Adam Torres and Doree Donaldson discuss Convoy of Hope.
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Show Notes:
Convoy of Hope is a non-profit, faith-based humanitarian organization that feeds children, empowers women, trains farmers and responds to disasters all over the world. In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Doree Donaldson, Co-Founder of Convoy of Hope, VP of Convoy: Women. Explore Convoy of Hope, Women’s Empowerment Initiative and the upcoming book Doree will release with Dr. Nancy O’Reilly from Women Connect4Good and Mission Matters.
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About Convoy of Hope
Convoy of Hope is a faith-based organization with a driving passion to feed the world through children’s feeding initiatives, community outreach, and disaster response.
In partnership with local churches, businesses, civic organizations, and government agencies, Convoy strategically offers help and hope to communities around the world.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of mission matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters. com and click on, be our guest to apply. All right. So did I have Dory Donaldson? Who’s co founder of convoy of hope and also VP of convoy women.
We’re celebrating convoy of hope celebrated. 30th anniversary. We’re going to be talking about a brand new book we have coming out with Dr. Nancy as well later in the year. And man, we’re just, we’re also just going to catch up. So first off Dory, welcome to the show. I’m so excited to finally get you booked.
Thank you, Adam. It’s great to be here. All right. So when I think of mission based organizations and individuals yourself, I mean, the cohort that we have that we’re going to be publishing this year, I just, I, I, I’ve been, I was talking to Dr Nancy the other day and I talked to Melissa and I’m like, Wow, just author after author, these amazing individuals that just all bring something unique to date to the table, but are extremely mission based.
So I’ll start this up. So Dory, just like I start them all, I’ll start with our mission matters minute. So, Dori, at Mission Matters, one of our goals is to amplify stories for others missions that we feel need to be heard and that we want to get to a broader audience. That’s our mission. Dori, what mission matters to you?
Well, the mission that matters to me is Convoy of Hope. We are all about helping people in times of crisis. That’s really at the core of convoys work, whether it’s a natural or humanitarian disaster. We want to provide tangible aid, whether it’s food, water, relief supplies through tarps, baby supplies, cleaning supplies, hygiene kits, those types of things.
We want to let folks know that they’re not alone in what very well may be their darkest hour. We also have a passion to feed vulnerable Children to see them grow up. healthy and strong and to empower marginalized women so that they can start their own business, which will allow them to feed their Children and send them to school.
And we’re also passionate about empowering girls so that they can make good decisions for their future families and helping farmers to increase the yields of their crops through best practices so that they can increase those yields and feed their families and even their entire communities. It’s really about giving a hand up when people are in Times of crisis, whether it be through lack of food or upward mobility, we want to help people to live independent lives free from the grip of poverty.
And it’s really a strategy of all of those things that makes an impact in communities when you can feed and educate children, empower women, and train the farmers. Wonderful. Dori, so 30th anniversary, first off, congrats. And I just have to ask, how do you feel? Quite honestly, I think we feel like it’s the beginning, not the end.
You know there’s just been so much momentum the last decade or so that we’ve seen. We never could have dreamed it would. Be where it is today, but you know, when I think a 30th anniversary this year, mission matters, we’re hitting our eighth year and I’m just thinking, I go back to that first year every year and I’m like, wow.
So when, as I was preparing for this interview, I’m like 30th anniversary, it’s amazing. The ecosystem. Yeah, it is a lot. A lot of great milestones were celebrating this year. We’ve served over 250 million people. Now we’ve distributed more than that one more time over 200. I don’t want to glance over that 250 million.
We want to say that short. That’s amazing. Yes. In 30 years. And we’ve distributed more than 2. 5 billion worth of food and relief supplies. And That has really happened over the course of the time, but with the help of over a million volunteers who have compassionate hearts for the volunteers and for the vulnerable.
So really it’s, it’s a, it’s a team effort. There are no, you know individual awards at Convoy of Hope. It’s, it’s an incredible team of people all around the world and volunteers. So, so maybe you just answered it and I’m sure it’s part of the answer in terms of teams, but you know, a lot, a lot of well meaning people and individuals, maybe they don’t make it to this milestone, assuming it was their goal, right?
