Background: This is the record of a discussion between William O'Keefe and Katherine Marshall (Berkley Center) that was part of preparatory work for an April 16 conference at Georgetown University on the role of faith-based organizations in development. The conference is part of a joint Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and Luce Foundation project on religion and international relations.
What path has brought you to your current job, and how has it involved working with faith-based organizations and international development?
I started work with CRS in Tanzania, as an intern, fresh from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. During my graduate program, I knew that I wanted to work in the international field and through the Catholic Church; CRS came to interview, I was hired, and sent to Tanzania. Tanzania is a wonderful country and I was there during a fascinating period, just as the country was beginning to thaw economically, after many difficult years. The government was in discussions with the IMF and the World Bank, and had agreed to a careful, gradual and controlled process of devaluation. We witnessed a perceptible change in the environment and more private engagement over the period. CRS at the time was supporting primary health care, in the northwest part of the country. We were also just beginning to do some HIV/AIDS work, mostly involving mobile health clinics which supported Church-run health clinics. We helped people to care for relatives, and, overall, worked to address the pernicious influence of stigma. We were starting to do some work with microcredit. CRS also was providing some emergency support, generally around localized and generalized food security crises, usually the result of droughts. This led us to explore agricultural support and appropriate technology. Our programs focused on small community groups, and, in those early microcredit programs, built on community systems of peer responsibility. After my years in Tanzania, I worked from Baltimore for about four years on the Africa desk, then spent three years on the Operation Rice Bowl program (which is an educational program involving some 14,000 parishes in the US). I then worked on Church outreach programs and a broad range of public education efforts, focused in the U.S. For the last seven years, I have worked on advocacy and government relations.
How would you describe the “faith component” of your own work and of CRS?
Both personally and for CRS more generally, being part of a faith community is very important. It provides our mission and commitment and is also part of the professional character and quality of the organization. I am a lay person, married, but consider my work with CRS a vocational choice. CRS often works through the infrastructure of the Catholic Church. Because of its ties to the Catholic Church, the organization has a much richer understanding of the faith elements of development generally and the issues that people face.
Over the period I have been with CRS and especially since the 1990s, there has been a tremendous change in the way the CRS mission and thus its work are conceived. One factor in this change has been a much more intentional reflection on Catholic Social Teaching. CRS today takes consciously and seriously its responsibility as an organization built to address directly the roots of social injustice. Our work now is also built on a conscious foundation of working towards global solidarity. This has two sides: working in countries to that end, and offering the experience to American Catholics. Up to the 1980s, donors were donors, and saw themselves primarily as supporting the Catholic Church and discharging a general responsibility. The new focus on solidarity brings with it a much greater role for advocacy, and involvement of our supporters; their engagement benefits others, but also themselves in a spiritual way. CRS has no faith criteria for hiring and we hire without regard to religious background and we require no one to sign a declaration of faith. There are, that said, some jobs at top that by charter are held by Catholics.
Tell me more about what this notion of solidarity means for CRS?
The term indeed has different meanings in different places; in a European context it can conjure up the Polish Solidarity movement or labor unions. But in CRS, the context is a major statement of the US Bishops in 1997, “Called to Global Solidarity." CRS was much involved in the process of preparing this call. Solidarity is a Catholic moral principle. What it means to me is taking actions on behalf of our global neighbor, outside our immediate sphere, out of a sincere concern for the well-being of others. It means a firm and persevering determination to work for the global common good.
How has faith been part of the vision and evolution of your institution?
CRS began as a part of the American Catholic Church, as the US Catholic Bishops responded to the refugee crisis at the end of World War II. As Europe and the rest of the world moved from recovery after the war to development, its mission expanded and deepened through a combination of reflections about the realities of the world and the social teaching of the Church. Consequently, broader issues of social justice and solidarity came to the fore. CRS was also shaped by new concerns about the US role in fighting poverty and global hunger.
In many respects the evolution of CRS parallels closely the development of thinking within the Church. Before Vatican II, most or many of CRS' staff were priests and nuns. The head of the organization was a bishop. Following Vatican II, within a fairly short period the staff of CRS was professionalized. In recent years the CRS Board has included half bishops and half lay people.
