The 11th Hour Project lost a longtime friend, partner and grantee with the death this week of Dr. Paul Farmer, a world renowned physician and humanitarian. The founder of Partners in Health, who was a friend and inspiration to Wendy Schmidt, Amy Rao, Joe Sciortino and the entire TSFF team, spent his career delivering high-quality health care to those with the least access to it. From Haiti to Rwanda, Farmer prioritized working with local providers and leaders, moving his family with him to live in the communities where he worked and helped shape public health responses to tuberculosis, Ebola and HIV. He also delivered antiviral medication door-to-door to people the medical field dismissed as untreatable. Partners in Health operates Mirebalais, a hospital in Haiti that, with support from 11th Hour Project, runs on clean, reliable electricity. Another recently approved grant will help upgrade the hospital.
Farmer was the inspiration for The 11th Hour Project’s practice of “accompaniment,” where program managers spend up to a month working in the field with grantees. “To accompany someone,” Farmer said, “is to go somewhere with him or her, to break bread together, to be present on a journey with a beginning and an end… There’s an element of mystery and openness…I’ll share your fate for awhile, and by ‘awhile’ I don’t mean ‘a little while.’ Accompaniment is much more often about sticking with a task until it’s deemed completed by the person or person being accompanied, rather than by the accompagnateur.”
Wendy Schmidt, 11th Hour President and cofounder penned a tribute to Farmer and his philosophy in the Chronicle of Philanthropy:
“As our team got to know Farmer, we drew inspiration from his practice of accompaniment. As part of our annual disbursement of roughly $100 million on clean energy, healthy food systems, human rights, and ocean health, our program teams spend up to a month each summer working directly with grantees. This is not to look over their shoulders, or even to walk in their shoes, but as Farmer said, to walk alongside them —to break bread with them.
We believe, as Farmer taught us, that we cannot truly understand the challenges and struggles of our grantees — of the people working every day to improve and protect the world — unless we spend time with them in their world, listening, observing, caring.
Our accompaniment program has given us a deeper understanding of the work of our grantees. We see firsthand the injustices facing neighborhoods beset by urban oil drilling. We experience what it means when a community lacks access to healthy local food or educational resources. We are more understanding when a grantee occasionally needs to shift focus or redefine goals because we have learned what they are living through. Such flexibility comes through genuine connection.”
Read more in Chronicle of Philanthropy