This issue of Global Giving Matters highlights two very different foundations that work in developing countries: The Hummingbird Trust, based in England, and Fondation Mérieux, based in France.
While precise statistics are not available, approximately 10% of European foundations do some giving outside of the developed world, according to Dr. Gerry Salole, chief executive of the European Foundation Centre (www.efc.be). Giving to Third World countries is comparable between the United States and Europe, he adds.
The four basic categories of U.S. foundations – community, family, corporate and private – do not work well for European philanthropies, Salole says. European foundations are more hybrid and their source of resources is more varied. “They have been around longer, and they therefore have had to change more over time. They are not governed by one set of laws. It makes them much more complicated.”
They also differ in other ways from U.S. foundations. “In Europe, you have foundations that aren’t grantmakers, but are actually operating their own programs. There’s also a very different understanding of how you use assets,” Salole says. In general, “European foundations are somewhat more advanced, in that mission-related use of assets is more frequent.”
While Fondation Mérieux and The Hummingbird Trust exemplify the diversity of European foundations, they have in common deep family commitments to meeting the needs of underserved people in the developing world.
The Hummingbird Trust: Mathias Family philanthropy crosses generations and continents
Four years ago, Chris and Clare Mathias sat down with their three daughters, then ages 9, 12 and 14, and invited them to enter the adult world of philanthropy. “I felt it was our responsibility to explain [inequality] to the kids and actually take some responsibility for all the unequal things in the world,” says Clare Mathias.
Both parents had been involved in philanthropic ventures for years, and wanted to create a counterbalance to the luxury of their everyday lives in Surrey, the richest county in England.
“The reality is that the majority of the world does not live like them – they live in nasty urban slums. They [his daughters] have a real understanding of that. They realize they are lucky, and with that goes a lot of responsibility,” says Chris Mathias, a businessman and philanthropist who was born in India and lived there until he was 16. Clare adds, “They’ve learned a whole load of life skills, should they have wealth in their future.”
The Mathias daughters play a hands-on role in the Hummingbird Trust, created by the family in 2007. They helped make the decision to concentrate on women’s issues and to focus on India, with which they feel a strong connection. The Mathiases are particularly interested in serving vulnerable young women and children in Calcutta who are at risk of sex trafficking. The trust also supports leadership initiatives internationally and some projects in the family’s local community.
Chris is an entrepreneur and philanthropist who cofounded CMG Partners and Arbor Ventures, both private investment management companies. Prior to that, he founded Conduit Communications Ltd., an IT consulting firm and service provider. Chris serves on the boards of World Links and Common Purpose. He supported the start-up of Basic Needs India, and is an advisor to Oxfam Great Britain. More recently, Chris was a founder of the British Asian Trust. He is currently involved in a business venture to identify, capture, and market new intellectual property in India.
Clare worked in the field of human resources for a major oil company for many years. Along with Chris, she plays on a polo team, which she also runs. In addition to her international work, Clare also is involved in a number of local community initiatives in the United Kingdom.
While Clare runs the trust, family members make joint decisions about what to fund and for how long. They also review how well grantees are doing and go together to Calcutta to see the work on the ground.
“One of our objectives is to work with the poorest of the poor and also look at communities that are particularly marginalized. We wanted to work in areas where society doesn’t deliver a fair deal for women,” Clare says. She pointed out that women in these communities are not considered just second-class citizens, but tenth-class citizens, and sex workers are “the lowest of the lowest of the low.”
The Hummingbird Trust sees itself as “small and very busy,” which is one reason for the name. Hummingbirds also have long beaks that allow them to reach areas other birds can’t reach. They evoke hope and freedom, and as the Mathias’ youngest daughter put it when they chose the name, “Humming is a happy sound.”
The trust supports NGOs that provide a range of direct services, including operating a women’s center, feeding children, running healthcare clinics, educating women and preventing violence in the home. In addition to direct interventions, however, the organizations provide holistic, integrated social development programs that promote women’s education, empowerment and leadership. The ultimate goal is for girls and their families to understand that they have other opportunities, so that they are not lured by offers of marriage without dowry or jobs in far-away countries that mask sophisticated sex trafficking operations.
“Mainly, we believe that vulnerability is a community-wide issue, and that increasing the voice of the whole community has to happen through greater empowerment and control for women,” Clare says. Typically, a group of women who are natural leaders start demanding their rights. It is not easy for these women, who have been subjugated their whole lives, to do this. “They have to be brave to stand up [to the men] and say, ‘I will educate my female children.’”
In deciding what NGOs to fund, the Mathiases take two parallel approaches, Chris explains. First, they try to think logically and strategically. “You have to understand your focus, the levers you’re trying to pull and what success might look like. On the other side, we absolutely back people we believe in. We back the man not the plan – or the woman in our case. The one thing we know for sure is that the plan is out of date the moment you hit ‘print.’ ”
After three years of experience, Hummingbird is now organizing a conference on best practices to improve the lot of vulnerable girls and women in India. “We want to review what we have learned so far and discuss what that tells us about where we go in the next three to five years.”
Clare is still working on exactly who will be invited to attend the conference, which will be held late in 2011. “There are hundreds of small NGOs focused on doing their own piece of what they believe is useful. My hypothesis is they don’t talk together,” she says. Based on advance research on what areas seem to be most important, the conference will bring the key stakeholders together. Two major questions to be addressed will be “how bad is the problem of sex trafficking, and how can we stop it?” adds Chris.
Once they can answer these questions, the family would like to give away more money, says Clare. She notes that so far the trust has been relatively modest in terms of the amount of money it has donated. In the early days, the focus was on getting the process right, understanding the complexity of the issues and engaging the children, Clare says.
