I first met Dick Blum in the 1970s because of politics. He became a friend and advisor to Walter “Fritz” Mondale not long before Fritz became my running mate in our victorious 1976 campaign for the White House, and he then aided Fritz after the election in crafting our administration’s urban policies. But it was trekking with my wife, Rosalynn, and Dick in the rugged mountains near Mount Everest ten years later that first opened my eyes to Dick Blum’s expansive humanitarian commitment.
His initial acts of generosity in Nepal had accelerated, as I learned, through his friendship and work with Sir Edmund Hillary. Both men loved and admired the loyal, hardworking Sherpa people. These two Westerners—one the world-famous conqueror of Everest and former beekeeper from New Zealand, the other a private-equity investor from San Francisco with a long-held fascination for the Himalaya and an eye on Asia’s growing middle class—wanted to help the families and communities of their Sherpa guides.
It was the Sherpas who not only accompanied and cared for them but in fact made possible their personal adventures across the Himalaya and, in the case of Sir Edmund’s world-captivating achievement years before, to the very peak of Everest. So Sir Edmund and Dick asked the Sherpas, How can we help you? What they learned set their agenda for the next few decades: build schools and health clinics; restore Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, the wellspring of Tibetans’ cultural identity; and introduce hydroelectric power, airplane access, and simple modern conveniences. All this became part of initial development work by Sir Edmund, Dick, and their mountaineering colleagues in Nepal’s northeastern Khumbu, in the mountains and valleys beneath Mount Everest.
Following Sir Edmund’s philanthropic lead, Dick and a few of his trekking buddies made a long-term commitment to helping the poorest people of Nepal, Tibet, and northern India when they established in 1981 a nonprofit organization, the American Himalayan Foundation. They and their growing roster of donors and volunteers have kept that commitment, often in extraordinary ways and especially in the months following the devastating earthquakes that killed more than nine thousand people and left nearly three million homeless in Nepal in the spring of 2015. Perhaps the foundation’s most important work, however, is confronting the scourge of sex slavery by supporting the full-time education of 14,800 vulnerable girls, from early grades through high school.
Dick’s American Himalayan Foundation and The Carter Center, our nonprofit organizations focused on improving human rights and health care and founded around the same time, share many principles regarding global development and how to combat poverty. The most important may be putting local people at the center of any project. If people have the right knowledge, encouragement, and skills, and if they have reason to hope, they can change their own lives. We know from more than seventy-five years of combined experience in confronting poverty in Asia, Africa, and Latin America that focused, disciplined, science-led efforts do work.
Dick is a longtime trustee of The Carter Center. We often have traveled together over the past thirty years, with hours of opportunities to discuss our goals and share ideas. Dick has for many years helped guide our financing at the center. He has journeyed with me often to countries such as Nepal, Burma, Sudan, Nigeria, and Ghana to advocate for democracy, and to Sudan, Ghana, Ethiopia, and elsewhere in Africa as an advisor and funding partner in the center’s projects to fight preventable diseases such as Guinea worm, trachoma, and river blindness.
Beyond our work at The Carter Center, Dick is a prominent activist and supporter of public policy organizations and institutions such as The Brookings Institution; the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs; the President’s Global Development Council; George Soros’s Central European University in Budapest; and the University of California, where he is a longtime member of the governing board of regents and served more than two years as its chairman.
Through many vivid and often surprising accounts, Dick masterfully describes in this book guiding principles and examples of what we know works best in the field in the fight against poverty. Dick and his staff have a hands-on attitude. They know what’s happening in these remote villages and communities among the people who are in need. They are efficient. There is minimal bureaucracy and waste. They concentrate, as we do at The Carter Center, on helping the people who are most deprived and neglected, and who suffer from the most correctable problems. I don’t believe any nongovernment organization (NGO) can possibly do more with available funds than the American Himalayan Foundation does.
It’s no accident that, in addition to serving on the board of the American Himalayan Foundation, I am one of the advisors of the interdisciplinary academic and research center on combating global poverty that Dick helped establish in 2006. The Blum Center for Developing Economies on the University of California’s ten campuses may well be the finest program of its kind in the world. It turns out legions of young graduates who are well prepared with expertise, humility, purpose, and a pragmatic optimism for combating poverty in the United States and globally.
The breadth of Dick’s interests, knowledge, experience, and influence in practically every area of life in which he’s involved is remarkable. He has been an impressively principled and successful investor. He is a prominent activist in several public policy institutions supporting global development and the spread of democracy. He and his wife of more than thirty-five years, Senator Dianne Feinstein, are longtime supporters of the Tibetan campaign for autonomy within China, with close ties to His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.
Dick Blum helps improve the policies of each organization, agency, or program in which he’s engaged. The heart of our humanitarian work together has always been helping poor people figure out how they’re going to get out of poverty.
An Accident of Geography is a book you should read to learn more about progress in and pathways for fighting poverty. You will find many moving stories and concrete examples in the pages that follow. I hope they inspire you to find your place alongside Dick, me, and millions of other activists around the globe who are dedicated to making the developing world work better for its people.
—Jimmy Carter