Al York’s 44-year management and consulting career includes military service, business, and nonprofit work. He spent nine years in the US Air Force as an aviation weather observer and as an aviation weather forecaster. Next, he spent ten years with a Fortune 100 business. Since 1983, York has worked in international relief and development during which time he spent 20 years at World Concern, a faith-based international relief and development agency. He has worked in operations, administration, program implementation, executive management, and at the board level. York lived and worked in Africa, where he oversaw work for Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Rwanda. From 1995 to 2005, York had oversight for 20 countries and managed the relief and development program budget of $30,000,000, with a staff of 900.

For more than 20 years, York’s work included developing funding from foundations, US government, bi-lateral agencies, and international funding sources. That work includes nearly 35 million dollars of US federal grants and 15 million dollars in other grants.

York is active in his community, serving on several nonprofit boards.  That community service includes writing grants for state and US government agencies. He has also been involved in youth sports for more than 20 years.

York attended Boise State College and completed a certificate in nonprofit management and organization at Case Western Reserve University, Mandel School, with a practicum in strategic planning. More recently, he completed executive management classes in outcome measures and nonprofit leadership at the Harvard Business School.

Senior Consultant Beckie Sill

 Beckie grew up in Ivory Coast, West Africa from 1962 to 1976.  She has worked in the Netherlands Antilles and has traveled to Liberia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Kenya, South Africa, Swaziland, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Bangladesh.

From 1989 to 1993, Beckie served as a Research Analyst and Research Director for Hebert Research in Bellevue, Washington.  She began her career with World Concern in 1993 and continued there until 1997, working in the area of grant compliance, program evaluation and grant writing for foundation and government donors.  She returned to World Concern in 2002 as a consultant, doing grant writing and survey research.  For six years, Beckie also served as Adjunct Professor at Northwest University in Kirkland, Washington, where she advised students on their thesis research projects and taught Methods of Research and Analysis, Organizational Communications and Group and Organizational Dynamics.

Since 2006, Beckie has worked with a broad-base of local and international nonprofits, including organizations working in education, human services, medicine, information technology, and international relief and development.  Her services include prospect research, development of foundation fund-raising strategies, market research, and writing for grant proposals, reports and direct mail.  Along with domestic foundations and corporations, Beckie's portfolio includes USAID, OFDA and ECHO grants.

Beckie graduated from Crown College with a BA in Communications and from Wheaton College with an MA in Communications. She served a graduate school internship at Centre Evangelique de Formation a la Communication en Afrique in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

Beckie resides in Bothell, Washington with her husband Michael and two children, Natalie and Caleb.

If there was ever a scenario for a young food monitor to fail, it was that of Mary Njorogi in Kenya, 2004. I met Mary in Narok District, Kenya, at a time of drought and famine. I was working with a team that was providing food aid to 200,000 people—mostly Maasai pastoralists. Mary was assigned to the UN school feeding program in the district. It was a difficult time in Kenya, fraught with ethnic clashes, high ethnic tensions, food shortages, and, unfortunately, corruption.

Mary took over a program that was one of those experiencing corruption. She was from an unpopular ethnic group in the area; she was a woman in a very male-dominated social structure; and she was responsible to oversee a program where powerful people were benefiting at the expense of hungry school children. Mary was put in a position where failure, even personal harm, was likely. She did not shirk the responsibility—she stepped into a maelstrom and set to work to see children receive the food they needed to be successful in school.

I watched Mary as she created relationships where none existed; as she pushed through barriers that had stood for years; and as she forged unlikely alliances, bringing disparate elements together. Mary turned the school feeding program around and established new, higher standards for success in food aid. Mary Njorogi taught me that quality programs are built, not only on good systems, but on courage, commitment, and perseverance in the face of adversity.
 

Christon Domond
Faith, Trust, Energy

I worked with Christon for 10 years. We had a difficult beginning. I had recently been involved in removing his boss, and Christon was his successor. We did not know each other—he a field officer moving into the head office in Port au Prince, Haiti, and I was a manager making periodic visits to the country. Between the two of us, we had the responsibility of taking a troubled organization and making it into a growing, successful agency that would have a powerful impact on the poor in Haiti. Our first meetings were quiet, courteous, and brief. Long drives to the south of the country produced little conversation.

As I watched Christon interact with people in the field, I began to gain a real respect for his talents. He had boundless energy, working from early mornings to late nights. He always had the same warm, inviting demeanor, whether greeting a peasant farmer in a field, a government official, or a visiting donor.

