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Nonprofit Leadership Podcast
How to Move Beyond Short‑Term Relief to Systemic Change
00:36:32
Dr. Kurt Ver Beek In this episode of the Nonprofit Leadership podcast, host Dr. Rob Harter sits down with Dr. Kurt Ver Beek — longtime sociologist, adjunct professor at Calvin University, and co‑founder of the Honduran‑based nonprofit Association fo...
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- [00:02]
A
This is Dr. Rob Harder with the nonprofit leadership podcast, Making youg World Better. What does it take to be an effective nonprofit leader today? What are the biggest challenges? What are the biggest obstacles? How should nonprofits fundraise in an economy that is constantly changing? All these reasons combined led me to start this show, and it's my hope that through this series, people can learn not only what it takes to be an effective nonprofit organization, but to hear from effective leaders who are who are successfully making a positive impact in their communities. We hope you enjoy the show as together we hear how they are making their world better. Hello everybody, and welcome back to the show. My name is Rob Harder. I'm the host for the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. So glad you're here. Thanks for tuning in. Well, today's conversation is absolutely fascinating. In fact, as you listen to this guest, you're going to ask this question, which I asked of him. It sounds like his work is something that is the beginnings of a movie. And it turns out there's a new book that's been written by a journalist about the organization my guest has put together, and they do their work in Honduras. And now this book may turn into a movie. So it's pretty fascinating. So anyway, the name of the book is called Bear Witness, and I'll make sure there's a link in the show notes when you listen to this podcast interview. And my guest today, though, who's going to be answering all these questions about what he's doing in Honduras and the organization that he built. His name is Dr. Kurt Richard Verbeek. He's lives in Honduras. He's been there for about 30 years, but he's also done a lot of different things. In fact, he's I think he's still an adjunct professor at Calvin University in the area of sociology. And this conversation today is going to be all about the organization he helped start and co founded, which is called the association for a More Just Society, or ASJ for short. Now, this organization is an international organization, of course, and it's based in Honduras. So it starts with we're going to talk about how is he gaining support still to this day for his organization? And then he did a couple of really strategic things along the way. One of the things we're going to address, and this may be an issue you're dealing with with your organization that you lead or you're a part of, is this very issue that there's on the one hand, there's a lot of work being done around the world, certainly in the US as well, that focuses on short term relief and that's what he started with in his work in Honduras. But then he realized he if he didn't deal with, in his case, if he didn't deal with the issues of violence and corruption, no matter how much short term relief he was providing, he needed to go deeper into a systemic issue of corruption and violence to really then provide the help to these families that they first were drawn to provide these services. So he's going to talk about how he's gone about not just addressing short term relief that's important, but really going after the long term systemic reform and how to do that. Well, working closely with the government there in Honduras. In fact, he's got a very fascinating story that eventually landed on the front page of the New York Times about how his organization helped to reform the police force in the entire country of Honduras. It's a fascinating story, but we're not going to just talk about that. We're also going to talk about a couple other issues that are hot button issues here in the US that first one is immigration. Of course, that's a big political issue right now in the US and he's going to get his perspective from the angle of Honduras, living in Honduras, looking at some of the root causes of migration away from Honduras and how that may impact the debate here in the U.S. for those of my listeners that live in the U.S. about the immigration debate. And then the other one is there's been such a huge slash in federal funding, again in the US Context, towards international aid organizations. And so I asked him the question, how is it impacting him personally and what is his perspective on some of the real world effects on Honduras and other countries when the United States now has decided to reduce so much of its international aid with these federal funding cuts? So it's a really fascinating conversation you're going to really enjoy hearing from. He has so much experience. I think you'll be able to really learn from experience and gain some new insights perhaps of how you can better lead with your organization. Well, as always, thank you so much for tuning in. Now onto the show. This podcast is sponsored by Donorbox, helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business. Well, welcome everybody to the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. I'm Rob Harder, your host, and it's so good to have Kurt Verbeek here on the show, calling in from Honduras. Kurt, thanks so much for taking time out of your really busy schedule to join us on the show.
- [04:36]
B
It's great to be here, Rob. Not that busy either. So happy to be here.
