Earthquake in Haiti: Corporations Respond
Beyond Relief:The BCLC Strives To Bring Recovery To Haiti

Editor: Please tell us about your background at the Business Civic Leadership Center.

Jordan: In 1997 I joined the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the Foreign Policy and International Division where I worked on international trade issues. I honestly knew very little about corporate citizenship at that time. Then, when Hurricanes Mitch and Georges hit Central America, I was able to witness firsthand the phenomenon of corporate citizenship - and was surprised to learn why companies get engaged in different kinds of external challenges. We compiled a list of over 75 companies that together gave close to $170 million to the recovery effort in Central America and the Caribbean, an amount greater than they had ever generated in revenues in those markets.

I found this display of corporate citizenship to be very intriguing. Furthermore, when I went to speak with the Red Cross, along with other disaster-relief organizations (including many Hispanic ones), I learned that they were as much advocates for "aid plus trade" as we were. From a business perspective, philanthropy is good as far as it goes, but if you really want to make a recovery sustainable in the long term, then you need business investment.

I became so interested in corporate citizenship that in 1998 I became a kind of in-house entrepreneur and began work on starting up both a corporate citizenship program and a critical infrastructure protection program. In May 2000, the Center for Corporate Citizenship was established, and I was named executive director. (We changed the name to the Business Civic Leadership Center five years ago.)

Meanwhile, we staffed the Partnership for Critical Infrastructure Security, and we helped to launch it and the National Cyber Safety Alliance. We signed a memorandum of understanding with FEMA to enhance communication and facilitate cooperation between the public and private sectors with regard to disaster response in 2000.

This was somewhat ahead of its time, as it preceded 9/11, and it struck a chord - it was a wake-up call to our world's interconnectedness.

Editor: When you speak of "critical infrastructure," do you mean domestic or global?

Jordan: That's the interesting piece; it's all global. Transportation does not stop at our nation's borders, and certainly our financial system does not stop at our nation's borders. We need to think of infrastructure security in global terms. Likewise corporate citizenship cannot stop at the border. Early on at the then-called Center for Corporate Citizenship, we began to think about corporate citizenship in terms of recovery and development, and therefore, we were thinking in terms of relationships. So while we were considering, of course, the humanitarian side of our work, we were also considering the interconnectedness of business within a much larger context, including impacts on the local environment.

I have never thought of myself as being in the climate change business, but in retrospect, I have ended up being involved - unfortunately - with the effects of extreme weather for the last 12 years.

Editor: What has the Center done in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti?

Jordan: The Office Depot Foundation helped us set up a Help Desk, and it is run by Ines Pearce, the former head of the Office of Emergency Management for the city of Seattle, with a team of experts in the field. At the moment we are dealing with over a thousand different cases, many of which involve countless moving parts. The Help Desk matches up a nonprofit's request with companies most likely to partner on a particular challenge, and vice versa. For example, UPS and FedEx are working on shipping issues for a variety of nonprofits. Microsoft, Cisco, IBM and Motorola are assisting on telecommunications and IT challenges.

We have more complicated projects that come over the transom as well. Navistar has offered to donate 11 heavy-duty trucks that will be critical for the infrastructure rebuild, so we need to figure out how we will get the trucks from Alabama, say, to the Dominican Republic and on to Haiti. Who will do the shipping? Who will receive them once they arrive? That's the work of the Help Desk.

Editor: What about the roles of other countries?

Jordan: As I said earlier, the interconnectedness of our world today is undeniable. The UN World Food Program has been deeply involved, feeding an estimated 70,000 Haitians a day, and other organizations, like the Pan American Development Foundation, are bringing Caribbean and Central American players to the table as well.

Meanwhile, we are seeing solutions elsewhere in the region of Central America and the Caribbean, and we would like to import those to Haiti. An amazing Texas entrepreneur named Steve Miller in Guatemala has invented some life-saving "machines" at very low cost; by working with the indigenous people in the Guatemalan highlands, he learned what would and would not work. He and his group created an ingenious water filtration system - out of a few buckets and some charcoal - that can provide clean water for 20 people for a year, all for about 30 or 40 dollars. Obviously these would be immeasurably useful in Haiti. His group has also designed an amazing stove that reduces the wood-burning content of a standard stove by 70 percent, which would be perfect for Haiti, where deforestation is a major issue.

Editor: What are the current challenges to coordinating efforts on the ground?