30, whether it’s 30 years, whether it’s to even use the word Billions with a B in terms of impact or whether it’s, you know, hundreds of thousands to be able to help that many individuals. If there were some secrets or tips to the success and the longevity, what, what do you think some of those would be?
Wow. I think just doing the next thing that God puts in front of you really, you know, because you, You can’t project future. You have no way of seeing into the future. We certainly didn’t plan all the things that have happened or could never have dreamed it. Can I tell a little bit how convo got started and that might help everybody understand, you know, you know, you don’t, you don’t have big dreams in the beginning.
You just know that you’re supposed to do something and how that all started was all the way back to 1969. My husband’s parents were on their way to a business meeting and they were hit by a drunk driver. And then his dad was killed instantly. His mom became a single mom and he was the oldest of four.
And at age 12, they found themselves on welfare because the person who hit them didn’t have insurance and they didn’t either back in the day when I guess you could drive without insurance, not anymore. But they, they knew the pain and the shame of poverty, but they also knew the power of kindness because people wrap their arms of love around them.
And so I think that’s why they didn’t get bitter. To be quite honest fast forward a few years and he went to college, you know, he, he really didn’t want to be poor. He was doing everything he could not to be poor. So he studied journalism, started writing books. And one of those book projects took him to Calcutta, India.
And the folks that he was writing the book for said, we have someone we want you to interview for our book. And lo and behold, it was mother Teresa. And so in the course of that interview, Hal said, she turned the tables on me and she said, young man, what are you doing to help the poor and the suffering?
He didn’t think it was a good idea to lie. So he was honest and he just said, I’m not really doing much of anything. So that night or in her response, this is what was kind of leading me to your question was she said, everyone can do something. Just do the next kind thing that God puts in front of you.
Those were words to him, so they haunted him and they really caused him to start doing some soul searching. Okay. What is my life about? What is my purpose? Why am I here? Am I really happy? Am I fulfilled? And fast forward just a few more years and it wasn’t long and he felt called to go travel to eight cities in America.
And as a journalist, you know, he has that. incredible, curious bent. And he felt compelled to ride with the police on the midnight shift. And for three days and three nights, he lived in the streets and he interviewed gang members, prostitutes, homeless, drug addicts went into some pretty seedy places and he saw the underbelly of America and it really broke his heart.
It broke his heart and he said, you know, again, remember the mother trees experiences a ways back, but it’s still there. And he said, we got to do something. We got to do something. And so we loaded up a pickup truck of about 300 worth of groceries. And that was quite a bit back in the day and pass them out to some migrant farm workers in Northern California, where we were living at the time.
And that was the start of Convoy. Wow. I have chills right now to bring a Mother Teresa story and to get that and to see her spirit still work and inspire others and through you sharing that story as well. I feel that many that hear this are going to feel that spirit too and be inspired too so that to see that legacy and to see the start and the and really where it all began.
It’s just, it’s just amazing. And what I, I like this, this concept of just do the next good thing, right? That God leads you to, because I think also sometimes maybe people have these, you know, intentions of wanting to do well, but it can become overwhelming. It’s just like, I guess, just like starting out, whether it’s nonprofit or you know, a business for profit.
If you’re trying to tackle it all at one time and you have to have this great grand vision, can you imagine if you had in the beginning after had this conversation and said, How do we plan out the next 30 years versus getting what you could 300 of groceries. Let’s go hand these out, right? Do what you can one step at a time, be smart, be strategic but do something right.
You know, like you said, the need is, is tremendous. It’s great. You can be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the need, but rather than being overwhelmed Roll up your sleeves and do something. And we know that we’re helping somebody, you know, it’s like the little boy that was walking on the seashore with his grandpa and he starts throwing the starfish back in his, his grandpa says, Oh son, there’s two, there’s too many to throw back, you know, you can’t help them all.
