Welcome to this month's E-zine!

I'm very excited this month, having completed our first round-the-world Mark of a Leader trip with conferences in Asia and Europe the same week.

But my comfortable circumstances to bring to greater light the tragedy that has befallen the people of Haiti and the inconceivable suffering that millions are facing there.

Sadly, it is often takes bad circumstances bring out the best (and sometimes the worst) in people. This month’s story is about an organization and its selfless people who exemplify the very best of what human beings can do with their lives.

We have admired them for many years. Once again they were on the scene of the tragedy in Haiti almost instantly to bring expertise and help.

I hope you enjoy the story of the incredible Médecins Sans Frontières.

Yours in Leadership,

Doug Keeley

Please visit our website at www.themarkofaleader.com

WITHOUT BORDERS - OR LIMIT

After years of hard work and the huge expense of medical school, many doctors settle into comfortable careers. But not the doctors of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) or Doctors Without Borders in English.

MSF currently provides emergency medical assistance to populations in danger in as many as 70 countries, and is one of the world’s best-known aid organizations.

What is incredibly powerful and moving about MSF is that it is staffed and run by trained doctors and nurses, some of whom are fulltime but many of whom take leave from their careers to risk their lives everyday for others, living amongst the absolute worst of human circumstances.

It began in a place no-one had heard of... and at a time no-one would wish to revisit.

It was 1968. A group of French doctors had volunteered to go with the Red Cross to help victims of war and famine in Biafra, a breakaway state in Nigeria.

Upon entering the region, the volunteers were horrified by the atrocities they witnessed... food supplies locked away from starving thousands, innocent civilians killed mercilessly, medical centers deliberately attacked.

They had signed an agreement promising not take sides in the conflict, because it was only under this condition of neutrality that the Red Cross could enter the country at all.

But some of them, led by Dr. Bernard Kouchner, decided that in the face of such injustice they could not accept the deal. So when he returned to France, Kouchner broke his silence.

He openly condemned the brutality of the Nigerian government, and organized public protests in an attempt to draw world attention to the situation. He and his allies started to plan a new emergency aid organization which would operate independently of politics.

On December 20, 1971, Kouchner and his group of doctors came together with another fledgling humanitarian organization in Paris, to form Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF.

Against his preference, the majority of the group decided that staying neutral and silent was a price worth paying to get medical care to victims of war. So this became the operating rule of MSF…although the debate continues throughout the aid community to this day.

"MSF is a humanitarian organization -- neutrality is enshrined in its charter -- but from its earliest days it has wrestled with the knowledge that, in cases of brutality and oppression, neutrality may be tantamount to complicity."
- Dan Bortolotti

In those days they were seen almost as the "mavericks" of emergency medical aid. Early emergency projects were small, and often modest in their success... yet MSF gained a reputation for going where other agencies would not go.

The first MSF volunteers hitched rides on relief flights into disaster zones and opened their clinics in tents.

They were on the front lines, giving aid after the devastating 1972 earthquake in Nicaragua; after Hurricane Fifi hit Honduras in 1974; opening a hospital in war-torn Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War in 1976.

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and closed the borders, MSF volunteers rode donkeys over hidden mountain passes to bring medical care.

During the 1980s, MSF added offices in countries across Europe and its reputation continued to grow... as did its outspokenness.

It criticized the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia in 1980, and in December 1985 was expelled from Ethiopia for speaking out against Colonel Mengistu.

Now well funded by UN agencies, governments and private donors, MSF had become admired for its clever logistics and frugal use of resources.

For example, it developed standardized packs of emergency supplies, which could be warehoused and shipped out instantly wherever they were needed. Its teams could move quickly and efficiently by plane, Land Cruiser, canoe and on foot to deliver medical aid to the most dangerous and remote places on earth.

And that’s exactly what they did... everywhere there was a need.

Sadly, there was no shortage of those places.

Bosnia in 1992. Rwanda in 1994. Chechnya in 1998.

And those are just the ones that made the headlines.

MSF was present in every case... standing up for the victims, giving aid to the wounded.

On December 10, 1999, their work was awarded one of the world's highest honors... the Nobel Peace Prize.

"Despite grand debates on world order, the act of humanitarianism comes down to one thing: individual human beings reaching out to others who find themselves in the most difficult circumstances. One bandage a time, one suture at a time, one vaccination at a time."
- James Orbinski, MSF international president, accepting the Nobel peace prize, December 1999

In the decade or so since then, MSF has continued to provide emergency aid in disaster zones, and expand its humanitarian projects in every part of the world.

Its most recent challenge came only about a month ago.

On January 12, 2010, an earthquake virtually destroyed Haiti's capitol city Port-au-Prince, as well as the nearby town of Leogane. An estimated three million people were affected by the quake, which has left as many as 200,000 dead.

MSF had been working in Haiti since 1991, and was already operating three hospitals in Port-au-Prince. But the primitive state of Haiti's healthcare system meant that their surgical facilities were already overburdened... before the earthquake.

Now, of course, it's far worse. All three hospitals were destroyed in the quake, and have had to be abandoned.

But within a few days, over 800 MSF volunteers were providing emergency medical care to survivors right across Port-au-Prince.

They set up clinics in tents to replace their own damaged medical facilities, and even airlifted in a unique 100-bed emergency hospital – with an inflatable surgical unit, two operating theaters and seven hospitalization tents.

Extraordinary. Yet for MSF, this is life as usual.

Yes, there are many terrible things happening in the world... natural disasters, civil wars, the horror of AIDS, refugee camps filled with hungry children.

But at least with MSF, I get a chance to do something. I am with an organization built to act, to try to make things better for people who are suffering and need medical care.

Volunteers with MSF don't have to sit by helplessly, wondering what on earth we can do. In the face of disaster, we can respond. The gift of action is ours.
- David Morley, Healing our World

To this organization and its brave and giving members I humbly tip my hat (and gladly donate). You are an inspiration and role model for us all. You do not just talk - you take action. You expose yourselves to risk and danger everyday to make a difference. And what a difference it is.

The world is a far far better place because of Médecins Sans Frontières.

How better could you define leadership?

You can find out more about MSF and donate to its emergency relief projects in Haiti and over 70 other countries, by going to their international website: http://www.msf.org.