years doing alcohol and drug work in U.S., and I had responsibility for all of the Salvation Army thrift stores in the organization's western territory (one of the four regions in the United States). In 2002, I was assigned to do business development with different Salvation Army corps around the world, which I did for three and a half years, based in London, England. Throughout, I worked with my wife on the mission.

And then in January 2006 I was assigned to SAWSO, the Salvation Army World Service Office.

The Salvation Army seems almost omnipresent in some places. Can you tell us a little about the organization's history?

The Salvation Army started in London in 1865, which means we are in our one hundred and forty-third year. Our international headquarters remain in London, and the U.S. National Headquarters are in Virginia. The Salvation Army is a church, with its own religious doctrine, somewhat along the same lines as the Nazarenes or the Free Methodists. Worldwide, there are 3.5 million members of the church and about 35,000 Salvation Army officers.

How is the Salvation Army structured?

The Salvation Army works in four major regions in the U.S.: east, with headquarters in New York; central, out of Chicago; south, based out of Atlanta; and west, out of Los Angeles.

We use our military formation to give us structure and focus. Internationally, the Salvation Army is broken down into territories, which usually correspond to countries, although there are some countries that contain more than one territory. Territories are broken down into divisions, which are further broken down into local corps. SAWSO works through the territorial and divisional offices, which assigns us to work with a local corps. We come and we say, “How can we help you meet the needs of the people around you?”

What is SAWSO, and how does it relate to the broader Salvation Army?

In the early 1970s, there was a decision that the Salvation Army needed a more systematic way to work more with the U.S. federal government and also to do more development work around the world. And so SAWSO was started as a separate corporation to enable us to be able to contract with foundations and the U.S. government. I should note, though, that long before SAWSO was founded, the Salvation Army had been doing missionary work worldwide. SAWSO allowed the Salvation Army to do this kind of work while getting support from foundations and governments to do so.

SAWSO works in seven core areas: HIV/AIDS; maternal and child health; women's literacy; prevention of human trafficking; disaster relief; food, water, and sanitation; and education. Our major goal is to work with Salvation Army corps in different countries around the world as they reach out to their communities. We look for opportunities where can we marry SAWSO resources and expertise with the need and presence of the Salvation Army on the ground.

Disaster is a major part of our work, though it comes and goes based on events. At the moment it's relatively quiet, though it still represents about 60 percent of the work that we do. We supported flood victims in Indonesia and earthquake victims in Pakistan.

SAWSO has 17 people on our staff, and seven of those have responsibilities that are directly related to those seven areas I just mentioned and have a master's degree in a relevant field. We also have some field employees.

How is SAWSO's work funded?

Most of the time, governments and foundations will approach us, and say, “This is what we want to do, and this is where we want to do it.” You hope that the donor's wishes and the needs of the Salvation Army match each other, that they overlap; sometimes that takes some discussion. Our largest institutional funder is USAID, and then mostly we are funded by private foundations of varying size. SAWSO doesn't do any general fundraising in the U.S. for international work; all the U.S. fundraising that you see (the Christmas fund-raising with bells, for example) is for projects in the U.S.

How does SAWSO work with Salvation Army corps in any given country?

Our goal is always to support them. They were there before we arrived, and they'll be there after we leave. We want to strengthen their capacity, build their organization and work with them.

It is a tremendous advantage to be able to work with such a broad network. When SAWSO goes into a country, there is already a Salvation Army organizational structure in existence. They have all the contacts and we can get in very quickly, so we don't have to build an organizational infrastructure from scratch.

While SAWSO works primarily with the Salvation Army, our goal is that we don't exclusively work for the Salvation Army. We have had partnerships with World Vision, Save the Children, Food for the Hungry International, Compassion International, and others. They contract with us in part because of the extent of the Salvation Army network. In Zambia, there's an HIV/AIDS and community health workers program called RAPIDS, with World Vision as the lead organization. There are six other groups providing on-the-ground service, and we are one of them.

Is shelter and housing an important part of the Army's work?