And he said, well, I know grandpa, but it sure mattered to that one. Didn’t it? Wow. It mattered to that one. As you’ve been on this path and I’m asking, just to speak for yourself, of course, I, I know you’re not speaking for everyone, but how, how do you know when you feel like you’re, you’re continuing along the right path of helping?
Like, like was there signs, were there things that were like, okay, this is, this is working? I think, oh, there’s probably, that’s probably a multifaceted answer, but a couple of things that come to mind is, you know, if if you feel like you’re just constantly. You know, butting against the green or you’re hitting your head against a wall, you know, maybe, maybe you’re not going through the open door, you know, you need to look for those open doors and not try to force them open.
I think we have a saying at Conway that we follow the miracles and there were times when we came to follow the miracles. We came to a crossroads. That is amazing. Follow the miracles. That’s amazing. And there were a couple of times when Helen and I were like, you know what, we need this. We need like 25, 000 or we’re done.
You know, we can’t keep doing this. And we just, we just pause and we said, okay, God, if you want us to keep going on this. This, you know, we need this and just time after time, there would be a provision of some sort. And those were just little signs. Okay, you’re on the right path. Keep going. Don’t give up.
And people came alongside of us and said the very same thing. Don’t give up. Keep going. And if you believe something deep in your heart and you know that it’s the right thing to do don’t stop, but continue to operate with integrity. I feel like there’s humility is so important and that’s something that our leadership has really modeled here at Convoy of Hope is just be humble and know that this is a team.
Like I said, there’s no, there’s no individual awards. It’s team, team awards. We’re together in this. And we have incredible partners that link arms with us to, to make the work all possible. And I know that this isn’t why you do it, but I do feel it’s important. And I want to bring this out to my audience from the standpoint of, I’m hoping others that listen to this will be inspired as well.
But to think about it from going from, you know, that initial give right of groceries to now being recognized as one of the largest charities in America by Forbes magazine. Again, I know you don’t do it for accolades, But you do it for impact and that’s, that is for whatever it’s worth a measure of impact.
So again, I bring, I bring that up because I want my audience to know that and hopefully be inspired to take action as well. Yes. Yes. I want to I got, I know we have some other things on the, on the agenda that I definitely want to get into with our time. So women’s empowerment initiative, what’s it about?
And give us some more. Yeah. Well, again, that wasn’t one of the things that we set out to do. Right. It, it sort of dropped in our lap a little bit, started out as a grant from USAID in Ethiopia. And it was so successful that we said after the grant ran out, we’ve got to keep doing this. This is powerful.
This is amazing. We saw just incredible fruit from it. We saw women just rising up and becoming breadwinners in their homes. And we just saw the cycle of poverty being broken. There’s a lot of reasons why we do it. Let me start a little bit more with the why I could for a moment. You know, how mom became a single mom overnight.
Right. In a moment, she became a single mom and she didn’t have a college education, so she had to fight and claw her way up in the corporate world. She didn’t want to live on food stamps. She didn’t want to be on the welfare role. So she wanted to be self supporting and she worked really hard to get there and she eventually did.
So that’s one of the reasons why we believe so strongly in empowering women. But of the world’s Those of the population living in severe poverty. It’s over 800 million people, and that number, you know, fluctuates some, but it’s continuing to grow. And of the vast majority are women and Children. So we know that bad things happen to a lot of people, but often they happen to women and Children.
One in three women will experience gender violence in their lifetime, and one in seven girls will be married by age 15. If you can imagine even younger, I’m a mom of four daughters. I can’t even imagine it. So, you know, we see this all over the world that women are devalued by society. They are not considered valuable enough to educate.
They, they just aren’t. So When you when you’re fighting against those odds, you have a lot of strikes against you. And there are no safety nets for women around the world in many places like we have. And we’re so blessed with here in America. So between early marriage, early pregnancy and lack of education, women just can’t get the skills that they need to support their families.
I love how Melinda Gates says it. She says what extreme poverty really means is that no matter how hard you work You’re trapped. You can’t get out. Your efforts barely matter. You’ve been left behind by those who could lift you up. She also says that when you lift up women, you lift up an entire community.
