Anatomy of a start-up antigenocide charity

Once dissed as naive, a college kid builds a nonprofit into an influential force for Darfur in Washington.

from the September 11, 2007 edition

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GI-Net eventually focused on rape as a weapon of war. Darfurian women collecting firewood outside camps were often attacked; many wouldn't report rape to the mostly male AU soldiers. GI-Net researched recruiting more female African soldiers, but no country agreed to spare them. Besides, as symbols went, it was all wrong: GI-Net was about prevention. Reporting rape seemed less useful than thwarting it.

So the group talked with the AU for nearly a year about how to prevent rape. In south Darfur, AU soldiers escorted women gathering firewood. There wasn't money for this in the northern camps, where the scarcity of wood forced women to travel greater distances, so GI-Net proposed funding patrols in 11 camps there. In March, a GI-Net staffer visited Darfur for the first time, to finalize lingering details.

The staffer came back with bad news: Most of north Darfur had run out of firewood.

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When GI-Net opened an office in Washington in 2005, nearly half of the nonprofits registered in the previous 10 years had effectively ceased to operate. Those still around are small: Most have just $250,000 in revenue.

Lara Galinsky, vice president of strategy for the Echoing Greene Foundation, says GI-Net's vitals are good: the staff has grown; grass-roots groups stay involved; and, of course, there's the group's $3 million. In an industry where viability is often measured by dollars raised, she says, "that's a big deal." A GI-Net board member says Hanis is among the youngest people she's seen "take an idea and [make] it into an organization."

He's made it more than an organization. It's also his literal home. His D.C. roommates have been GI-Net staffers, his bedroom furniture comes from a board member, and his first real bed was a birthday present from an employee.

Though Hanis hasn't been to Sudan, he finds what's happening there personal. Growing up Jewish in Roman-Catholic Ecuador, he developed sympathy for outsiders. With four grandparents who fled the Nazis, his worldview was shaped by the Holocaust. "As a kid, I was held accountable for not doing something," he says. "My dad always pointed out that the Americans knew [about the Nazi death camps] ... and didn't bomb the railroad tracks" leading to them. This inspires much of what he does for Darfur. But it also troubles him.

"Where does that responsibility stop?'" he asks. "You're willing to help someone if they're in the same room as you. Why does 3,000 miles remove ... that responsibility? And there must be that balance or else you might as well not wake up in the morning."

The balance, he thinks, lies in strategy. He could measure his work by the number of Darfurians who, in spite of all his calls and e-mails, couldn't be saved. Instead, he looks at GI-Net's domestic achievements: Its antigenocide hot line that connects citizens to their representatives, a website grading politicians for their Darfur efforts, and the Sudan Divestment Task Force that has helped pass divestment legislation in 19 states and the US House of Representatives. This traditional grassroots work has ripple effects, observers say.

"What these kids have done is something unique, something that opens the door for this kind of campaign ... for the next Darfur," says Ted Dagne, an Africa specialist at the Congressional Research Service. He credits the group with helping successfully pressure the president to name a special envoy to the region and Congress to commit more funds to the African Union. "Even now, their continued engagement really has influenced our politicians, our teachers, our community leaders, our churches.... That means a lot, even though it probably doesn't end it."

This, though, nags Hanis. "Obviously, it's frustrating that our work here isn't translating on the ground," he says. GI-Net is still debating the best thing to do in Darfur: Maybe subsidize firewood sold in small markets in the north, maybe invest in regionally appropriate alternative fuel sources.

Ultimately, ending genocide may best be measured with a simple scale, Hanis says. "I am here today because my grandparents were able to survive a genocide that was supposed to exterminate them. That, I think, is success."

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