- [04:41]
A
Well, you're very humble about that. I know you've got a lot going on. This is the first call we've had from somebody who actually is calling in from Honduras. So I kind of like the idea that we have listeners in Honduras, but it's fun to have someone actually calling in from Honduras. So thanks for doing that. And I really do have a lot of things we want to cover. As we said before we hit record, we may not cover everything today in this one interview, but there's so much you're doing and it's fascinating work and I think a lot of my listeners can really take a lot of principles of what you're applying there in Honduras for their own social impact organization wherever they find themselves. So maybe let's start though. I always like starting my interviews with Tell us about you. Tell us a little bit how you got started with what you're doing and the impactful work you're doing there, particularly in the area of justice and humanitarian service. So let's start first with what first motivated you to co found the association for a More Just Society in Honduras. Give us the background there and the story of how you got into this.
- [05:43]
B
So probably has two pieces. One, my wife and I, and then my best friend who's the co founder, Carlos, worked for community development organizations. So micro enterprise health education programs in Honduras for a bunch of years. And we really liked it. But we often felt like we would empower small business people and then the gangs would come along and shut down their little business or we were training farmers and then a general came along and stole the land. They had improved for years and took it back. So there were these structural changes that we were not addressing. And then the second thing is I ran a semester abroad program for Calvin University for 25 years. And the very first semester we taught, the first class was all about Honduras history, culture as a block of a month. The second month we did community development. So the same kind of agriculture, health, micro enterprise stuff. And then the third class was about macro issues like corruption. I'm still not even sure why I did that, but corruption, violence, trade, immigration. And in the second class I would ask students if they knew of organizations working on those issues. And they would mention world vision and compassion and they would know a half a dozen and I would know a couple of dozen that were doing each of those. Agriculture, health, microenterprise. When we got to this third class, I started talking about violence and corruption. I did the same thing. I'd say, do you Guys know any organizations working on that in Honduras or anywhere? And my students would all just stare back at me like they didn't know a single organization working on violence in developing countries or on corruption. And then I would only know maybe one or two. So it felt by the end of that class that there was like a weight on my shoulders that there was hundreds of organizations doing the same kind of work, which was not bad work, but there were next to no organizations working on these structural issues that we saw every day when we were doing our community development work. And that's when Carlos and Joanne and I decided to start esj. Okay.
- [08:06]
A
I love how you quickly saw a need and you also saw an opportunity because there wasn't, as you mentioned, that many organizations, in fact, maybe zero at that time, but doing anything specifically with the justice and violence issues. So again, I love that you're kind of how you process through that. Now let's talk about a little bit your work now with asga. You do a lot with the most vulnerable populations. Specifically Honduras is where you're located, and it's one of the world's most dangerous countries. Tell us a little bit more what makes it so dangerous and what are you doing to really address some of.
- [08:39]
B
These things so specifically violence. What we have ended up finding out is that much of the violence in Honduras is related to drugs. And this is drugs going from South America to Utah, Chicago, Los Angeles. So it's US Consumers, but they're trying. They need to get those drugs up there. And Honduras is a. Is one of the stopping points. And so when the drugs stop here, there's fighting with the police between gangs who's going to control those drugs. And Honduras in 2011, 2012, was the most violent country in the world. So more than Mexico, more than Iraq, more than Afghanistan, we had 90 homicides for every 100,000 population. The U.S. is like, at 8, so 12 times more homicides than the U.S. and we started trying to think about, like, how do we fix this? Why is this so bad? And lots of it ended up being corruption that the police. But government authorities were in the pockets of drug traffickers, were taking money to look the other way. And so we started pushing for a police purge. We said, we gotta. The only way to reduce violence in our neighborhoods is to clean up the police force. And the only way to clean up the police force is not gonna be training the. We ought to get rid of the ones that are in the drug lord's pockets. And so we worked four years pushing for that, and finally The President said, yes, that's an interesting story how that happened. But he named a six person commission. Four of them were connected to asj. Two ASJ employees, two of our board members, two pastors from Protestant church. And they ended up firing out of 13,000 cops, they fired 6,000. And in the first two weeks they fired all of the chief of police in the whole country. So they started at the top and worked down. Wow. And then we ended up putting together a new program with the Swiss government which had to be good, right? To train new. They trained about 10,000 new cops and violence has gone down from 90. Last year the homicide rate was 22, about the same as Chicago, actually. So Honduras is still too high, but now not crazy high. New Orleans, Baltimore are all about 20 something. So that's an example of why Honduras is violent and also an example of the kind of things we try to do. And again, it's looking at things structurally not helping one victim whose son was killed. But how do we help make it that more people's sons aren't killed?