An important caveat, in light of common misunderstandings, is how decentralized Catholic institutions are. CRS has no day-to-day relationship with the Vatican, no “orders” each day.
How does CRS work with other Catholic Institutions and other faith-based organizations?
CRS is part of Caritas International, the international federation of Catholic social service organizations. We are also part of CIDSE (Coopération Internationale pour le Développement et la Solidarité) which is a European network of Catholic organizations working on international development. We work closely with these networks, and with many other organizations. We benefit from their financial support. Most of these organizations do not have an operational presence in a wide range of countries. Thus in a crisis or following a disaster they will often channel their funds to CRS to do what needs to be done. We coordinate with these umbrella organizations, for a start to support the local Catholic churches in emergency situations. After the tsunami in 2004, for example, the Catholic Church in India was much involved in a mass appeal. CRS was on the ground, engaged in health care work with local churches. Caritas Germany and CAFOD in the UK were eager to help and turned to CRS. Generally, there are patterns in support but these are not absolute (European CARITAS tends to support former colonies, etc.).
Overall, our relationships with Catholic bishops vary by country, and obviously depend on the presence and structure of the Church in each location. Where the Church is strong, we would tend to work through the local Church. But we operate in lots of countries where the Catholic Church has little presence, for example in majority Muslim countries. There, in particular, we work with many non-Christian groups.
How is the work of these different organizations and others on the ground coordinated in practice?
Donor coordination tends to be focused at country level. Our staff on the ground form relationships with visiting organizations and a pragmatic arrangement forms. CRS bumps up against and coordinates with many organizations in its work.
So how does this lead to coordination when you are working in similar fields? And what about government roles and responsibilities in coordination?
There is an important difference between coordination and being coordinated. The two reflect a different vision and that can present important issues in relationships with governments and other institutions. In a crisis, the government frequently can coordinate less effectively but this situation can change afterwards. In practice, arrangements vary widely country by country. CRS works with many local organizations on the ground, many of them indigenous but also with several of the large international NGOs, notably CARE, Save the Children, Mercy Corps, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and World Vision. Thus we find ourselves working with a mix of secular and faith organizations that share a similar mix of objectives. We are finding that other FBOs are starting to work more actively in similar areas. Samaritan's Purse, for example, is also active in emergencies. We have not had many working partnership arrangements with evangelical groups, though we are working with some congregations on the ground. The increasing role of evangelical churches is a big issue for the Catholic hierarchy in certain countries, but is not something that we would be concerned with.
As you look at the Berkley Luce FBO project and April 16 conference, what are the issues you would most like to see addressed?
The conference can and should address the important medium term and long term issues that face faith-based organizations working in development. I will return to them.
But there are also immediate, short term issues, questions about what the effect on FBOs might be if the Democrats return to the presidency and more broadly the nation's balance of power shifts. The concern arises because of a perception that the focus on faith-based work is tied to right wing and Republican support. While much is being said today about the underlying faith engagement of the left and of Democrats, there is fear in our community of a backlash, because the Bush administration has been rhetorically so supportive of faith-based organizations. As a non-partisan, faith-based organization that seeks to work with both sides of the political spectrum, we are concerned.
CRS is a faith-based organization and has a good relationship with the Bush Administration, but to my mind is not the kind of FBO they necessarily are targeting in terms of their “faith-based initiatives." We have received federal money to support our work since 1943. We do not proselytize. We have careful and professional management systems, and we have been doing professional work for a long time. The FBO policy is more directed to evangelical churches who felt they could not participate in government funding because they lacked a clear wall between their religious and their faith activities. CRS has a wall. Propagation of faith, evangelization, is done by another part of the Church. It is not in the job description of CRS. The issues that turn around the roles of FBOs in global health offer an illustration of how this problem takes shape. CRS is deeply involved in HIV/AIDS work. CRS follows a strategy here that is both professional and consistent with its faith ethos. CRS in its HIV/AIDS work focuses on prevention; it does not support or promote condom use, nor does it distribute them, but it does give complete and accurate information about them. We support abstinence programs on their merits, and we rely on scientific evidence. But the issue of abstinence is highly polarized today. On one side there are some FBOs that take a much less scientific approach in the design of their abstinence programs. On the other, some family planning groups are chomping at the bit to roll back the role of FBOs, to get back to an approach that relies far more on condom distribution in USAID funding (at one stage it seemed that 90 percent of their funding was going to condoms). This polarization is unhealthy and dangerous. CRS does not define itself, and should not be defined in terms of condoms. Our position is well known and we do not see it as a limitation. We provide first class anti-retroviral therapy to 70,000 people in nine countries, as well as palliative care; we offer dignity to those who are dying, nutrition to families, and much else.
