|
|
|
Solidarity Network:
Unleashing a Powerful Force
By Kevin Carrel Footer
On Saturday morning, Juan Carr is deep in his element. The founder of Argentina's Solidarity Network is dressed in jeans and tennis shoes. Even when seated, his short legs are in movement, like a child's.
Carr is seemingly all at once talking with Jaime from Peru about cross-border collaboration; discussing a
 new project with two young women from the province of Córdoba; pausing to be interviewed by phone on a radio show; ignoring a photographer who is following him around; trying to keep his three children from fighting over a toy; and all the while serving maté, the Argentine national beverage drunk from a gourd and shared around the room. It's a situation that would soon overwhelm the calmest souls, but Carr calls it "ordered chaos."
For an outsider, it's a little bit hard to see the order.
But all this chaos is at the service of a single, powerful idea: tell people about someone who is in need, and tell them how they can help – and they will. The only obstacle between people helping people, says Carr, age 39, is a lack of information. But show them a need, and the way to do something useful about it, and they will overwhelm you with their desire to lend a hand.
When floods left 400,000 people homeless on Argentina's flat plains several years ago, the Solidarity Network telephone hotline responded in typical fashion by linking those who were washed from their homes with those watching their plight on television. To do so, they united trucking companies, Catholic charities, and thousands of individual volunteers in an improptu campaign that collected and delivered food and clothing to 200,000 people in just one week. And they did it with their secret weapon: the telephone.
But dramatic as such moments are, Carr's organization focuses most of its energy on resolving day-to-day problems. "In Latin America," says Carr, "there is a constant catastrophe. Every day there are deaths that no one sees, people on the margins that no one sees . . . AIDS victims without medicine, old people who are abandoned, kids who die of hunger . . . All the organizations that truly want to change this reality necessarily have to make contact with this permanent state of catastrophe."
Building a Network That Doesn't Exist
Since 1995, when Carr and several friends started the Solidarity Network (Red Solidaria in Spanish), it has answered 180,000 calls and 30,000 emails. Through its intervention, help has been provided to 16,500 cancer patients, 400 AIDS patients, 90 rural schools, 50 people waiting for a transplant, 140 community kitchens, and 335 families with missing children.
But certainly, the most amazing aspect of the Solidarity Network is that it doesn't exist – at least not by traditional standards. It is a "virtual" organization. It has no headquarters, no salaried staff, no budget, no chain of command – the organization isn't even registered as such. Its sole asset is a powerful idea, a phone number, and a group of motivated volunteers. Nothing more.
And nothing less.
The network, says volunteer Belen Quellet, "doesn't belong to anyone – and belongs to everyone."
The network consists of 35 volunteers (most are women) answering the phone in three-hour shifts from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily while working from home. (The calls are automatically switched to the volunteer's home phone).
People calling for help are referred to the 350 community organizations affiliated with the network. Callers are told to call back if, for any reason, their needs are not met.
Juan Carr
For example, when the caller is reporting a missing child, the network refers him to a local affiliate of Missing Children. When it is a parent with a hearing-impaired child needing a hearing aid, they refer him to FANDA (a foundation dedicated to helping such children). When it is an AIDS patient, they send the caller to La Posada, a clinic for AIDS patients.
Veronica Viel, head of Ashoka in Argentina says, "What was brilliant about Juan's idea was to create a solidarity network that is practically virtual – not in the sense of the Internet, but in that they don't have a structure, they are not a registered organization, they don't have a budget, they don't have a hierarchy, they don't have an office . . . In a way, that is very efficient, he connects people in need with those who are able to give."
For example, if you call with a wheelchair to donate, the Solidarity Network will not send someone by to collect it – where would they put it since they don't even have an office, let alone a warehouse? Instead, they will connect you with an organization needing wheelchairs or better yet, with an individual in need of a wheelchair who has called the network.
The genesis of the Solidarity Network, with its peculiar "virtual" structure, owes much to popular disillusionment with traditional approaches. Across Latin America, many programs (especially government-run initiatives) have been discredited by bureaucracy, corruption, waste, and failure. Too often, in the power struggles, greed, lack of focus, or general torpor, the original mission of these organizations gets lost.