- [11:36]
A
Yeah, okay, so I know we're going to get into this, but this is such a fascinating story about how this work that you've done and really continue to grow. Let me just jump in right to. I think my audience is going to be thinking, okay, so you're putting yourself in danger, right. If you're going against a very violent gang and you're going against the power structure that's supporting that, tell us a little bit more how that worked and how did you get to the President to make that massive decision to fire basically almost half of all the police workforce? And then how have you protected yourself along the way? Because my guess is you became enemy number one to the drug traffickers and those who were in that system because you were trying to clean it up. So maybe you could talk to my audience about that.
- [12:20]
B
So like, how did we get there? Is it maybe a fairly longer story? But at that time, ASJ was about 15 years old and we had kind of made a name for ourselves about being a Christian organization, which I think provided us some legitimacy and respect in a Catholic country. We also had a reputation for speaking the truth, for not pulling punches, for not politicizing left or right, but being willing to say when either side was messing up. And then I, like I said, it took us four years of going after this. And when the President finally pulled the trigger was the New York Times ran a story about in. In New York of the top level cops meeting together to kill one of their own who was investigating drug trafficking in the police force. And when that story came out, it was a huge story in the US and in Honduras. And then the President felt pressured, not by us anymore, but internationally, to do something. And then, because we had been planning and thinking about this for a long time and studied other models. Most police purges start at the bottom. They like street cops. And we knew that that would. We would never get to the top. If you start at the bottom, you never get to the top. So in those first two weeks, they ended up reviewing. I won't go into all the details, but they fired those top generals and they announced it on live TV on a Thursday night. And by that time Friday morning at 6am all of those generals were in the President's office telling them that he needed to fire the commission and to reinstate them. And the president said, too late. Like, there's no way they did this on live tv. They didn't ask me. I'll look very weak. I'll look. I just can't do that. The commission has too much public support. So you see there, like, sort of strategy using public messages, et cetera, in a way that. That strengthen our position, weaken their position. And then how did we keep ourselves safe? So one of the commissioners, so one of them was a pastor, was coming home from a meeting and six guys jumped out of two SUVs with M16s and chartered shooting at him. He and his wife were safe. They got inside a metal door. But one of his bodyguards was killed, and one of his bodyguards was shot eight times. So it was not easy and it wasn't always safe. They had to leave the country for a couple of months. But again, I think even though we made people very angry, it was not seen as politicized. I think it's now it's been almost 10 years, seven years. I think we're still sometimes fearful that one of those cops that fired was. We're going to meet him in a restaurant or on a street and something's going to happen. But, yeah, I think part of it is we were smart about security and strategy. And partly, honestly, I just feel like Grace of God.
- [15:50]
A
I mean, you've got the workings of a movie there. I mean, that's such a dynamic situation.
- [15:55]
B
And there's a book about it. You can go read it. Okay.
- [15:58]
A
There you are.
- [15:59]
B
All right.
- [15:59]
A
And is it okay? We're going to talk about this book in just a second, but that's great. I do want to zero in now on your approach, because I think there is a lot to apply to any social impact organization that's dealing with not just like you were saying, short term relief, but really getting to the long term systemic reform that's necessary to really move the issue forward. In other words, in this case it was the violence issue and really cleaning things up so that you can really help people sustainably. So talk about that. How did you go about making that change? How have you overcome barriers? I'm sure that was difficult. And then even I'm thinking to the point of donors who really want that short term relief, they want the quick results, they want to see what you're doing with their money and be able to report back to them. Whereas I'm guessing long term strategic, you know, structural reform and systemic reform. That's going to take a while. So you don't have as much to report on to your donors who are investing in you and giving you money to support this. So talk about how you process through all of that. Because my listeners who maybe are trying the same thing, their donors are wearing thin on patients and they're like, hey, come on, let's see the results here. What would you say to your experience and how did you hang in there and continue to move forward with progress?
