Reaching the Forgotten: Why Work at the End of the Road?
World Concern President, Nick Archer, discusses why an organization would intentionally choose to work in difficult, dangerous, hard-to-reach places.
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Show Notes
Why would someone walk into a potentially dangerous, difficult situation? Or intentionally step towards something they know will cost them a lot and potentially fail? In this episode, World Concern President, Nick Archer, shares why he feels the organization he leads is uniquely called to work in some of the hardest places in the world. Hear how Nick himself chose to move his family, including two young children, to the end of the road, and how it shaped his future and theirs.
Reaching the Forgotten: Why Work at the End of the Road?
Cathy Herholdt:
Welcome to the End of the Road podcast. My name is Cathy and I'm your host and tour guide, as we journey together to some of the most remote, challenging places on the planet. I'm so excited to have you along for the ride. So buckle up, we're going to the end of the road.
Cathy Herholdt:
Our guest today on the podcast is Nick Archer. He's the president of World Concern, a Seattle based Christian humanitarian and community development organization with a 65 year history. I'm excited for you to meet Nick, he took over as president of World Concern just about a year and a half ago, but has served with the organization for 23 years. He's got a really incredible life story, some amazing experiences, including raising his children in Kenya. I'm excited for you to get to know Nick a little bit and hear what he has to share with us today. So without further ado, Nick, thanks for joining us today.
Nick Archer:
Thank you. It's good to be here.
Cathy Herholdt:
Let's get right to the end of the road, which is a unique calling on World Concern's ministry, and also the reason behind the name of this podcast. So at World Concern, we talk a lot about going beyond the end of the road, which is to say, we feel called to serve the people and the communities that are unreached, super remote, places that a lot of people will never go in their lifetime. Some of these places are really far away. Some of them are dangerous, and most are unknown to a lot of people or they know very little about them. I've traveled a bit with World Concern and I know you've traveled a ton and lived overseas. And so the question always comes up, why these challenging places?
Cathy Herholdt:
I remember driving through the Samburu region of Kenya and passing some villages along the road, even after the paved road ended, even after the dirt road ended and out into the bush. And I used the term villages loosely because some of these places hardly look like a village at all, but I remember driving way out there and dust is swirling around the car and it's very bumpy and difficult driving and passing these villages and thinking, "Why don't we just work there? Why are we going farther?" So tell me a little bit about why the end of the road?
Nick Archer:
Yeah, good question. I think when I think about end of the road, I think there's a couple of ideas or themes that come to my mind. One is about forgotten and the other is about need. It's much easier for us to access places that are on the main road or near the main road. But when we talk about the end of the road, we're really looking at communities and families and villages that are really a long way away from the reach of most humanitarian organizations, even governments. That's really our passion to reach people like that. The other is need, and that's the need is really tied to distance. Many of us know that the further away we are from a service, the harder it is to gain any benefit from it. I remember, I think I was in Northern Kenya, I think, many years ago, and there was a sign posts there.
Nick Archer:
And you got to realize that in Kenya, once you get above the first Southern third of the country, roads certainly in those days used to really deteriorate badly. And it just got more and more barren, more and more remote. And I remember getting to this place and there was a sign and it said, well, it said Nairobi X number of miles in one direction, and the other one, it said New York. New York 3,500 miles or something bizarre like that. And I said, "Really what's the connection between that sign and the people here?" The vast majority of them would know nothing about New York, other than it being a name on a map or a story that they'd heard.
Nick Archer:
And for me, it really captures this idea about these people are just a long way from anywhere, what is our role to be hope and to be life to these people? So I would say that's one of my answers to that, but need is very much tied to that. How are we asking ourselves really hard questions about what is the need of those people that are so far away from the major resource centers?
Cathy Herholdt:
So Nick, what gets you really excited, really jazzed up when you think about the work that World Concern is doing, when you sit and you think about the places that we're working, the current programs and projects that are happening, the way that we do our work, what is it that really gets you going in the morning and makes you think like, this is good work, I'm excited about this?
Nick Archer:
What I really love about the work that we do it's what I see in the faces of the people that we serve. So a lot of my time with World Concern, before is working with and talking to a lot of local communities. The one thing about World Concern that is very core to us is that we have a message of hope. And part of that hope is about dignity, and dignity's really important for World Concern, but it's very much about how we interact with people. And too often in the West, what we've done is we want to do things for people. We go in and we decide what their need is, and then we actually say, "Well, this is how you fix it. And you know what? We're going to fix it for you." And what that does it disempowers people. It actually demoralizes them and it makes people feel worthless. But when we as an organization go into a place like that, we engage with them, when we ask them very simple questions.