Why? Because moms want what’s best for their kids and they’ll do anything to help them survive and thrive. So if you want to break the cycle of poverty, it makes the most sense to invest in mothers because we know that women will pour more resources back into their family, far more resources than a man will.
So that’s so important. Can you maybe share some, and of course you share any names or anything like that, but maybe share some, some stories of some of the women that have, you know, benefited from this. Yes. And just to back up, I think I’ve alluded to this, but you know, we, we do business training with the mothers.
We do. Girls clubs with the teen girls, really to help them. It’s as a preventative, right? So that they can stay in school, delay marriage, not get pregnant, all of those things that they need to do to keep them out of that cycle of poverty. And then we also work with mothers and training how to raise their Children.
How to be take care of themselves as mothers. Holistic training really for the moms. Yeah, a couple of great stories are so many good ones. One of my favorites is a woman I met in Tanzania. Yeah. Quite a few years ago. And it was such a special moment for me. Her name in, in Swahili actually is the same as my name.
Oh, wow. So we had an instant bond. Follow the miracles. I’m looking for them all the time. I all, whenever I See, when I love this, I’m completely going to be using this with my team. Now they’re going to be like, Adam, where’d you get this line? You must’ve been doing an interview and somebody said it. I’m like, I borrowed it from convoy of hope.
Copyrighted. So it’s all the miracles. No accidents there. Those are guide posts. Go ahead. Yes. Yes, for sure. Well, anyway, so, you know, she didn’t speak a lot of English, but through her telling me her story through a lot of tears, she told me how her husband had been killed in a plane crash. He was on his way home from Europe from a buying trip.
So obviously quite a successful man. And because of that, her in laws disowned her. I don’t understand that, but they disowned her. She had no skills to support her kids. So she was thrust into severe poverty and she found her way to our women’s empowerment program. And that’s. That’s how I met her. About 18 months later, I went back to Tanzania and I saw her again, and I thought, she sure looks familiar.
Who is she? And somebody told me it’s. Her that you met 18 months ago. I couldn’t even recognize her. She was full of joy. She was walking upright. She dressed beautifully. She was running a successful jewelry business. So, you know, just that seeing that transformation over time it just. It’s incredible.
It was just amazing. Just a few weeks ago, I met a woman in the Dominican Republic who again kind of has a tragic story. Many of them do not all, but many of them do. Her, there was a history of violence in her home. It landed her in prison. Her sentence was short, unfortunately, but she had a son and I think her mom probably took care of her son while she was in prison.
And when she got out, she came across our women’s important home. Empowerment coordinator and got enrolled in the program, and she had always wanted to do nails, and so they were able to train her in having a nail salon. So we went to her nail salon. My daughter was with me and actually had her nails done by her.
Amazing. And she was just so wonderful. She was so fun, so happy, so joyful, so thankful for the opportunity to have this nail salon. Now she cares for her son and her mother. They live with her. And here’s the neatest part. She’s taking psychology classes. Wow. Because she wants to be able to help women who’ve gone through what she’s gone through.
Wow. So. And think about, think about her new position as really a community leader, having a nail salon, all of the women that she’s going to be able to help and, and like by being that new community leader. Wow. Yes. Yes. The influence is huge. Not only like you said, the community in her family, her son’s going to see an empowered mother.
He’s going to know how to treat women more. Her nail salon will probably grow. She’ll probably have to hire more women. So there’s always a ripple effect when you empower one. You’re not just empowering her. You’re empowering her whole family, community, the next generation. What is the just I don’t want to assume that everybody understands this.
What’s the likelihood that, and again, we’re, we’re, you know, we’re kind of projecting here a bit, but what are the odds or the likelihood, however we want to say it, that had You not been there, had your organization not been there with that program, that this woman was going to be able to put together this training, pay for it, do all these other things that would then lead to her having a nail salon.
Like maybe not likelihood, maybe another way to say what, what would some of the hurdles be? Maybe that’s a better way to pose the question. I just want people to understand like how remarkable that is. Because some that listen to this, they may say, Oh yeah, if I wanted to learn how to do nails, I just go down the street to the local, you know, tech shop or whatever.
