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| Courtesy of World Vision Canada |
Toycen was visiting the village as head of the Canadian branch of World Vision, a large Christian humanitarian relief and development agency that was providing resources and training to the drought-stricken country.
"In most situations I try to accept [the gift], but I had to say to them, ‘Where I come from, and according to our tradition, I simply could not accept this when I know you have hungry children in your community.'"
He told the farmers he'd be delighted to accept the gift in better times, when they had a successful harvest. Toycen said embracing people’s generosity is essential in development work.
"It's very important to allow people, that are poor by our standards, for them to express what they have to give to you," he said. "I always find that really humbling and compelling."
Whether it’s respecting cultural traditions or balancing donor influence, Toycen is pragmatic. It’s a skill he’s learned through his 23 years with World Vision, including the last 15 as its president.
In an interview with Toycen just days after visiting West Africa. WVC is focusing its resources on a looming food crisis that threatens 13 million in the Sahel region surrounding Mali.
A man of faith
Toycen, a slim, tall man who runs regularly and keeps fit at a health club, said he’s able to adjust to different time zones. But other adaptations take more time.
"You never fully acclimate when you're been in places where people are living with so little," said Toycen. "One of the things I try to avoid is going to a grocery store right when I get back because it's really so overwhelming."
Toycen lives in Mississauga with his wife, with whom he shares a love of film. The two have an adult son and daughter. Toycen became an Anglican as a young adult, and earned degrees in philosophy and divinity.
He starts each day with prayer, for himself, his organization – and this morning, his five-year-old grandson’s operation. Toycen is motivated by prayer and a belief in a better world.
"When it doesn't upset you, you should leave," he said. "You need to be into this for deep and good reasons."
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| Toycen visited victims sof the 2004 Asian tsunami. Courtesy of World Vision Canada |
Toycen echoed these feelings in his 2005 address to Christian convocants at U of T's Wycliffe College, his alma mater. He urged graduates to live out their faith with enthusiasm and use their outrage as a motivation to serve others.
Toycen joined World Vision seeking a summer job before his last year of seminary. Though the BlackBerry-toting executive works from WVC's Mississauga headquarters, he visits many poor countries regularly to asses the ground situation.
Before his term as president he had a much more boots-on-ground career, working in post-genocide Rwanda, visiting emaciated children in North Korea and providing aid in war-plagued Sudan.
He now makes short-term visits, including his recent trip to Mali, which he tweeted. Toycen says social media is key to raising awareness.
"We're using every means we can to basically distribute the message," he said.
Managing images
Under Toycen's direction, WVC has used Facebook promotions and issued over 200 YouTube videos. The charity has raised money through celebrity partnerships, Polar Bear swims and a 30-hour famine initiative that is popular with high schools. Toycen also helped design the organization's recent global rebranding.
WVC had been criticized for graphic commercials with images of poor African babies accompanied by emotional music. The approach has been deemed "poverty porn" by critics who say the spots show a disempowering image of Africans.
Toycen told reporters he seldom receives complaints about the commercials, explaining in a recent YouTube video that making people uncomfortable is less important than exposing stark realities.
But it’s not just at home that WVC has to manage its image.
"It's become more problematic but our goal is to be seen as non-partisan," said Toycen, adding that NGOs are seeing "more people killed doing relief and development in the past 10 years than ever before."
Toycen pointed to how virtually no Western outreach takes place in south-central Somalia, as aid organizations are overwhelmingly deemed imperialistic. He said a similar challenge is putting pressure on oppressive governments who can send pesky outreach organizations packing.
"I don’t think one size fits all. There are times when you need to speak up and leave. There are other times when you need to keep your mouth shut and just be helping the people over the long haul.
"I don't think any of these issues are simple, but I think you have to have principles," he said. "I think you have to be humble about it. Sometimes you're probably going to get it wrong, hopefully you get it right more than wrong."
