World According to ... Curtis Welling

L.G.: Do you have any idea that because this incoming president has such a unique relationship with Africa that the situation might change?

C.W.: Well I think this is apropos of the conversation we were having earlier about a little bit of uncertainty. This is a good example. I think he has the potential to redefine in an important way the nature of the foreign policy relationship between the United States and Africa in a way that would be important for the United States and for Africa. Where that will rank on his priority list, which list also needs to include oh, Iraq, Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, India, the Middle East, and on and on, remains to be seen. There's a limit to the amount of power that the United States could project, just a practical limit, both financial and logistical. And there's a limit to the financial power that the United States can project at this time, and there's also a span of control set of issues. So I would like to see the president set engagement with the African Union as a high priority and set the resolution of Darfur as a high priority, as a signal of what the new relationship could be. I'd like to see that on political grounds but most importantly on humanitarian grounds. Whether that's something that will be on the list or not remains to be seen. This is going to sound like an odd analogy, but Darfur shares the willing suspension of disbelief that the Bernie Madoff situation shares. There are so many people with dirty hands that allow this atrocity to continue, including the United States, but not limited to the United States, to people who support the Sudanese regime for their economic reasons, most importantly the Chinese, the Russians, and on and on. And so what you have here is a manifest atrocity of the most despicable kind, where the people that are in the position of doing something about it, including the Africans, by the way, for their own reasons, have just chosen to turn away. So it's one of those rare moments when the true nature of human nature is revealed. Some of those are wonderful, and some of them are not. And this is one that is not.

L.G.: By the way, do you plan to be in Washington around the time of the inauguration?

C.W.: I don't. I plan to be as far away from Washington as I could possibly be and still see it on cable television.

L.G.: With all the traveling that you do, I have to think all your shots are up to date, but have you ever gotten hugely ill?

C.W.: No, I've been very fortunate. I travel with traveler's pharmacy. I travel with the range of things designed to get at bugs and bites and things like that. But I haven't ever been hugely ill. I've been around some people that have been pretty sick. One of the things that I greatly admire among the people who do the kind of work we do and the places we're doing it, is their willingness to subject themselves to healthcare conditions, living conditions, and physical risks that are really quite intense. You can't imagine that conceptually until you've actually slept under a mosquito net on the floor of a cement slab in the desert.

L.G.: Which you have done?

C.W.: I have done. In fact, one of the moments of greatest irony and cognitive dissonance for me was that Darfur trip in 2004, which was in October, so the Red Sox were playing the Cardinals in the World Series. And I watched about half of a game of the World Series under a mosquito net in the desert in Darfur on a satellite downlink

L.G.: That shows how loyal a Red Sox fan you must be.

C.W.: It also tells you something about how interesting the world has become from a connection and a communications standpoint. You can imagine the dissonance that creates.

L.G.: Indeed. Let's say there are normal people out there who are moved by your mission. You take contributions of any size, right?

C.W.: In fact, one of the things that's the great strength of AmeriCares is over 27 years we have a very large and dedicated donor base. We have over 10,000 people who give us gifts on average of $50 to $60 to $70 a year.

L.G.: Do you think you've learned anything from the Obama fundraising operation?

C.W.: Well, it's pretty clear that all gift-supported organizations are spending a lot of time thinking about social networking and the power of the internet to create communities, so we're certainly trying to learn as much of that as we can. It's an area where my prediction is, like a lot of things having to do with the internet, the rhetoric will precede the reality for some considerable period of time. But there's no question that internet-based fundraising and community-building is going to be a very important part of all nonprofit organizations going forward.

L.G.: What's your Christmas wish or your holiday wish for the coming year?

C.W.: That's a terrific question. I guess my holiday wish would be for a smooth transition to what I think has the potential to be a new era in the American experiment, and for there to be a return to the kind of aspirationally based politics that characterized this country maybe up through the '60s, maybe up to the Nixon administration, and the turning away of the partisan attack element that we see manifest in so much of the society.

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