- [17:11]
B
Yeah, so I heard two questions. I'll just make sure I'm right. The first was our theory of change. How do we do that? And the second is how do we get donors to buy into that? Right. So on the first, I think that lots, I like to think like all of what we do is pretty replicable. And we often talk about four strategic pieces of our strategy, of our theory of change. So the first would be investigations. So I think that lots of times nonprofits, very well intentioned, don't do the hard work of really documenting and figure out what's wrong, what's broken, who's responsible, what are the numbers, what's the statistics? We go with what we think or maybe someone else's research. We're not curious. And it just takes time. It takes time and some skill, but it's not usually that hard. But I think that's key. So I think almost everything we do, that's where we start. We, we often spend six months, sometimes more investigating, like what's broken and how could we fix is another country ahead of us? What have they done in the Dominican Republic? What have they done in Venezuela? What have they done in Ecuador? What have they done in the US what can we learn from other places? The second piece would then be sometimes this comes first, but the second piece is alliance building. So especially when ASJ was little and lots of your listeners maybe have a small NGO that that doesn't have the budget or the capabilities to do some of this, like bringing, you know, building alliance. And we almost always try and figure out, like, who's the strongest voice, like who, if we have them at a table in a press conference or a meeting with the president, who will get the most respect. Here in Honduras, it's often churches, the Catholic Church and the Protestant church. And that's unusual. Like, lots of nonprofits don't seek them out, and we do, partly because we are a nonprofit of faith, but partly because they are the two most respected institutions in Honduras. So we build an alliance and then we're sharing this information that we're investigating, research about what's broken, how to fix it, coming up together with solutions and strategies. The third piece is communications. So we in our office, probably once or twice, sometimes more a week, have a press conference about some topic that we're working on. We will get 10 to 50 news outlets here, a newspaper, radio, and again, in early days, it was a lot of times because the Catholic Church, the Protestant church, everybody was there. So it wasn't ASJ that got the press to show up. It was that they knew the Catholic church, the Protestant church, the chamber of commerce was going to be there and they could get our press conference. And then they get a bunch of other interviews for other things that were going to help them as reporters. And that communications and alliance ends up building pressure, we call it healthy pressure, on the authorities, on the decision makers. And so the last piece is lobbying, we call it incidentia. It's how do you put healthy pressure on the mayor, the chief of police, the president, to get the thing done you want to do? So those four pieces work together.
- [20:43]
A
Super helpful. I appreciate both answers to that, those questions. Okay, so in addition to the drug trade, which is obviously a huge issue in the United States, and you already gave a reason why it impacts us in the US Another big hot button issue, particularly the last, I'd say year and a half, has been immigration. It's been in the news all the time, of course. And as quickly becomes a political issue, you see this from a slightly different angle because you're there in Honduras and you see a lot more on the back end, if you will, maybe, or the root causes of the original, you know, migration from Honduras to other countries, including the U.S. what would you say are some of the implications that you have seen in Honduras that have direct impact on the Immigration debate in the.
- [21:26]
B
US That's a very good question. My answer is going to be maybe surprising to some of your listeners, but also a little nuanced. So, first of all, when we talk about our work, one of the ways we describe it is that we are trying to make Honduras a place that people don't want to leave. So if we can make Honduras safer, we can make the Honduras public schools better, the public health system better, then many people who are wanting to leave now won't because the main reason they're leaving is because of the conditions here and that they think that their life will be better in the US So I think that's a good way to understand our work. I think that one of the things that we also know is that most. So it's often portrayed that people are leaving Honduras because they're going to be killed because their life is at risk. And that is a small percentage of the people leaving. It is not the majority. We have a extremely broken immigration system in the US So the only way most people can go is by claiming, asking for asylum and saying that their life is at risk. People would love to go to the US for short terms. I think one of the solutions is a complete overhaul of the immigration system so that people could go to the US for three months, six months, nine months tops, and then come back to their families. And the last piece I'll just mention is I think that the system is so broken that it was overly easy to get into the US it was too open and people were leaving here. We don't want those people to leave. We don't want all these young men going to the US they finish high school, they finish university, and so we need to make things better here. So they don't want to go, but we also don't want it to be so easy to leave and then they don't come back. Because we need talent here. We need people to start businesses here. We need people to support their moms and dads and their husbands and wives and kids here and broken families and all of that has really messed things up. So I think the system is completely messed up. I don't think what the current administration is doing right now is fixing it. I hope that that's where this is going to go. But we need a system which will allow people who are really at risk to leave. If we need workers in the U.S. let's create a system. People can go for a short term and come back for their families and that it isn't too easy to leave. That people will not feel overly attracted to leave when they have a future here and they could support their families and have a good job and create a better future for Honduras.