It’s a dilemma Toycen said he encountered weeks ago reflecting on the Talisman Energy scandal.
In 2000, Toycen was at the forefront of an NGO effort to make public an investigation by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade into the Canadian company’s oil pipeline in south Sudan, following allegations that the company's $800-million project helped fuel the country's civil war.
NGOs alleged the company displaced certain tribes who were ultimately killed. Toycen said that since Talisman left in 2002, Indian and Chinese companies bought up its infrastructure.
"Did we do the right thing? Now the people in charge have even less concern than Talisman did. There's always the issue of unintended consequences,"Toycen said.
"I'm just a little bit dubious when people […] are so certain that the way they do things it is the right way. I'm always a bit cautious about that."
Toycen said these experiences affect how WVC shapes its corporate partnerships, like its two recent partnerships with Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold.
"We were very cautious," Toycen said, noting that its first partnership, launched in 2003, started after two years of on-the-ground investigation in Peru.
WVC said it would focus on its child-sponsorship programs so it could cut the partnership if they disagreed with the company.
Ultimately, Toycen said the project was a large success, and WVC entered a larger five-year partnership near the mine in 2007.
"One of the most challenging things that we're facing right now is that Barrick also has interests in a couple of other countries where it's been much more problematic," he said.
Barrick Gold has come under fire over allegations of forced dislocation, environmental harm and unsafe labour conditions, though not at its Peru site.
"One of the questions you have to ask is does that taint our whole relationship with them? And I think that has to be an open question. You could decide at one point things are OK now, but not later," Toycen said.
"We think the good that’s being done outweighs the bad. But it's always fluid. You have to be flexible on this, because you're talking about the lives of children and families. And we’ve always been clear our first priority is them."
Partnering cautiously
Toycen said last month’s decision by the governmental Canadian International Development Agency to pledge $41 million to WVC’s Barrick Gold partnership "added a whole other dimension."
Critics say CIDA's increasing financial support of charity-company partnerships uses taxpayer money to subsidize corporate social responsibility projects.
"The programs might be welcome and worthwhile, but they should be paid for by the companies that are reaping the profits and getting much of the credit," wrote Elizabeth Payne of the Ottawa Citizen editorial board. "CIDA’s involvement in the partnerships potentially tars all Canadians, by default, for any bad corporate behaviour, or environmental damage, that results from those mining operations."
Toycen said that WVC’s approach is to stick to its mandate.
"We just have to be convinced that they’re not meddling in any way with our ability to do good work development work," said Toycen. "You have to bring that same kind of diligence whether you’ve got CIDA as a partner or Barrick or somebody else," he said, adding that WVC monitors its projects to avoid compromises.
"There’s risk involved in this. But sometimes you have to take risks to actually do something that in the long run turns out to be better," he said.
More recently, Toycen is taking his pragmatic thinking to the looming food crisis in West Africa.
"I know the challenge we’re up against, to get the message out," he said. "I just think you gotta struggle at it the best way you can, be as creative as possible, be persistent and invite others to do the same."
Toycen’s current goal is to prompt action before the situation in the Sahel goes from bad to worse.
"We really have two choices. One choice is to not do anything … wait until we see pictures of children, skeletal babies. That could easily be some months down the road," he said.
"The other choice is we have is to do whatever we can right now, so that we can bring in emergency food, we can bring in emergency assistance so we can start helping people before it deteriorates to that level.”
Toycen’s hopeful that a crisis can be avoided. Ultimately, he looks forward to visiting that village in Mali to collect his cart of vegetables.
This is a magazine-length profile I wrote for interviewing class. In groups of three we interview a newsmaker for half an hour. The session is filmed and we're critiqued by our peers for using the techniques we learned.
UPDATE 27/3/2012: I took my instructor's advice and truncated certain bits. While she recommended cutting the section on his personal life, I've added subheads so people can skip over it if they're looking for the hard news (as this is still a profile piece).
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