In our first year of working together, we faced a crisis in a program that demanded action. I had a very strong opinion as to how we should proceed. Christon disagreed. Those that are familiar with relationships in the development community know that there is often a strain between local managers and those like me who represent the senior management outside of the country. The lack of trust exacerbated this crisis situation. Christon’s response was to say, “Okay, I will trust your judgment.” Rather than earning Christon’s trust, he gave it to me. It was unmerited; I had done nothing to earn his respect or to demonstrate my trustworthiness. But rather than allowing distrust to hurt or harm the program, Christon gave me his unmerited trust. He had good arguments, but he relented, trusting me.

By investing trust in me, Christon opened himself up to failure if I was wrong. His first step in extending his trust laid the foundation for a long-term trusting relationship. If he could trust me, then I could trust him. The trust I grew to have in Christon was never disappointed. In difficult times—times when we disagreed—that trust carried our relationship.

From Christon I learned that, often, to gain trust, you must give trust.
 

Prodip Dowa
Humility, Love, Resolve

In his country, Prodip is a double minority—ethnic and religious. For more than 20 years, he had developed, managed, and led programs that were devoted to the poorest people in Bangladesh. Often challenged because of his beliefs, he always returned those challenges with love, respect, and a firm resolve. He is a humble man, not at all braggadocios or boastful. In every relationship, he demonstrates his love and a deep respect for all persons and all faiths. That brings him great credibility in a sometimes fractured society, which is rife with differences at every level. With that credibility, Prodip is able to weave together diverse and competing interests into successful community development, benefiting people at all levels. Where powerful people cannot make progress Prodip forges unlikely alliances that demonstrate mercy and justice.

Prodip taught me that firm resolve, framed in love and humility, can carry you through a crucible of prejudice and intimidation for the betterment of all.
 

Sheikdon Mohammed
Peace, Humor, Sacrifice

To me, Sheikdon was a Somali’s Somali. He could recite his family name for 50 generations and recount the hundred different colors of a camel. He sang beautiful Somali folk songs—almost all of which extol the virtue of various camels.

In 1991, the civil war in Somalia had turned to anarchy. Hundreds of thousands had descended on Mogadishu, trying to escape the fighting and the lack of food in the countryside. They were in camps of stick huts throughout the city. Aid was able to get to the port, but little could get through the many roadblocks that were manned by competing factions in the city. Thousands were dying as various clans fought for power.

Sheikdon was my agency’s Somali administrator at the time. He was an elder in every sense—his eyes bluing with age. Sheikdon had clan affiliations, but he held, above all, his commitment to peace and to serving people in need. Daily, he ventured throughout Mogadishu, encountering hostile roadblock after hostile roadblock in order to get aid to those in need. Often without an armed escort, he moved medical supplies, food, and water to the helpless thousands who were trapped by the conflict in decrepit camps. He literally laid his life on the line every day for more than three years. He talked, cajoled, negotiated, connived, and sometimes bullied his way through countless situations and saved thousands of Somali lives. On more than one occasion, I saw him defuse deadly situations with his wonderful sense of humor.

Sheikdon was well connected with the expatriate community; he could have taken his family and left Somalia at any time to escape to freedom, safety, and peace—three things that he valued highly. But he remained in Mogadishu, absolutely dedicated to saving lives and being an agent of peace.

In July 1995, just after I returned to the US from Africa, I learned that my friend Sheikdon had been murdered along with his wife. Sheikdon taught me that sacrifice was more than giving up something important—real sacrifice, he showed, was giving up what was most important to him so that others could have peace, life, and freedom from oppression.
 

Damien Lugemiya
Forgiveness, Determination, Joy

I only spent four months in post-genocide Rwanda, but that time and experience had a profound impact on me. As Charles Dickens says in the opening of a Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” It was the best of times, in that a country had been liberated from oppression. It was the worst of times, in that 800,000 Rwandans had been murdered.

I hired a young returnee from Uganda. Damien was a veterinary technician, and I had set up a program course for rebuilding small livestock for widows and orphans. He was so quiet, so gentle—so much so that most did not have confidence in him. However, every job that Damien took on, every task, he attacked with such vigor and energy as to astound you. I remember his reaction to our first full day of field work after weeks of office work in curriculum development and training. As we walked out of a corral, he threw his head back and let out a howl: “Ahieee! I love to work!” It was sheer joy—his joy in finally working with animals and kids again; his joy in helping an orphanage; his joy in being a part of rebuilding his country. If only everyone could experience such joy in their work; the world would be transformed.