- [24:38]
A
Well, another big issue that is hit a lot of NGOs and social impact organizations in the US in the last three to four months has been this massive cut from the federal level to programs that typically have been given to NGOs again in social impact organizations. Talk about that a little bit because you are an international organization, of course, you also are in the area of international aid. There's been a lot of cutting of that kind of support to those kinds of organizations again across the world, not just in Honduras, but maybe you could talk about that. What have been some of the real world effects in Honduras that you've seen now that the US has been cutting back on so many of these programs they had been giving over the last several years? What are you seeing there in Honduras?
- [25:23]
B
My answer also here might be a little surprising to some of your listeners. So I would say that we have, we've had multiple funding projects with USAID and with other US State Department offices. One or two of them have been among our best projects and our best owners. The Police Purge was funded in part by US Government funds and I still think is one of our probably our most successful thing we've ever done as an organization. But over the last couple years, probably two of our worst funding relationships were also US Government USAID projects and really messed up, messed up power relationships, messed up the way we were treated, the way our experience and knowledge was undervalued, stealing our staff, lying to us. So I also think the current administration, probably the same argument, the way that they are doing this is pretty awful. But that USAID and much of the ways that this international aid was distributed and how it was run was also in dire need of reform. So I think the need to change the system was there then. The way that this administration has taken that on seems also equally or maybe even more broken. So again, I hope that either this administration or the next administration will create something new, like a new immigration system, but also a new international aid and also helping in the US in ways that are empowering what we all want, right, to create really healthy communities in the US and around the world.
- [27:28]
A
We'll be right back. Are you looking for an easy and effective way to boost your nonprofit's donations? Well, look no further than DonorBox, the online fundraising platform that streamlines your fundraising efforts, maximizes donations and simplifies giving for your supporters. With DonorBox you can create beautiful donation forms, accept digital wallet payments, track donations and send auto receipts. And the best part, there are no setup or monthly fees and no long term contracts required. So what are you waiting for? Visit donorbox.org today to get started. That is www.donorbox.org. you've touched on this earlier and I want to come back to it a bit because it's related to what you've been just sharing. Justice versus charity. A lot of nonprofits and social impact organizations use both terms. We typically think of nonprofits and social impact organizations, broadly spoken as charity organizations. And yet you make a very important distinction. And you kind of again mentioned this, the very first answer you had about what you were seeing there on the ground level in Honduras. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about that. How do you define and distinguish between those two concepts of justice on the one hand, charity on the other, and what dangers can arise from well intentioned charity alone? That doesn't address justice.
- [28:49]
B
We always use three words. So we talk about charity, which is what we would say is necessary in like disaster situations, refugees, war, so handouts, somebody's house was ripped up by a tornado and they need clothes and they need food and, and then community development or development work is where. So the, the Chinese, the old Chinese phrase, right? So giving a fish and teaching them to fish. So community development development would be the teaching the fish and then justice work. I guess the Chinese also have another verse to that poem which is that the people who make the river too dirty so that no one can fish and like mixing up the water, but the idea is that there's corruption involved and that the people who know how to fish can't fish because someone else is messing up their river. And I think that's what justice work is. I have my own little handbook or like back pocket definition of justice work is always going to make somebody mad. And if you're not making anybody mad, you're not doing justice. Because when you're doing justice, someone is taking advantage of someone else. Someone is taking, getting undue benefits and when you stop that, they're going to get upset. So I often see like organizations doing water projects in Africa and they say they're a justice organization. So people have grabbed that term and say this is all justice. And I think it's more community development oftentimes. So I don't think any of the three are misplaced. It's not that we should not do all three, but I definitely think we have overemphasized the first and probably the first two and underemphasized the third. And I think the same thing. We see millions and millions of dollars raised after a hurricane or an earthquake that community development organizations do a little less but still do very well. And it's often hard to raise money to do this kind of justice work.
