Berkley Center

Background: In this exchange, Deborah Dortzbach, World Relief's international director for HIV/AIDS programs, discusses her vision of how communities of faith can be mobilized to address pressing health and development challenges. She says that collaboration between faith and government or secular institutions must be preceded by a “discernment” process in which both sides determine the extent to which they can cooperate without compromising their core mission or values. Ms. Dortzbach talks about the careful balance between funding local action and keeping money from “corrupting and limiting” local initiatives. She also describes what she sees as the most common misconception of FBOs, that they “cannot produce products or programs with far-reaching impact and scientific confirmation.”

What brought you personally to World Relief?

World Relief works through churches to accomplish the mission of relieving global suffering. The vision of working with and for the local church in numerous countries to accomplish this mission resonates with my personal calling and conviction of loving God and my neighbor. I believe local institutions are best able to meet the needs of the community and need support and encouragement to do so more effectively and in at a larger scale. I feel personally challenged and privileged to be part of a global team, connecting people, churches, vision, experiences, and resources. I enjoy participating in cross country dialogue to embrace lessons learned between faith-based groups.

What are the issues you would most like to see addressed in the Berkley Luce FBO project?

Issues of engaging within limited time frames but supporting long term impact; maximizing resources from within local churches or faith groups; avoiding a “stifling syndrome” as an international NGO or faith-based group partnering with a smaller field and based group; the nature of partnership from the perspective of developing nations; engaging resource rich countries in learning from faith-based initiatives in countries with less economic prosperity.

How has faith been part of the vision and evolution of your institution?

Faith is visceral to all we do at World Relief. We seek to clearly represent churches in the US and partner with churches internationally. The “faith factor” is integrated into our guiding principles, board resolutions, reports, and even funding base. It is critical to our strategic frameworks and workplans.

What would you describe as the "faith element" in its work? Can you identify ways in which the approach, ethos, and tangible work might differ from a non-faith-inspired NGO like CARE or Save the Children?

Faith isn't just another dimension, it is our substance. It commands how we view the world, interpret our success, drive our programs, envision our future. Our faith sustains us in critical periods, grows our compassion, and enables us to do more with less. It permeates not only who we are, but what we do and how we go about doing it.

Because we work with churches, we use the basic tenets of faith to mobilize one another to care for one another and live responsibly in community. The response is often transformation—the kind we experienced last week in China where church leaders entered the symposium on AIDS with judgmental attitudes toward people with AIDS and left convicted of casting stones toward others when their own hearts needed change. Faith fuels behavior change—bringing foundational principles and standards, common language, interpersonal accountability, and recourse to impact change.

How does the U.S. dimension of your organization relate to its international role and profile?

Our US office serves the international ones. It serves to provide technical assistance, discover funds, and provide valuable linkages to international faith development and expression between churches globally. Our non U.S. churches enrich our U.S. organization and connections through exchanges, providing lessons learned, and engagement in strategic planning, and exposure to nonwestern thought, ideas, and relationships.

Additionally, we seek to build a global concern among U.S. churches, offering opportunities for exposure, participation, and sharing of resources to counterpart churches in other regions of the world. This “global shrinking” informs and transforms churches in the U.S. and offers much needed assistance to churches in other parts of the world.

Has the faith relationship and inspiration of the organization changed over time or would you see it as a stable element?

The relationships are dynamic—ever challenged and changed by deepening faith and the many expressions globally. Our commitment to remain faith-based is visceral. Hopefully we will never be static in deepening our understanding of faith and it's applications as we partner together with faith-based groups across the globe. But our faith, understood through God's Word, is our anchor. The application of faith is far reaching, dynamic, and refreshing.

What do you see as the path of evolution of FBOs in the US? More generally?

I'm not sure. At times I see a return to faith discovery and at times I see a clear demise of faith accountability and relationship within the US. Some churches are growing in phenomenal ways as they summon relevance to everyday life and life's struggles. Others are definitely losing touch with people, growth, and development as they fail to adapt to today's realities. That does not mean that churches compromise on the basic tenets of faith or doctrine—it simply means there is desperate need to be focused, relevant, and adaptable in faith application to changing environments. Generally, within our world, faith faces the bombardment of materialism, the influence of the media and globalization, and the questioning of contextualization within culture. As I work within HIV/AIDS over the last 17 years I have seen faith drive behavior, mature programs, and develop people and families. It excites me to see the application of faith front and center of lives affected by HIV or the conviction of faith supporting families and children affected by HIV.

What are major generic issues facing FBOs? Limits on proselytization? Accountability? Relations with secular organizations? How have these affected you?

Many see faith simply as a means to an end instead of the means and the end, in other words the very reason we do things, express ourselves, or exist at all. We may therefore leverage that idea to our benefit but in the end lose the game though we scored many goals. Some reasons may be the distraction caused by meeting other's criteria for funding or measurements of success. A major issue in faith is relationship building which is not necessarily numbers focused or efficiency focused.

Yes, there are limitations with different programs, leaders, cultures, funding sources, but that is to be expected. There are always ways to work within limitations if we take the time to explore and really believe the match of program to funding source is appropriate. Accountability should never be compromised, whether the source for engagement is external, internal, or international.

My biggest struggle with secular interactions come with minimizing stereotypes, stressing the legitimacy of utilizing faith-based groups as pertinent to society in their own right, and bridging the worlds of secular and faith with grassroots and less exposed faith leaders. I am affected deeply by striving to remain aligned to my faith, relevant to my changing world, and challenged and sharpened but not defeated by critics.