For this reason, the network jealously protects its reputation for honesty and transparency. Hence, it has never accepted any funding for itself. Instead, network campaigns to raise funds for, say, a transplant, are done in the name of other organizations. Funds and materials never go to the network; they directly to the recipient.
"The day we ask for something for ourselves, we're lost," says Quellet.
The model has another virtue: it is easily replicable. All it takes is a phone number and some committed volunteers. Already there are 19 independent branches across Argentina, and Carr would like to see the idea copied worldwide.
"Copy" is the operative word. No one, he says, has to ask permission to start a solidarity network like the one he and his colleagues have started; it is nothing more than an idea, a model, a way of helping. And it belongs to everyone.
In Argentina, the result has been to unleash the powerful force of solidarity. "We didn't know that once we started, every time we approached the community they would overwhelm us with their generosity," Carr said. "When we ask for one blood donor, we get fifty. We ask for a wheel chair, we get ten. It is absolutely impressive. We are overwhelmed with generosity all the time."
Building a Humanitarian Bridge
The network often works in opportunistic ways, simply looking to make the connection between a need and those who can meet it. One excellent example of this is its program for helping those who cannot afford cancer drugs.
Through its work with cancer patients, network members discovered that often when a patient dies, valuable drugs are left behind that could be used by another, but go to waste. One of the network's many programs brings these two parties together.
The benefits are mutual. On one hand, someone struggling to hang onto life receives valuable drugs. On the other, families in mourning often benefit from the opportunity to transform their pain of loss into something positive. Connecting the two helps everyone, as is so often the case in solidarity efforts.
Juan Carr
An example of just how efficient this seemingly anarchic, 35-volunteer-strong organization can be was its response to the floods that inundated Argentina's flat lands several years ago. In seven days, the network mobilized numerous organizations and spontaneous volunteers to send a two-week supply of food and clothing for 200,000 flood victims. They built a humanitarian bridge that stretched from urban centers in Argentina directly to the scene of the disaster.
One of the country's most important trucking companies provided transport. The Catholic church (organized through Caritas) received and guaranteed a fair distribution of goods donated by individuals and companies.
Though they served as the catalyst for this massive effort, Solidarity Network volunteers didn't touch a single can of food, mattress, or piece of clothing. What they did was spawn an idea, linking together a network of independent organizations, communicating the idea to the public through the media, and channeling the outpouring of concern into tangible assistance for victims. To do their part and put this massive rescue effort in motion, they didn't need a squadron of C-130 cargo planes; they did it with telephones.
Combining the Ordinary and Extraordinary
There are many reasons for this unconventional network's success. Certainly one of them is its unconventional founder. Juan Carr's commitment, endless energy, and sparkplug-like mind serve as a detonator and magnet that make the network function.
A veterinarian by training and a practicing high-school biology teacher, Carr combines the ordinary and extraordinary in one person. On the one hand, he is a dedicated family man with four children. He prefers to be at home with his family, drink beer (or maté) with friends, play a game of football twice a week, or take a siesta in the afternoon. (He even claims to be lazy!)
Juan Carr enjoys one of his favorite beverages
On the other hand, he is deeply committed to his dream and has a remarkable capacity for creative thinking and hard work. Carr has all the characteristics of a social entrepreneur, according to Viel. "He is very creative, a natural entrepreneur, an obsessive: he is always looking for a way to get what he wants done," she said. "Faced with great problems, he always designs very creative solutions."
Carr is the only son of a father who left home when his son was just two years old. Carr credits the Boy Scouts for having shaped his vision of the world with their strong code of community service. In college, he organized a program to find shelter for the homeless, and another to aid lepers.
Carr's essential strength is his sense of mission, says Santiago Gowland, institutional relations manager for Unilever, Inc. in Argentina. It gives financial support to another of Carr's brainchildren, a training program for community workers. "He believes deeply in the culture of solidarity," Gowland said.
"He believes that it is an inherent part of the human being that each of us must develop . . . He lives it as a human being, and he is consistent in what he does and what he says."
