by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

February 26, 2009

In 2005, Judy and John Craig read a New York Times article about a successful anti-poverty effort in an African village.

The article recounted the work of noted economist Jeffrey Sachs, who brought a multipronged approach to increasing the Kenyan village’s crop production, school system, health care, and nutrition.

What especially appealed to John Craig was the notion that “you have to meaningfully involve the people you are trying to help.”

“Without their participation and their ownership, any attempts to sustain what you’re doing are going to fall apart,” he said. “Their definition of success is not what happens while you are there but what happens 10 years after you’re gone.”

Now, some four years later, the Craigs are helping other African villages apply Sachs’ principles — through an agency of the Israeli foreign ministry.

Called MASHAV, the ministry’s Center for International Cooperation was created in 1958 by Golda Meir, who was then Israel’s foreign minister. Meir wished to share Israeli agricultural know-how with drought-stricken African lands that faced problems similar to her own nation’s.

Through MASHAV, the Craigs helped finance and arrange for African agricultural and development experts to travel for advanced training in Israel. Some of them hailed from Sauri, the very village mentioned in the Times article.

“It is just extraordinary what they are doing,” said Judy Craig of MASHAV, as she sat at the kitchen table of her home in Mendham. “Unlike other government bureaucrats who are paper-pushers, these people are committed to tikun olam. They want to do good in the world.”

The Craigs are fans of Sachs, the director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and a special adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Sachs is a participant in the UN’s optimistic Millennium Villages project, which is dedicated to drastically reducing poverty, expanding education, and stopping the spread of the AIDS virus by 2015.

Sachs is committed to “having people in the rest of the world catch up with us economically,” said John.

In Sauri, there were some early signs of success.

There and in other places in Kenya, relief agencies helped provide local farmers with seed and fertilizer to increase their output of corn. As part of the bargain, the farmers were required to donate 10 percent of their crops to a school feeding program. In doing so, school attendance numbers rose, and so did the students’ test scores.

The success in Sauri led to imitation. With international financing, the project expanded to 80 villages in 10 African countries, “each with the most desperate rural challenges to deal with,” said John.

One major problem is severe drought.

On a visit to Kenya in January of 2008, the Craigs visited Sauri and another village, Dertu. They met with Pete Ondeng, a Kenyan economic development expert.

“He told us the success or failure of the agricultural improvements was rain-dependent. He said when it doesn’t rain, the crops are lousy and the people starve,” said John. “So I asked him, ‘Has anybody tapped into the Israeli expertise with water management and irrigation?’”

That was a cue for Judy.

“I like to get involved. I like to put people together,” she said, especially after learning that one African expert involved in the project had been a student at Hebrew University. He asked that 30 colleagues be sent for a month of study in Israel.

In December, the Craigs subsidized the Africans’ airfare to Israel, while MASHAV covered their training at Hebrew and Ben-Gurion universities. The Africans visited farms in the Negev and observed even more difficult growing conditions than the ones they faced at home. They were inspired by what they saw.

“One of the Africans told the Israelis, ‘If you could do it, all we need is the knowledge to do it, too,’” she said.

MASHAV experts trained the Africans in how to broaden the output of their crops, and assisted them in business development and microfinance projects. That gave them the means to diversify their farm production to include fruits, vegetables, and livestock.

Both John and Judy Craig have graduate degrees and years of experience in the world of business, and find such accomplishments appealing. She operated several small business ventures; until he retired, much of his career was spent in food production. Both care deeply about philanthropy.

“We’ve always had the thought that Africa is a place with tremendous needs and money goes a long way if it is properly directed,” said John. “I think you have to be optimistic. If you can demonstrate on the ground in 14 different sites with the worst possible conditions that with proper resources you could make this kind of progress, it becomes a challenge to the governments in Africa and the developed world. Look at what can be done.

“The only thing standing in the way is peoples’ will to make it happen,” he said.

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