A concern for shelter is in the credo of the Salvation Army. You can go back 100 years or more and see that reflected in our work. Originally the Salvation Army worked with the poor in rural England; “slum sisters” would go into tenements and dilapidated housing and clean up and teach people about hygiene and sanitation. We realized from that early point that if clean, decent housing was in place, other things would come together, also. And besides that, people deserve decent shelter. I believe that, the Salvation Army believes that, very strongly. You can't have a cohesive family unit without a stable roof over your head.

Homeownership is, we feel, an important part of the equation, and a good goal to work towards. You have to be careful, though, because you don't want people borrowing too much money against their land or other assets, and get into a vicious cycle if they miss a payment. But if it's structured properly then home ownership really helps entire communities be able to afford their village. Housing provides a sense of stability and location for individuals, families, and communities. When people have proper and decent housing, disease goes down, education goes up, and incomes go up. Decent housing can be a keystone for many, many other key indicators. I think housing has to be, first of all, culturally sensitive. I think you have to find out what style of housing works for that culture and what those people can afford. We're always learning new ways in which contexts vary. In one place, as we were hooking water up to the house, some people asked us not to hook them up, because they couldn't afford the water. So what we did was to make sure that all of the mechanisms were there so that, in the future, if that family wanted running water, they could have it, but they wouldn't incur any obligation in the present.

We don't have a handbook. Each of our shelter programs is different. In the context of emergencies, SPHERE standards are very helpful, however, because we're just trying to construct the safest, most efficient, and useful structures possible, for short-term usage. In longer term situations, our housing programs begin with conversations. We ask people how they see their future, and what kind of housing will help them get to their goals. We do neighborhood assessments, to make sure that what we're building contributes to the area as a whole. We always make sure that housing programs consider the special needs of orphans, women, and vulnerable children.

Can you tell us about some of SAWSO's specific shelter experiences?

When the tsunami hit, the Salvation Army was already in Indonesia. The Islamic leaders allowed other organizations to come in. We assigned officers to work with the local government and the displaced people themselves to see what the needs were. We think we want and need are two different issues. The government said, “Put the houses over there.” But we didn't think it was the right spot, so we worked on that. Then we began to find contractors large enough to do the job, build the roads, and really build an entire subdivision. It was basically a turnkey operation. Working with Caritas, Islamic Relief, and CRS, we built 10,000 houses in this new community.

The Sri Lanka experience was a bit different. Some people there owned their own lots, and we would help those people to rebuild themselves. However, 95 percent did not have the capacity to rebuild the homes themselves. Significant parts of the tsunami that hit on the eastern shore, where there weren't a lot of NGOs there. So we tried to help where we could; we would give an initial down payment on the rebuilding.

What's the financial arrangement with the people who live in the homes?

In almost all cases, we pay for the construction and then at completion hand the house over free and clear. There's no financial contribution whatsoever from the recipient. The only condition we have there is that we hold the lease for three years, because we were concerned about people abusing the system for profit by immediately selling the place we'd just built.

How is the Salvation Army changing? What direction do you see it taking?

I think something that's very interesting is that the basic needs of people still exist. Yet, it seems that how we serve them has to be couched in ever-fancier terms. But let me tell you—there are still hungry men in the U.S. There are fundamental decent shelter and housing issues in the U.S. not dissimilar to what you find in international settings. We discovered a lot of that doing Katrina work in the South. Internationally, children are still dying from very basic diseases, and gender inequality persists. The point I am trying to make is that there are ways in which we are changing, but we are strongly maintaining our focus on the most essential basic needs of the people.

We recognize that using computer programs for monitoring and evaluation and statistical analysis of what we do will help us. But while we are trying to be modern, we've got to be careful we don't impose change on people, as though machines and technology are the answer.

One example of this, of how there is a strong desire in people for the basic elements of community and family, even in the face of all of this change, came out in India. We would go to communities and say, “We're not here to offer you anything. We're here to listen to you.” And the people said, “We want stuff. We don't need you to listen.”