And I can learn, or I can do a quick apprenticeship or maybe they’ll hire me part time. Like, can you just draw at least that one story out a bit? Yeah, I think, you know, I’m not an expert and every culture is different. So I, I’m going to say that right up front. I’m not an expert, you know, in social structures and all of that, but.
But I know, you know, as I mentioned, there are just no safety nets. So She may have not had enough money. Number one to do that. A lot of times people are living literally What am I going to feed my children today? Certainly have no ability to Dream for their future or think of what life could be like if I could purchase meat for my children, I remember one mom said, and now we can have meat on the weekends and now we can, and now I have enough food to send a lunch with my child to school.
We need over 500, 000 kids at convoy and we do it in schools because when kids get a meal at school, their parents are more likely to get them there. Right. Because it costs money to send kids to school in most parts of the world. They have to have uniforms. And so, you know, it’s not easy for parents to get their kids to school.
So if a mom has the ability to generate income, it gives her the power. She now has the strength to send her Children to school. And we know how important Education is for the future of anyone. So I don’t know if that answered all your question, but I just want people to understand the hurdle and you did answer.
And I know we are projecting a bit and I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. I know you’re not a nail tech professional, but, but I think the main point here is that in what, and what I wanted to get out. So everybody understands is that if you have to decide between putting food on the table for your children or going out to learn a skill, it’s just, it’s a like hierarchy of needs.
Like which one are you going to do first? Right. Like just period. Like if that’s all the money there is, there’s no safety net, which is, I hope becoming a little bit more, you know, prevalent and understood by everybody listening and watching this. Then if you’re operating at that level, things are different.
And that’s why I’m so passionate about people getting involved. Mm hmm. Yeah. You know, children, girls are considered a commodity to be, property, to be sold for labor and childbirth and certainly not to be able to dream for their futures. Their futures, their decisions are being made. Their choices were being made for them, and so that that prevents them from, you know, excelling and becoming reaching their full potential.
Yeah. Now I wanna, I wanna make sure I position this right. So if I’m off a little, then, then, then please correct me. But one of the things that I understand is when people are giving or they’re getting involved, of course, you want to make sure you’re, you’re aligning yourself with the correct organization.
So what when we’re thinking about convoy of hope in relation to, I believe it’s called charity navigator, that’s the kind of watchdog for the industry. Could you maybe educate myself and our audience a little bit on that and how that works? Thanks. Yeah, there are several educators of you know, navigators that are evaluators of charities.
So forth. Charity navigator being one, we’ve had their highest rating for almost 20 years, I believe, which is, can only be attributed to about 1 percent of charities in America. There are 1. 5 million of them in America. And as I mentioned, maybe I said that already, but and A couple of others are candid and guide star, you know, so we are, we actually hold ourselves to a higher standard than the IRS.
As far as how we operate business and we take donor integrity very seriously. So folks that, you know, are looking to make sure that. They’re giving to an organization that is the, that their support is actually really getting to the need. We can say that that’s true. We, we try to keep our administrative costs anywhere from eight to 10%, that means that at least 90 cents out of every dollar is going to go to program work and we’re very proud of that.
And we that’s just really important to us. We want to operate with integrity at the highest level and take donor intent seriously and want to be the best user of the resources that we’ve been given so that we can really report that to our donors and, and everyone who’s a part of the organization.
Now Convoy of Hope. I know we talked about the initiative, but I also want to just go maybe a little bit further and Convoy of Hope and really what you’re doing on the farming and agriculture side. Maybe comment on that a bit for me too, please. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So agriculture, as you know food security is what it’s all about.
So in many parts of the world, for example, in Haiti they had forgotten how to farm. Wow. Because when they had the hunger. You know, the U. S. We just sent gobs of food to them, and then they forgot how to farm. And so now we’ve gone back in, and that’s where agriculture started. But of course, we’re in many, many countries now with agriculture just about everywhere.