It wasn’t only his energy that impressed me. I found that each time his responsibilities increased, he exceeded expectations. In spite of the fact that Damien’s family had been driven from the country by the ethnic majority and that his family members were numbered among the victims of the genocide, he had no animosity. He wanted nothing less than complete reconciliation in his country. He sought to be a living part of that reconciliation, day by day.

I saw in Damien the joy of someone who completely lived to serve others. I saw in him the release from the oppression of hate; a man whose simple faith had a powerful impact on many. I returned to visit Damien several times in two years. He continued to grow and to impact lives. Two years after I left Rwanda, Damien died of AIDS. The loss of Damien to AIDS is a constant reminder to me of the devastation of that disease. When I consider how much Rwanda lost with Damien’s death, I am reminded that thousands like him have died in Africa. How long can a nation continue to lose such incredible people and continue to survive?
 

Young Hee Park
Faithfulness, Generosity, Dignity

Young Hee Park is important to me as a personal representative of the millions of Korean families that are separated by their divided country. The separation of these families is one of the great, untold tragedies of our time. We traveled together to North Korea in 1998. Here is a vignette from that trip and the story of a reunion.

February 27, 1998, 1300 L
We crossed the Yalu River from Dandong, China, to Siniju, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), in a Toyota van. I told my colleague, Rev. Young Hee Park, that I was feeling a little tension. He laughed and said, "Me too."

Young Hee had far greater reason for a stirring of emotions. In 1950, as a young seminary student of 22, he left the city of Siniju, North Korea, to the drone of American B-29's and the thunder of bombs ripping into the city. His escape from conscription and a six-month trek to reach the UN forces is the stuff of epic movies. As we rattled past the center of the bridge, we passed the remnants of the bombed second bridge, rebuilt by the Chinese only to the center of the river. It's only use now is as a tourist observation site. In spite of the tension, the old man sitting next to me was smiling. So much must have been going on in his mind as he entered his birth country for the first time since 1950. As we traveled through China by train throughout the previous days, he gave me bits and pieces of his extraordinary story and the family he had not seen in nearly fifty years. Before him was the possibility that he would see his 82-year-old sister—he had not seen her in nearly 50 years, and he was not even sure if she was alive. I learned that the division of Korea had separated as many as five million families. Over 50 years, most had never heard anything of their relatives in the North. There were occasional letters. There was some cross-border contact out of China, but most could not learn the fate of their families. It is Korea's great sorrow. In a culture where family is so deeply valued, this divide cuts into the very soul of the country; there is a daily ache for the reuniting of those families.

We were in the country for ten days when news arrived that they had located Young Hee’s sister. Arrangements were made for Young Sun to come to the hotel for dinner.

It was hours before the meeting would take place. Young Hee was beside himself with emotion. “I am so excited,” he said. His eyes were glistening, his foot tapping. As we continued to talk about the reunion, he wiped tears from his eyes. Since we had come by train, Young Hee was able to bring a couple of extra suitcases of clothes and gifts for his family. Before we left China, he had purchased a case of apples and some other food, so he had quite a load to deliver. We waited nervously in his room. He paced about, then went to his suitcase and said, “I have a lot of socks; I don’t need these.” He took them and stuffed them in the suitcase for his sister. I said, “I have extras too. We only have a few days left. I don’t need them.” I went to my room and returned with socks. Young Hee stuffed them in the suitcase. He went to his closet. “I have an extra coat,” he said, almost to himself. He brought the coat, then an extra pair of shoes, and put them in one of the boxes. I followed his lead. “I have extra boots—I won’t need them when we get to China.” I ran for those. I returned, and Young Hee was going through his own suitcase. “There is so much I don’t need,” he said. He started transferring more to boxes for his family. I ran back to my room—an extra sweater, pants, T-shirts—I brought them all. By this time, we were in frenzy. We were grabbing everything we could find, calculating how few pairs of socks we would need to make it home. We were laughing, throwing everything but essentials into the boxes. We finally finished and sat down. Young Hee had a huge smile on his face and tears running down his cheeks. I had never felt so free, so unburdened. I had almost nothing to carry—it would be a great trip home without all of the excess. In those crazy moments, as I followed Young Hee’s lead, I learned the lesson of giving—the blessing and the unburdening that comes with giving your excess to those in need.