Others are simply not involved in this range of work and that should be recognized. Accountability is also an important issue. CRS benefits from the Combined Federal Campaign, which has high standards for governance. The Administration is working to bring changes in the regime that would allow organizations that have a large share of their operating budgets going to administration to participate. A suspicion is that the reason for this proposed change is so that many smaller FBOs with high administrative costs can qualify. That's a problem. Accountability is a critical issue for every organization today, in the era of Sarbanes-Oxley. FBOs have to have the same standards as everyone else.
What other implications do you see in the debates about HIV/AIDS funding and FBO?
First, there is a risk that funding will not be continued which would have disastrous effects. Second, there is a broad problem of imbalance in funding, and third there are distortions in where the funding is going, to what kinds of organizations.
In the debates about public funding for FBOs, PEPFAR and issues for HIV/AIDS loom so large that they dominate the discussion. An important and related issue arises because PEPFAR funding (as well as the HIV/AIDS pandemic) is overwhelming the Catholic and other health care systems in Africa. A major challenge is to get attention and resources to other aspects of health care and other diseases. PEPFAR dominate the scene for FBOs in the field, because it is difficult for FBOs to get funds from the Global Fund and other sources. The mechanisms are controlled by governments, who generally do not “share their toys” with faith-based networks. But the central reality is that FBOs are doing a lot of the care where HIV and AIDS are most serious.
There is more funding today for malaria and TB, but these problems also need more attention. And there is very little real thinking about future directions on health and FBOs, and what their future outlines will be.
How would you describe the range of issues of concern to CRS? How far and how is CRS involved in development policy issues?
CRS only really got involved actively in policy from about 1993, and it came as a result of our reflections on social justice. This was a very deliberate process. Every staff member went through a process of reflection on the topic. In parallel there was a process of looking at CRS programming from a justice lens. Out of that came a specific moment, as I recall, during a planning meeting in 1993/4, when there was a recognition of the implications of global changes in CRS policy. We saw that there were trends in the world that we are not keeping up with, the violence and strife that were contributing to crises, and that we must do something about the root causes, as well as to US policies. Otherwise we would never make a difference. This was a significant adjustment for people. We had to ask: Are we political? What does it mean in practice? We had to agree on what we meant by political, as opposed to partisan. We had to discuss criteria and decide on what kinds of issues we would discuss and what capacity we needed to do so properly.
At this point, CRS' policy role is well supported in the organization; it is well understood, if not completely understood. Of our 65 country offices, not all are involved. This policy focus translates into a major concern with the structure and funding of US foreign assistance. We would like to see a reform of foreign assistance, so it is responsive to the needs of poor, and we would like to see it adequately financed. We see a central role for issues of hunger, and thus the farm bill. We are looking at reducing subsidies that contribute to lower prices for poor country producers. We focus on the authorization for Title II food assistance. CRS has been much involved in debt relief, working on it as part of the global Catholic movement. We focus on the international financial institutions primarily through looking to US government oversight. Our view is that as an American organization we can be more effective influencing American institutions.
How far do you find yourselves seeking to influence developing country governments?
We really can not; what right do we have to influence a foreign government as a guest in their country? And if we do directly seek to intervene or influence, we may find that our services are not welcome, and our staff could be in danger. Where our local partners are engaging governments and want training and support, we do provide it, and we provide intellectual inputs. An example is work we did on extractive industries. We were involved in work on the Chad Cameroon pipeline. We supported local groups who were helping villages, and especially local people who were displaced and others who were concerned about what was going to happen. We focused on developing capacity for monitoring and reporting roles. At the national level, we supported the Catholic Church to develop a mechanism for monitoring. In the US, we published two papers. Thus, we have roles in education and advocacy. And here, as in other cases, there are many other groups involved, mostly European groups, some Catholic, some secular. We recently got a grant to support a “Publish What You Pay” group in the US.