Chris advises foundations that are considering working in the developing world to follow their heart. “If you want to do more than write a cheque, you need to have an emotional involvement in whatever you’re doing and that involves the heart,” he says. The other key is to really understand the culture of the area in which they want to work. “Go there with an open heart as well as an open mind because some of the things you see will shock you.”
Pragmatic Mérieux Family combats infectious disease throughout developing countries
The Mérieux family has a commitment to fighting infectious diseases that reaches back three generations to Marcel Mérieux, a pupil of the great French scientist Louis Pasteur. In 1897, Marcel Mérieux founded the Mérieux Institute to develop and manufacture human and animal vaccines.
Today, a network of biology laboratories throughout developing countries is attributable to Fondation Mérieux, founded in 1967 by Marcel’s son Charles, and the Fondation Christophe et Rodolphe Mérieux, established in 2001. The family’s business, bioMérieux, works to help improve public health worldwide through in vitro diagnostics. A percentage of bioMérieux’s profits supports the foundations.
Headquartered in France, the two foundations work closely together. They are now operating in China, Cambodia, Laos, Mali, Haiti, Madagascar and Lebanon and new projects are getting underway in Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia. Fondation Mérieux, which has a total annual budget of about €12 million, has committed to building one new laboratory per year in a developing country.
“We’ve learned that with an amount of money which is nothing for the U.S. or Western Europe, you can build a lab,” notes Alain Mérieux, son of Charles and chair of Fondation Mérieux (www.fondation-merieux.org).
Alain’s son Alexandre and two other family members serve on the Fondation Mérieux board of directors. Fondation Christophe et Rodolphe Mérieux was founded by Alain’s wife in memory of their son Rodolphe, who was killed in the crash of TWA Flight 800 in 1996. The foundation’s name was changed after Christophe died of heart failure in 2006, at age 39.
Fondation Mérieux started its international work in Southeast Asia. Dr. Christophe Mérieux, who worked as a medical doctor in Vietnam for many years, had the idea to build diagnostic labs in the field to fight infectious disease. Christophe also had worked in Haiti, which sparked the family’s interest in the country, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. Fondation Mérieux’s first project in Haiti was a microcredit program for women infected with AIDS, in conjunction with Gheskio, an NGO that provides services, research and training in HIV/AIDS and related diseases.
“We focus on what we know and what we can handle, which is infectious disease diagnostics,” says Alain Mérieux, 72. “But we can’t close our eyes when we are in countries where people are starving. We work with an NGO with microcredit because in some countries it’s not enough to make a diagnosis; you have to treat the people, and you have to feed them and the best way to feed them is through microcredit for women.”
In October 2009, just a few months before the devastating earthquake in Haiti, the foundation inaugurated the country’s only laboratory focusing on both AIDS and the identification of bacteria. The lab sustained minor damage in the earthquake. “We were very lucky that everyone was safe,” says Karine Mehler, Alain Mérieux’s niece and a foundation board member. As a result of the earthquake, the foundation is now seeking partners to build new villages, provide clean water and improve sanitation, she adds.
As in Haiti, the foundation chooses where to operate internationally based on need and relationships. “We try to be in a country where we can be useful and where we have reliable people in front of us with whom we can work. We are very pragmatic,” Alain Mérieux says.
For example, the foundation chose to work in Cambodia because the Mérieux family was acquainted with the dean of faculty of a pharmaceutical school there, who is now involved in running the lab. In Laos, the Minister of Health took on the project. A native of Mali who worked at bioMérieux convinced Dr. Christophe Mérieux to set up a diagnostic lab and training program in Bamako. Subsequently, Fondation Mérieux built a network of labs throughout Mali, Senegal and Burkina Faso.
The foundation decided to bring its work to the Middle East because the dean of St. Joseph University in Beirut had been a school friend of Alain Mérieux when they were children. Fondation Mérieux set up a lab in a new university building in Beirut. The move to Central Asia came when officials in Tajikistan asked the foundation to build a laboratory because of the serious problem of infectious diseases, particularly polio.
The foundation’s involvement differs depending on the country. “I always say that we work like a bacteria – we adapt to the field and the environment,” Alain Mérieux notes. In some countries, the foundation partners with the government; in others the partnership is with private foundations or universities. “We move forward only when we are sure of the partner we have locally. We have to be asked by the country, and be supported by the local authorities,” Mérieux says. “We are not building a Mérieux lab; we are building a lab that is for the country.”
However, the foundation insists that partners in developing countries share its core values of efficiency, excellence and transparency. “We cannot deviate from that,” he adds.
The biggest challenge facing the foundation is the enormity of the need throughout the world. Alain Mérieux believes tuberculosis is the greatest threat, which particularly disturbs him. “When I was a young intern at a hospital in the 1960s, we thought TB was behind us. We closed many TB hospitals in France, as they did everywhere. We thought with vaccine and antibiotics the problem was solved.” Malaria, hospital-acquired infections, and food-borne illnesses also are widespread in the developing world.
As a result of the overwhelming need, Alain Mérieux acknowledges that the family foundations have to figure out how to move forward in terms of financing while keeping the same high quality. “As a family we can’t go much further,” he says.
The needs go well beyond the laboratories. “We are focused on infectious diseases but we cannot close our eyes to what’s going on in the streets,”Alain Mérieux says. “We want to work with people. You can’t fight infectious disease if you don’t have access to drinking water, and if you have no access to toilets. We have to take a systematic approach with other foundations and other governments.”
It would be easy for the extended Mérieux family, which is very close, to focus inward. As Mehler says, “When I am in France everything seems so far. But when you are in the field you see how important the work is that we are doing. It’s very concrete while you are there.”