The phone rang and Young Hee ran to answer. She was there—in the hotel. We were going now to meet her and her son.

Young Sun is eighty-two. The reunion was emotional for all those present. Young Hee cried out, “Ohh!” when he recognized his sister and took her in his arms. They held each other for a long time.

Young Sun said, “I have no regrets now, even if I die now, now that I have seen my brother’s face.” She clutched her brother’s hand with both of hers. She never let go. She almost never looked away from her brother’s face. Briefly, as her brother talked with her son, she gazed off across the room, staring quietly, motionless. Who could say where she wandered to in her mind—back to the Japanese occupation? The American war? The recent food crisis? Was she remembering her own mother and father before they were lost?

Young Sun’s father-in-law, it turns out, was an interpreter for the Russians after the liberation. He had escaped north in the occupation and ended up in Russia. Young Sun spoke with pride of the important person he had been. Park’s brother, four years older, disappeared during the war. No one knew how he died. His other sister had lived south of Pyongyang and was a farmer, but she had died 13 years ago from stomach cancer. Her husband died 10 years later. Young Sun’s husband died when she was 30. She had lived alone since. She worked as a chef. She had one son, Bae Su Wong, and two grand children, 26 and 27 years old, who were both in the army. Su Wong’s wife worked on a farm near the city and came home on weekends.

At first they told Park that everything was fine. Later they admitted that the last two years had been hard, that they only had two meals a day, and that one of the meals was soup. Park was able to give them a quantity of food and supplies.

The reunion lasted two hours and twenty minutes, but Park was happy. “Too short,” he said, “but it is okay. I have seen my sister. She is beautiful.”

It was an emotional evening. It was a wonderful evening. It was a privilege to be present for one of the tens of thousands of reunions that are waiting to take place.

 

 Pvt. 1st Class Domingo Arroyo

 

Devotion to Duty

 

In January 1993 I was visiting humanitarian work in Somalia where my organization was engaged in emergency relief. I was spending some time with the staff in Mogadishu. Morning brought a dry food distribution at the compound – several thousand people lined up for a few kilos of dry corn each. In the afternoon we traveled outside the compound to provide health services to one of many camps we had responsibility for. While we traveled with armed guards we were only able to make these regular trips around Mogadishu since the American military had landed there weeks before. The American and UN military presence allowed for food shipments, food distribution and health clinics that had been stopped by frequent fighting in the city.

 

As we visited one of refugee/IDP camps that we were responsible for our nursing staff put on a clinic, treating wounds and various ailments; identifying those that needed to see a doctor. I accompanied a nurse named Verda. Verda was a peace-loving Mennonite – a pacifist whose empathy for the poor took her to places of strife like El Salvador and Somalia. After the clinic Verda moved from hut to hut checking on each family – almost all women headed households. At one hut we found a seriously emaciated child (see photo). Her name was Hawa and she was five years old – the same age as my daughter. She was skeletal and cried incessantly. Verda noted that she was seriously dehydrated as well as malnourished. We spent a long time here as Verda quizzed the mother and gave instructions. She produced a water bottle and some packets of oral re-hydration salts (ORS). She gave Hawa’s mom the water and ORS with instructions on how to treat her child.

 

We moved on to other huts and as we walked I asked Verda about Hawa’s chances of survival. She thought that the child might not live through the night. If she did, and the treatment with ORS and food could continue, she might survive.

 

That night I lay awake for a long time wondering if little Hawa would live. We rose early in the morning and headed out to cross the “Green Line” to the northern part of Mogadishu for the work there. As we neared the airport where the Marines were quartered we sensed real change; deserted streets and at the airport tense, serious Marines – not the relaxed, joking men we had encountered in previous days. Early that day a young Marine was shot and killed by a sniper. Private 1^st Class Domingo Arroyo was the first American Marine to die in Somalia. There continued, a somber tone as we passed through various checkpoints that day.

 

In the afternoon we returned to the camp where we had found Hawa and her mother the day before. We made our way to her hut; I wondered whether she had lived through the night.

 

She lived. She was doing better and Verda left more water, ORS and food. 

 

That night I considered the events of the day. A young Marine died; a Somali child lived. It was a hard trade. That young Marine, Domingo Arroyo, gave what Abraham Lincoln called, “the last full measure of devotion”.