THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 21, 1996 TAG: 9605210335
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ESTHER DISKIN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 109 lines
When Pat Robertson's international relief organization, Operation Blessing, launches a jet outfitted as a flying hospital today, it hopes to accelerate a strategy focused on medical relief in urban areas around the globe.
Most Christian international relief organizations in the United States focus on aid to rural communities, said Paul B. Thompson, Operation Blessing's president. Operation Blessing is seeking a different niche, Thompson said, basing its decision on a worldwide demographic shift toward urban centers.
Currently, there are 20 cities in the world with populations greater than 10 million people, he said. By 2025, the number of these megacities is expected to multiply, and most of them will be in the world's least-developed nations.
``When you look at the long term, you ask, `What's going on in the world?''' Thompson said. ``How are we going to serve most effectively those populations?''
Operation Blessing believes its new $25 million hospital-on-wings is part of the answer. The widebody jet - a Lockheed L1011 which has had a complete interior redesign to make it a medical facility - can land only on the longer runways atmajor airports.
The plane was funded mainly through charitable gifts to Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, which also provided about $20 million of the relief organization's $36 million annual budget in fiscal 1995.
Operation Blessing started as part of the network, but it was spun off as a separate nonprofit organization in 1993.
Thompson, who took the helm last year, has redirected the relief organization's efforts toward addressing poor health conditions in cities rather than in rural areas. One of his first decisions as president was to continue shutting down a several-thousand-acre farm that Operation Blessing had run in Zaire.
He has also been decisive about streamlining the organization for long-term survival. In January, he laid off 22 people on the 65-member staff, noting that the organization had grown too rapidly over the past two years.
Soon, the flying hospital will be the centerpiece of the organization's relief work, though it will continue truck convoys that deliver food to the poor in cities across the United States.
The plane is scheduled to visit five countries in the next nine months: El Salvador, Panama, Ukraine, India, and the Philippines.
Thompson said Operation Blessing will work in cooperation with the governments of those countries to bring in both patients and doctors. The medical teams will provide direct patient care and train local doctors in medical techniques.
While Operation Blessing is part of Robertson's vision, it will not have the same, singular focus on worldwide evangelism as the Christian Broadcasting Network, Thompson said.
Operation Blessing's goal is medical relief, and the work will be completely nonsectarian, he said. ``Although we are Christian and committed to evangelizing . . . at no point are people discriminated against on the basis of creed or religious preference,'' he said.
If government officials in host countries forbid Christian evangelizing - as is the case in some Muslim nations - then Operation Blessing's staff will not share their religious beliefs, he said. ``I don't agree with or support any kind of covert activities'' as far as spreading the Gospel, he said. ``We're not going in, under the guise of providing medical care, to set up underground churches.''
Right now, Thompson is working on finding the financial support to get the plane where it needs to go. Each trip will cost an estimated $500,000, Thompson said. Although CBN paid for the plane, Thompson said Operation Blessing has to take care of the costs of flying it.
He is seeking corporate gifts in kind for both fuel and medical supplies and plans to make a presentation to the Houston Petroleum Club soon. He hopes the project will inspire people to care about poverty and health problems around the globe.
``With one plane up against hundreds of thousands of medically under-served, what do you do? It's just a drop in the bucket. You can easily get discouraged,'' he said. ``But if you look at one life . . . one person at a time. It is the individual focus that drives us.'' ILLUSTRATION: HUY NGUYEN
The Virginian-Pilot
Paul B. Thompson, head of Operation Blessing, says more of the
world's poor are moving to urban areas. The transformed Lockheed
L1011 can take medical care virtually to their doorsteps.
PROFILE
Paul B. Thompson is president of Operation Blessing
International
Operation Blessing is a nonprofit international relief
organization founded in 1978 by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson.
The organization has about 43 employees and an annual budget of
about $36 million.
Experience: Joined Operation Blessing in 1995. Thompson was
corporate vice president for advocacy and education at the Monrovia,
Calif.-based World Vision Inc., an international child-care, relief
and development agency. In the late 1980s, he spent about a year as
vice president at Management Development Associates, an
international consulting firm. During his career, he has worked and
traveled in more than 100 countries.
Education: Bachelor's degree in sociology from Bethel College in
St. Paul, Minn. in 1974; master's degree in management from
Pepperdine University, 1977; post-graduate work in management at
various universities.
Personal: Thompson, who is 43, is married and has four children.
KEYWORDS: MEDICAL AIRPLANE FLYING HOSPITAL CHRISTIAN BROADCASTING
NETWORK OPERATION BLESSING PROFILE by CNB