- [31:06]
A
I like the distinction you made there. Okay, so let's get to the book that I think you're referring to. You wrote a book entitled Call for Justice. It's actually co written with you and philosopher Nicholas Woltersdorf. Talk about the book. Is it mostly around your work there in Honduras? I'm sure that you've talked about justice more broadly, but maybe talk about the book and what prompted you to write it in the first place.
- [31:28]
B
There's two books, so the one book that you're talking about called the justice with Nick Waltersdorf, it's a series of letters. So Nick is a world class philosopher, was at Yale, was at Harvard, a bunch of places, written 40 some books. And he's a hero of mine. And I ended up coming, finally getting him to come to Honduras after years of asking. And he became a fan and we ended up writing a book together and it's a series of letters. And I would write him a letter, he would write me back. And it's quite practical, it's quite easy to read. It's letters. And I think it's a lot of stuff that nonprofit leaders would enjoy and find helpful about what we do, how we do it, why we do it. I guess if they liked what we just talked about, there would be more details in there. And then the second book just came out. And I think that's kind of the impetus for this podcast call Today is a book by Ross Halperin. And Ross is a journalist. So we didn't write the book. We didn't get to read the book until it came out. But Ross spent seven years investigating ASJ and he wrote a book about and includes the police purge, what we did in education. So again, if you wanted, I'd say he got 90% of it right. There's some pieces I don't think he did. But if you again wanted to read more about what we did, how we did it from a independent journalist perspective, I think you'd like look.
- [33:05]
A
So is there any last things that you would just want to pass on to my listeners? Maybe one or two key principles that you have really learned that have shaped your leadership there in Honduras with ASJ that you think would be really helpful for those who are listening, regardless of the organization they lead, the size of organization they lead. But anything just that you've learned, you want to pass on to them from your own experience.
- [33:28]
B
Somebody who used to work here, Omar Rivera, now has his own ngo. But he said if you want to change the world, you need a really good team. And I like that. The importance of picking good people, working with good people, like building that team, I think is key. And then I think the sort of four things, just doing really good investigations, research, building alliances is a pain in the ass. Working with churches is often a pain in the ass, but it gives you a reach and protection that is also unmatched. So none of this is easy. But I do think like when I think about violence in Chicago, I'm from the Chicago area homicide rate in Chicago or the broken public schools in Chicago, I think that applying these same strategies in Chicago or Los Angeles or Park City work. Be happy to help anybody out there who's interested. Give me a shout out and we'll do a little chat sometime on Zoom. You also can go to our website to find more. You guys can put it in the chat. It's asjus.org there's also stuff about the book. The author of the book, Carlos and I have a video on there to talk a little bit about the book. But there's a lot more stuff on our website for people are interested.
- [35:00]
A
Yeah, sounds good. Well, that's great. I will make sure that's in the show notes. But Kurt, thank you for being on the show. But even more than that, I think what you're doing is you really have put your life at risk and yet you continue to stay faithful to the original mission of really serving your community well and dealing with those really difficult issues like you say, a violence and corruption. So thanks for just sharing some of those things. I encourage my listeners to check out your organization and one more time your website for asj and then we'll put everything else in the show notes, but just for people to hear your website. What is that again?
- [35:34]
B
Asj-us.org okay, perfect.
- [35:38]
A
Well, again, thank you, Kurt for sharing your insights. Thanks for all you're doing and for everybody tuning in. Thanks so much for listening to the show. We'll see you next week. Hey, friends. Well, I wanted you to know that this podcast can be found on itunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google podcasts and wherever you listen to other podcasts. I also want to encourage you to like subscribe and share this podcast with others. This will actually help us get this great content out to more nonprofit leaders just like you. You can also join the nonprofit Leadership Podcast community, find other resources and and interviews of past guests, all on my website, nonprofit leadershippodcast.org well, thanks again for listening and until next time, keep making your world better. This podcast is sponsored by DonorBox Donor Box, helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business.