Carr is constantly looking for human talent and, above all, commitment. "To build a Solidarity Network," says Carr, "all the time we are looking for quality people and commitment . . . We would never trade a person with quality and commitment – not even for a check worth $1 billion. A person who is committed to his community obtains many more things – and on top of it, gets the check for $1 billion!"
The network also benefits from Juan Carr's intuitive grasp of the fact that in order to mobilize the latent resources of the community, you must reach them through the media. He understood that you must make solidarity issues newsworthy in order to do that.
Carr became an expert in making news out of need: a homeless shelter is short of blankets; a blood donor is needed at a local hospital; volunteers are needed to visit elderly people who are alone; a child is missing. Thanks to the network's efforts – and Carr's badgering, cajoling and charm – Argentina's two leading papers now publish weekly special sections about solidarity issues: the people who volunteer, the organizations that work in the community, and those in need. One paper now runs a special classified ads section where organizations can broadcast their needs for supplies and volunteers.
"What impresses us is that, together with the media, we can save lives," Carr said. "We didn't know that a microphone, a TV screen, a camera can save lives. Most communicators are very sensitive, and in creating a culture of solidarity, they are playing a very important role."
To further spread the culture of solidarity, the network has spun off several educational programs that are run independently. One is aimed at informing professionals about society's problems, and how they can use their skills to right those wrongs.
(As Carr likes to say, "If a brilliant mind can make Wall Street tremble and interest rates fall three percent, why not use some of that talent to lower the rate of infant malnutrition by one percent?")
Juan Carr
Another program trains people to become community leaders who handle basic problems: what to do in a case of domestic violence; what to do when health insurance doesn't cover an essential drug; what to do when someone is found homeless on the street; what to do when a child is missing. The goal is that one of every 1,000 Argentines will know what to do in five years.
In essence, the Solidarity Network is a highly efficient and committed clearinghouse of information and ideas. It does not collect old clothing, it collects information. It does not distribute canned vegetables, it distributes information.
Network members are expert communicators. One measure of the network's success in communicating needs, and building the culture of solidarity, is to see how the calls it receives have changed: initially, 90 percent of the calls were requests for assistance.Today, 70 percent of the calls are offers to help. The network may be virtual, but the results are very real.
"I Want to Save . . . the Last Person Who Called Me"
The power of the Solidarity Network idea is its simplicity: if you give people the information to help each other, they will do so.
Somewhat like an insidious computer virus, the network's chaotic, flexible, non-hierarchical, no-leaders
approach makes it easily adaptable to different surroundings – and easily replicable. This is what
Juan Carr most wants to see: copies of the network proliferate across the globe.
He sums it up: "I have 30 or 40 years of life left . . . At the very least, I want to save the life of the last person who called me for help. And at best, I would like to leave behind me a global culture of solidarity . . . I want to transform reality because reality is complicated."
Carr may have a long way to go – and changing reality is a notoriously troublesome matter – but that doesn't deter him. He likes challenges and he likes to surprise people with what is possible – like the time he organized a Catholic parish, a Jewish community organization, and children from one of Argentina's poorest shanty towns to send supplies and moral support (drawings of peaceful scenery by the young shanty dwellers) to Muslim refugees, 14,000 km away in Kosovo.
It is these acts of solidarity between strangers – coming from people who are poor themselves, or of different religious backgrounds – that thrill Juan Carr. They prove his point that the world is full of perfect strangers who want to help each other.
They just have to be connected.
Needs:
Carr is looking for at least one person in every country who wants to copy the Solidarity Network model. True to the spontaneous spirit of his organization, he suggests that anyone interested in taking up the challenge begin with one or two other people. Tackle a real problem, he advises (e.g., one disabled person or one AIDS patient who needs medication), and transform it. "When you run into your first problem, give us a call," he says.
Contact:
Solidarity Network (Red Solidaria)
Argentina
Tel: 54-11-4761-7994
www.redsolidaria.org.ar
Kevin Carrel Footer is a journalist based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Responses are welcome at Kevin_footer_responses@hotmail.com
Read more articles on this topic:
|
October 2001 Journal Home Page