Baptist World Aid works with other Baptist relief organisations to provide assistance to support three types of programme – relief, development and fellowship assistance. It is currently working with Hungarian partners to help Afghan refugees living in Pakistan. From its headquarters outside Washington, director Paul Montacute spoke to Lauren Pollock about these activities and others in Belize and North Korea.

AN: What is the mission of Baptist World Aid?

PM: Baptist World Aid is part of the Baptist World Alliance. Its specific role is really supporting those in need irrespective of colour, creed and race. The agency is funded mainly by Baptists around the world but also by donations that come to us.

AN: What kinds of assistance do you support?

PM: We have three main areas. One is relief, after situations like earthquakes, fires, or floods. Then we’re also involved in development work around the world, which would be agricultural, medical and educational work like the building of schools, supplying of hospitals, and helping street children. Then we do have a third grouping. As a Christian organisation, we help churches in underdeveloped areas within their church ministry work.

AN: How does Baptist World Aid work with partner organisations?

PM: If I looked at a situation like Belize, where Hurricane Iris recently hit, there we’re working through the local Baptist community, so that they’re the people who do the work there. We have three words that try to describe how we do that. We are entrusting our local partners. We’re empowering our local partners. Then we provide them with the means, so we’re enabling our local partners in the work that they’re doing. It’s only in places where we don’t have Baptists that we would work through another Baptist group. I think it’s important to note that we are an international organisation. Our membership is drawn from over 200 different Baptist groups all over the world. We are based here in the United States but we’re not an American organisation

AN: What is the organisation doing to help those suffering from the September 11 attacks in the United States?

PM: We opened a fund so that people could make contributions, not so much for people in the United States to give contributions because I think they had so many avenues. We received such a flood of letters and e-mails of regret and sympathy over what happened here. It was actually our Baptist groups from overseas that said 'we want a means by which we can help the situation in the United States'. It was quite moving, really. These funds will be used by Baptists here in Washington and also in New York, particularly for the counselling of families who were affected by the disaster. Baptist groups here in the States moved in a big way, cooking meals for rescue workers and providing help. They really get up to do that in disaster situations here in the States and neighbouring countries.

AN: What projects do you have in other countries?

PM: One exciting project at the moment is in North Korea. We are again working with Hungarian colleagues and also British colleagues. We have been providing medical supplies to a children’s hospital and an orphanage. We rented an apartment as a base in Pyongyang so that we can have people living there and assisting in the distribution of these goods and also be helping in English as a foreign language training. We are very active in a number of different parts of Africa where there has either been war or strife. Where we have Baptist groups, we are trying to help with the health and healing of the situation. That would be true in Sierra Leone, in Liberia, in Congo and in Rwanda. For Sierra Leone, we are sending some spare tractor parts for a tractor we provided for the Baptist convention there to assist on an agricultural project. In Rwanda, we are supporting the building of homes for some of the widows and orphans still left from the tragedy of six years ago. In Liberia, we are supporting local Baptists in their work there, which is mostly educational work in schools. I was in Congo recently, where we were working with a number of Baptist communities on some of their agricultural plans. Then we will be different from other most relief and development organisations in that we would rarely send in experts. We would try to rely all the time on the indigenous groups to provide the leadership for these projects.

AN: What are some of your goals for the organisation?

PM: Really we want to see a development in the work that each of our member bodies does around the world, in caring for their own situation and those in close proximity. For instance, we have seen this in recent years in Zimbabwe where the capacity of the Baptist groups has increased. As well as their own concerns about their country at the present time, they are reaching out and undertaking work in Mozambique. That’s an encouragement to us. Our goal is also one of growth. We want to be able to fund more projects, which are presented to us by our Baptist community for development projects and we’d like to be able to respond more adequately in the ever increasing number of emergency situations there are around the world.

AN: What challenges does Baptist World Aid face?

PM: I think we face the challenge of trying to share knowledge of what we’re doing. We are, first of all, a worldwide Baptist community. I think, as with many other organisations at the moment, we face a challenge of a multiplicity of different emergency situations around the world, so determining priorities as to where and how you can do something is a growing challenge.

AN: How did you personally become involved in this organisation?

PM: I first became involved with Baptist World Alliance, which is our mother organisation back in 1963. I was a young man who heard about a conference being held by the organisation in Beirut. I went and realised the extent of the work of this international Baptist family. Then, 11 years ago, I was elected director of Baptist World Aid, so I moved across from the U.K., became an alien in a foreign land and here I still am.

AN: What do you find most rewarding about working in this field?

PM: I think I have to say looking into people’s eyes and looking into people’s faces. That can be the most soul-destroying thing, when you’re looking into the eyes of a baby you know is probably going to be dead by the end of the day, suffering from malnutrition or HIV or something similar. The most rewarding too is looking into the eyes of people and seeing how, collectively, we’ve been able to help in a particular situation whether that was providing food or medicine or helping them to build a school or dig a well.

AN: What are some of your upcoming events or projects?

PM: The ongoing work through relief in places like Belize following Hurricane Iris and the situation in Pakistan as well as Africa. One of the other things we try to do at least once a year is organise a conference or training event for our Baptist groups in a particular region of the world. For instance, in May I was doing a training conference in Bolivia for our Latin American groups to try to encourage them and train them as to how they can become more involved in disaster-preparedness or development projects. Each year we try to hold one of these conferences in a different part of the world.