And so we left, because we think there are some other groups that can do that, that can provide those things. We left, only to have, two or three months later, the community ask us back, to say, “Let's talk.” We think community conversation and linking people with similar issues together is so essential. We are absolutely convinced that people know how to address their own problems, that they will come to solutions. We see ourselves as sitting down in community conversation, and saying, “How can we work with you to address what you think needs to be done?” One good way to see how we work is the example of a simple well. We wouldn't put a well in without a substantial amount of work in preparation. If the community tells us, “We need a well,” then we reply by saying, “OK, we're willing to work with that. But we think we have three, six, eight months of work to do beforehand. We need to answer the questions: Where should it go? Who will be the leaders? How will it be managed?” We consider the process of community consultation and development to be essential. We want to be sure that we listen more than we give stuff.

I hope we learn from the mistakes we've made in the past. I hope we recognize what didn't work, how can we move on and do something that will. I think we have a great deal to learn from proper community work overseas. What we're trying to do now is to replicate that community work back in the U.S. Probably one of the destructive things of home ownership is that a person's home becomes a castle, and you start to lose some of the community-level texture. We think it's valuable to ask people, whether abroad or in the U.S., “How are we going to do things together?” The proper development of shelter is not just bricks and mortar. It's people. Sometimes we think if we build it, they will come, but that's not always enough.

What makes SAWSO different from a secular international relief and development organization?

We believe in the absolute respect of the faith and traditions of others, and it is never our goal to change people or rearrange their beliefs. We don't love people any less if they have other beliefs. But I think that if you don't have a faith, or if your faith isn't strong, we want to be able to share love and compassion in common with you. There's a motivation and strength inside of ourselves, derived from our faith, that drives our work. Our faith commitment to expand the message of the gospel and to meet human needs is what drove us there, is what keeps us there, and what pushes us other places.

Another important thing that sets us apart is that we've been in Africa for over 120 years, long before the international relief agencies. That's important in a number of ways, perhaps most crucially because we have the trust of our communities, and we know what the issues are.

What is the SA's stance on interreligious work?

We are very respectful of all of the different contexts and places where we work. One good example is from Indonesia. When we first arrived in Indonesia, the imams said, “We don't want you to pray. You can't pray publicly. You can't even pray in your own buildings.” We worked there for nearly three years. We were then honored at a public event where the local Islamic leaders said, “We would like to pray,” and then, “We would like you to pray.” That was a tremendous gesture of respect. I think we earned it because we came and did what we said we would do.

When we first arrived they also said, “We want you out of here in three years.” But what they are telling us now is that they would like us to stay. We don't yet know what that specifically means, but we will try to find a way to support them.

Why is the Salvation Army not in Sudan or Ethiopia? You are in all countries of Africa except those two, you said. Why is that?

I would say that that's because the leadership is trying to be responsible based on our resources. Being in 117 countries is an immense challenge as it is. While we want to answer that Macedonian call to be everywhere there's a need, it doesn't make sense if we can't stabilize the situation and make a substantive contribution.

I'd like to get into Sudan, but we think there are very sufficient and capable partners working there already. We know that World Vision is doing incredible work there, as are other groups.

How has the Salvation Army felt the effects of the global financial crisis?

Well, what we've found is that the number of donations is down, but the individual donation amount is actually up from previous years. What that signals is that people who did give understood that the need was greater, but not as many people were able to give.

Certainly we have seen changes in the economic level of people who come to us for help. People who thought they would never come for help find themselves coming to the Salvation Army. Demand for what we provide is up, as it is with food banks and other similar institutions. But the economic worry is only one part of it. We're also concerned about the psychology; the devastating effects on people when they lose the professional structure that they've known.

What are some partners of yours that have been doing work that you respect?

The Mennonites have been wonderful. I've never seen such dogged willingness to get dirty and build things. I've been very impressed with ADRA. We have a wonderful relationship with Caritas and CRS. We all learn from each other. And a number of organizations in Sri Lanka, also, have been incredibly helpful.

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