Jordan: The problem is that there are so many projects and initiatives that many people can't keep track of what is going on or who is doing what or where. At the moment, for instance, several different organizations are saying they are helping orphanages in Port-au-Prince, but there is little known about which orphanages and how these organizations might coordinate with each other.

Another problem is that people are so focused on Port-au-Prince, they may be neglecting the fact that so many Haitians have left the city or are trying to go, and a huge diaspora is developing. We are getting reports of large numbers of patient refugees from hospitals in the Dominican Republic. We need to be focusing not only on the primary responders, but also on the secondary responders, because people are flooding out of the primary impact zone.

Editor: How do you envision the recovery going forward?

Jordan: Right now, the key is to stabilize the current situation. We respect the authority of the Haitian government, and they must ensure community safety and figure out what to do with the debris and the many physical hazards. It remains a very dire situation in terms of shelter, delivery of food and water, and healthcare. Clearly, these must be stabilized first.

But the relief model is unsustainable in the long term. The private sector mobilized over $60 million in just three days after the Haiti earthquake, and to date has contributed close to $147 million. This is already the third largest corporate response to an international disaster (following the earthquake in China and the Southeast Asian tsunami of 2004). But consider this: if you've got a million people or more who are displaced, and you spend just 10 dollars a day to feed and shelter them, $120 million will be gone in 12 days. We need to think in terms of recovery, not relief.

Too often we have been short-sighted about recovery - after getting people evacuated, folks are ready to move on. After Hurricane Katrina we basically paid to have local chambers, small businesses and residents evacuated out of the hazard, and then we left them in limbo. We discovered that this level of response was simply not enough: once a situation is stabilized, you need to figure out a viable living situation. Self-sustainability is the greatest challenge, and I think that if we want to achieve actual recovery, we need to have people employed in the recovery of housing, infrastructure, debris waste management, environmental management and, finally, sustainable businesses.

Following Katrina, we created a kind of "buddy system" in which local small businesses and chambers of commerce were paired up with counterpart businesses and chambers not in the impact area. We are considering setting up a similar system in Haiti, but we are concerned that issues of sovereignty, language, comfort level and cultural understanding may preclude this from working successfully.

Editor: I realize it is too early to say what the success of the relief will be, so in the meantime, what ripple effects do you predict?

Jordan: The thing about a disaster is that it really unveils whatever was broken with the community beforehand, then takes that to the next level. Before the earthquake, the per capita income in Haiti was $800 a year, which meant that the vast majority of people were probably living on one to two dollars a day. Add to that a lack of education and a lack of technical expertise, and you have a situation in which a population absolutely needs international support but may not know exactly what to ask for. Meanwhile, foreign entities, able to help but aware of sovereignty issues, are walking on eggshells.

Furthermore, the rainy season begins in March, at which point we will likely have a whole new disaster on our hands. I imagine the outflow of Haitians will continue to grow. How long can you live in a tent 100 feet from a cemetery where your loved ones are buried? How long can you tolerate living on land where your house and all your belongings are now crushed? How long will you watch your children getting meals from the back of a truck before you decide to leave? There could be a very great impact on South Florida in terms of immigration and on the rest of the Caribbean in terms of stretching already scarce resources.

Similarly, of the 9 million Haitians in total, about 900,000 Haitians live in the U.S. now, which means that one in ten Haitians have already moved here - so we may well see a huge influx of their family members into the U.S.

Editor: What would you say to companies that want to help?

Jordan: I would strongly encourage them to call our Help Desk hotline at 1-888-MY-BIZ-HELP. They should also check out the pool of resources we have at uschamber.com/bclc. From there you can connect to many other resources that will build real recovery. Companies should also contact Aidmatrix.org, an excellent Web site that partners supply chain management with communities in need.

People need to realize that this is not just a Haitian disaster, this is a disaster for the region. And, as I said earlier, folks have to really think about the fact that this might be a marathon and not just a sprint. We will continue to need help going forward, especially if you factor in that many governments, businesses and nonprofits that have already given huge checks might be maxed out now.

One thing that I want to convey is that this is not a big PR move by companies - most people probably couldn't even name a half-dozen companies that are involved in this response. No one is getting a huge PR benefit out of this. I think that what we are seeing is a kind of "enlightened self-interest" on the one hand and long-term thinking on the other. Companies are building the kind of morale and motivation among their employees that is priceless. I think, too, that this response points to a generational change, one that recognizes our world's interconnectedness and understands that collaboration is key when building sustainable recovery.