How does CRS decide what countries to work in what you do there?
CRS now has offices in 65 countries and supports projects in 100. There is no systematic process of country election. In practice the process is fairly evolutionary. We tend to start with disaster support, in a crisis, responding as quickly and effectively as we can. Programs develop from there, as we try to move as quickly as possible to development; in many cases we then stay on and the partnership expands. Over time country programs get bigger or smaller, in response to periodic reviews. We do not want to contribute to dependency.
CRS today allocates about 25 percent of our operational budget to emergency work and the rest to development. HIV/AIDS work under PEPFAR, however, is not considered emergency. AIDS and health is 15 to 22 percent and will grow. We also work in agriculture, microcredit, and many other issues. The objective is to work over time on all issues in ways that increase capacity.
How are you involved with problems of corruption?
We are trying to prevent it at the micro level! At the government level, in a number of countries we support local groups that are trying to address the issue. An example is a technical assistance project in Cameroon. We are connected with other efforts.
How does the need to find financing for CRS programs shape and affect the organization?
CRS has seen its resource base grow significantly in recent years. We see a sincere basic story line, that the quality of our work has grown and therefore our support has grown. But the reality is quite complex and we find ourselves in a more competitive role today, in an environment where competition plays a greater role. CRS has gotten money from many sources, including several public organizations, foundations, and new donors. Our private fund-raising has been much more successful, more organized. We are making a more coherent and compelling case.
How do you demonstrate quality in the kind of work you do?
Because we receive public money and have been for a long time (half our funding today is public), we are compelled to demonstrate the impact and quality of our work in great detail. We monitor and evaluate the quality of everything we do, often repeatedly and in great depth. We have a monitoring and evaluation system that is as good as any. Starting in the 1980s, we have always had objectives and targets.
We are very much part of a network of similar organizations that shares good practice and issues around monitoring and evaluation (like CARE). Interaction has a monitoring and evaluation group that is very active. There was a conference on the topic there today about benchmarking. The technocrats of M and E are all well networked.
What do you see as the path of evolution of FBOs in the U.S.? More generally?
CRS is in a good place today but the future depends a lot on things outside its control. That includes how the Catholic Church finds itself in society. So far CRS has not been affected by scandals in the Church, but if that continues both our policy role and donor money could be reduced.
We are not happy with the present characterization of FBO issues because they polarize. In our view, the problems at stake instead require everyone to come together. We do not want to see a battle among faith and secular organizations over money for health and other areas. This does not serve anyone. We want to see a global movement where faith and non-faith organizations work together. The Catholic Church is big enough and diverse enough, and Catholic social teaching is broad enough that we can say that. We see ourselves as able to play a bridge role for all.
Which emerging issues could really benefit from religious/secular partnership? ( i.e the "new" trafficking, Darfur, debt relief, etc.)
CRS works on global policy issues in several areas. We are fairly involved in the issues of trafficking, though we have tended to focus on economic trafficking. We support several programs that aim to give education and jobs to women in vulnerable communities, to “inoculate” them against prostitution and trafficking. Because we are an operational group, we are less involved in advocacy on Darfur; the Sudanese government is watchful enough that an activist organization could find themselves with security issues on ground, so we stay below the radar screen. But generally we are very active on issues of rights, and that includes working with the Congress and on public education.
If the range of issue concerns among evangelical churches continues to broaden as it has in the recent past, to broader life issues, global warming, and poverty, then the possibility of people working across the lines, reaching across divides, is more possible. Yesterday, I was at a meeting of the ONO campaign, which is really trying to reach out to all groups, evangelical, mainline, large, small, protestant, secular. There are real grounds for hope there, though it is still a relatively small area of dialogue, and only a few organizations can straddle it.
Competition is an issue that can help or hinder and it applies particularly to this question of bridging cross what often seem like large divides. The coordination mechanisms are few and do not reach all, especially in the FBO community. There are only a handful of organizations that are part both of the large NGO coordination platform, Interaction, and the Evangelical coordination group.
