Around the globe, a force for change

In 1980, my father found himself in Port Sudan, a small city near the Red Sea in east Africa. His stay there hadn’t started well: He was stuck in a small, hot and humid hotel, sick and miserable with dysentery.

But then Dad visited a settlement camp of 50,000 refugees from war-torn Ethiopia and Eritrea — and his own misfortunes were quickly dismissed. The camp had no water or sanitation facilities and the people there had very little food, posing a tremendous humanitarian challenge. 

Dad was part of a team hosted by international relief agencies that was tasked with addressing this challenge. After countless hours of effort, he and many others eventually did overcome the crisis with a combination of permanent water supply and public health facilities and food relief logistics. Ultimately, their efforts made a huge difference in the lives of tens of thousands of people.