Interpreting quality assurance criteria, variations of doctrine, issues of stigma and inaccurate information that may be “believed” but not understood by some faith leaders remain challenges. One example of this is dealing with issues of cursing or faith healing in understanding the facts about AIDS in Africa and juxtaposing believe, practice, fact, and faith.

What kinds of funding issues arise for your organization, especially insofar as its faith links are concerned?

There are many—do funding sources have restrictions (most do); do they create dependency or have strings attached in terms of participation?

Perhaps the largest issue for me is how to effectively use funds to leverage programs without snuffing out local initiative and creating dependency. Money often corrupts and limits initiative.

I am encouraged as I see churches in Africa pull together to address the AIDS crisis in their communities through their own resources of dedicated volunteers, relationship building and community support, advocacy, time, and the offer of what they have in their homes and fields. This inspires us to strive to support this more, adding much needed leverage for scaling up not only good intentions but sustainable practice.

What issues might arise on operational processes that are in some sense specific to FBOs? (For example criteria for hiring, procurement, limits on types of interventions).

Usually FBOs (churches in particular) have their own structures already in place that also have operational procedures whether formal or informal. When collaboration with other faith based groups, funding sources, governments and government policies are expected or even desired to maximize benefit there is likely a period of discerning what may need alignment, compromise, or scrapping. The cost of cooperation may be too high for some types of intervention (i.e. compromise on some forms of faith conviction). It is important for faith based groups to know their identity and be refreshed in operating within that while at the same time seeking new partnerships, insights, and understanding.

In our experience globally, many faith-based groups are very well organized to serve locally, but not to administer programs requiring larger sums of money, reports to donors, etc. The challenge for us is to build better bridges between effective methods of intervention at the grassroots which include discovering and building upon already established accountability structures while at the same time enabling scale up and participation in regional and global support. We are discovering one way to do this is through working networks of cross- denominational leaders in villages and towns in Mozambique and Rwanda. As these grassroots gatherings support one another in training, supervising volunteers, and raising community advocacy for families affected by AIDS, their leadership and experience is ripe for adding dimensions of larger program management, funding, and participation with other organizations and government interventions. The whole process of moving from networking to larger scale program management requires care, however, with a continual assessment of balancing local capacity with need and opportunity for growth.

What are the central challenges for your organization as you look to the future (not with specific relation to faith)?

Discerning appropriate size for capacity, funding long term, anticipating and adjusting to change, maintaining relevance, developing international leaders.

How does the organization interact with major secular development organizations?

We seek to blend into society—learning with secular groups—informing and enriching them. This is fleshed out through our many professional memberships, funding and program partnerships, and participation with numerous government interventions in the countries of operation. We purposefully do research, develop abstracts and publish, and participate in international and national forums that are secular. Some examples include participation in microfinance networks and institutions, participating as subgrantees in funding through secular groups, contributing to country coordinating mechanisms for HIV/AIDS Global Fund, contributing to local NGO councils, and linking community initiatives that are faith-based to the structures of national and local government, ranging from local chiefs and leaders to Ministries of Health.

How does World Relief approach collaboration with FBOs from other faith traditions? In the U.S. and overseas?

Our general approach is to respect, network, exchange views and lessons learned, and participate together in meeting the community's need without seeking to homogenize. In practical terms this means we actively seek to serve all in the community but may decide to conduct curriculum development and training that is more specific to our own faith convictions.

What are the major challenges of partnering with local FBOs in the field?

Some like to lump all faith based groups together rather than allowing them to just be who they are with distinctions in the community. Faith is personal and real, not generic and easily compromised. At times it may appear that to collaborate with other groups is to compromise individuality or conviction. There are other challenges more specific to certain faith groups and areas of intervention including the understanding of family, roles of men and women, interpretation of faith principles, language, the influence of poverty, the gaps between haves and have nots within the same faith, etc. Compare/contrast dealing with NGOs, CBOs, umbrella groups, individual congregations. By definition, faith conjures up conviction which may be deep and personal. People are willing to die for their faith or at least sacrifice deeply. This is not so likely within secular groups.

Which emerging issues could really benefit from religious/secular partnership? (i.e the "new" trafficking, Darfur, debt relief, etc.)

Actually all issues—political change, conflict resolution and peace building, economic development, gender issues, HIV/AIDS, the continuum of care in malaria eradication and TB control, protecting the girl orphan, the orphan crisis, etc.

What is one major misconception about FBOs in development work?

That they cannot produce products or program with far-reaching impact and scientific confirmation. When we first began our large program of AIDS prevention with youth, (a PEPFAR funded program working in four countries with 1.8 million youth and those who influence them) there was a great deal of skepticism expressed in the press about how this would roll out and how youth would be tracked in behavior change. To date, we are surpassing our goals, even in conflict ridden areas like Haiti. I think the unusual dedication and determination embedded in faith presses through obstacles to find ways to get the job done.

Does it matter?

It brings us under constant scrutiny and frequent attack in political arenas particularly. We have to be vigilant and wise—careful to press on with the work we are committed to and confident that the demonstration of change in lives will speak for itself in time.

How do you see experience in the U.S. in comparison to FBO work in other parts of the world?

Recent years have given US based FBOs a more rightful position (recognition and funding) in contributing to the government and community responses. This certainly is the norm in many other countries—certainly in Islamic countries or countries where church and state are interrelated (also Germany and Norway for example).

In some regions of the world, people of faith are deeply persecuted. Rather than sniff out faith, it appears to strengthen it. Death to personal faith is more often a product of growing materialism and individualism that we find in Europe and America than persecution for personal faith in parts of Asia. One thing is certain, in times of crisis, people often turn to God for help.