We work. Agriculture is at the core of what we’re doing. But, didn’t know how to farm. So once you can train a farmer, so we have agronomists that are on staff with us, but we also from our headquarters have the ability to do a lot of training. And we actually have greenhouses that are going to be on our property here at our headquarters that will replicate soils from around the globe and climates around the globe so that we can really help farmers troubleshoot when they have something that’s eating at their plants, we can help them figure out what that is.
And so they know how to to fix it. Those kinds of things really helping them so that they can not only be sustainable for themselves, but even have agriculture on a, on a smaller scale for export. Even some things have been exported to different countries. I think of dragon fruit in Nicaragua.
Incredible. The government, we caught the attention of the government, Nicaragua, when we figured out how to be so successful with dragon fruit and the government said, teach us, how are you doing this? And so that, that’s really amazing when you think about just being able to go in and see what people have, how can we help?
How can we work with what they have? You know, because there’s technology is fairly minimal in many places, right? That’s going to be increasing, I think, as the years go by. But it’s been incredible to see the transfer of knowledge that has been happening from our local. Agronomy team. We’ve got soil scientists on staff that are leading the charge.
And they are doing some cutting edge research and making it happen all over the world to help transform communities. And so that community will say, we’re good. Why don’t you go to the next one? We are good. And we’ve seen that in Haiti, you know, barren land just literally transform into lush fields.
It’s been amazing to watch and school kids are learning how to farm as well, garden, and they’re taking home that knowledge to their families. So those simple, that simple knowledge of gardening, how important is that? Right. It’s amazing. I grew up on a farm in North Dakota and my mom was a big gardener.
So I ate great vegetables growing up and I know how wonderful they are. But for people that their livelihoods, you know. that are we going to eat today? Well, is it in the garden? If it’s not in the garden, where are we going to get it? You know, so we know that food security agriculture is really at the center of that.
It’s great. Well, Dory for everybody watching this, just so you know, I, I did kind of tease that we have a book coming out later this year with Dr. Nancy and women connect for good. We’re not going to talk about that today that much. And the reason is because we will be bringing Dory back onto the show when the book is out and live, and we’re going to do a whole production around and we’ll do a deep dive.
But little birdie told me Dory, and you know, I have to bring this up. I believe in the family. You have some books coming up, right? What’s next? I’m married to a writer. He is a writer and he just finished a book that’s coming out in June, but you can get it now on Amazon. He told me you can actually buy it now on Amazon.
It’s called what really matters. The subtitle is how to care for yourself and serve a hurting world. Fantastic. And can you give me that title one more time? Because people can catch it. What Really Matters. And the subtitle is How to Care for Yourself and Serve a Hurting World. And that subtitle really tells what the book is about.
You know, if you are a person who’s helping a lot of other people and you’re involved in compassion, a lot of times you neglect your own needs. So the book is about being healthy so that you can help more people. And taking care of yourself is not an act of selfishness. It’s actually an act of selflessness.
Well, Dory, I really appreciate you coming on the show today and really it’s just a thrill to me to be able to, of course, bring your stories to our audience and to, to more people to get involved. But also to celebrate this 30th, I know it’s not its anniversary, but in my head, it’s 30th birthday. I’m like, come on, celebrate the 30th.
30th birthday to if somebody wants to keep the conversation going and learn more about the projects, what you have going on what’s the best way for them to do that? You know, our website’s quite thorough and exhaustive. Convoy of hope. org. If you’re interested in women’s empowerment and getting involved there a little bit more, you can always.
go to the website that I’m in charge of. That’s convoy of hope. org slash women. And you can join convoy women, whether you’re a man or a woman, it doesn’t matter, but you can see more ways of how you can be involved and you can get a monthly email that dives deeper into it with reports from the field and some creative ways that you can be a part.
We’d love to. Wonderful. And to my audience, definitely go check that out. And if you’re new to the show or new to the platform, hey, if you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe button because we have many more mission based individuals coming up on the line and we don’t want you to miss a thing. Dory, again, thank you so much for coming on.
It’s been a pleasure and I can’t wait till the next time we get to work together. Thank you so much, Adam. My pleasure as well.