Nick Archer:
We say to them, "What do you think your need is? What you think about how that is solved?" And we begin a dialogue that just changes the dynamic of that relationship. And then you look in somebody's face and you can see the lights come on and they begin to say to themselves, "You know what? All of a sudden someone is interested in my opinion. Someone is interested in what I think about my problems. This person isn't telling me what my problem is, they're asking me, they're inviting me into a relationship." And that really changes, that changes this whole dynamic of how that relationship evolves. And we start using people's names, we say, "Well, [Mwangi 00:07:27], or we say, Ahmed, what is your problem? And how can we journey with you?" And that changing dynamic of empowerment, it gives people dignity, it gives people value. And I think for us in World Concern, that is so core, it's about in our relationships in serving people, it's about giving them value, restoring dignity. When I go to the field, that's really what inspires me.
Cathy Herholdt:
That's what you love to see. Yeah. So that's interesting. I think for most of us, when we hear about poverty in another country, we hear about suffering, we hear about things that are happening, people not having enough food or having dirty water that's making them sick, or little girls being married off at a very young age. And we think we've got some pretty simple solutions to that, in fact, people often say to me, and I'm sure they say to you, "Why don't you just bring them some food? Why don't you just give them some clean water, give them a way to get that." And at times that is necessary, particularly if there's an emergent need right at the beginning of working with a community, but you're saying long term, that's not really the best approach.
Nick Archer:
Yeah, absolutely. You use the word poverty, poverty has many dimensions to it. One of them actually is the loss of dignity, it's disempowerment. And I think many of us can ask ourselves a very simple question, what if somebody shows up at my front door and tells me what my problem is, and then tells me, "Well, this is your solution, and I'm going to do it for you." And we would feel terrible if that happened, then we would say, "Who was this person that is coming here, doesn't know my circumstances is telling me what my need is?" And that's the whole conversation we're trying to change in the relationships that we engage in. Because you know what? You might be right about what somebody's problem is. When you think about it, so many needs around the world are tied up in things like access to food, shelter, security, education for children.
Nick Archer:
So it's not rocket science, but the how of doing that is hugely important because do we engage with communities that really, it doesn't just solve their problem, but they own the solution and they're engaged in it. And that's what is the real driver, because then you're giving them something much more important than just a commodity. You are restoring a sense of their own value and worth, which by the way, is something that God gives all of us. It's the most basic need that God gives us. He recognizes us as individuals with the ability to choose and decide for ourselves. It's an incredible privilege we all have. And so when we engage with these communities, it really is about restoring and building and reinvesting that gives dignity, empowers, it transforms people's lives.
Cathy Herholdt:
Absolutely. So that's really interesting as I'm listening to you talk, I'm trying to bring it down to what the listener's perspective might be. And it makes me think of when you said, if somebody arrived at your door and said, "This is what your problem is, and this is how you need to fix it, and I'm going to do it for you." As independent North Americans, we would probably be offended and a little bit put off. If we were in a place of need, a place of struggle in our lives, then it's easy to see how that could be disempowering, how it could make you feel not good about yourself. I'm thinking just of a time when my husband and I were young and first married and didn't have a lot of money and believe it or not, we bought a minivan at a garage sale, which promptly dropped its transmission.
Cathy Herholdt:
And of course we didn't have the money to fix it. And I remember well-meaning people in our lives basically doing exactly what you just said, "What your problem is that you wasted money on a piece of junk and you need to just get rid of that thing." And that was actually not the solution that we ended up taking or that we wanted to take. But I remember feeling, oh, we had done something that wasn't very smart, as someone else needed to tell us what to do about it. So we've all been in that position,
probably in our lives where we're struggling. And when you think about what you really need during a time of struggle is you need someone to say, "Hey, I'm here. I'm going to walk with you through this, and you can do this. You actually have everything that it takes to get out of this situation."
Nick Archer:
Yeah. I think in that example, the issue is about being invitational in the relationship. Is your engagement with somebody else, is it reciprocal? Are you going in to listen or are you going into tell? And I think that's really the key thing. Just bear in mind, what color am I? Okay, I'm white. Okay. I've got a whole bunch of cultural baggage. When I walk into a place, people will make all sorts of assumptions about me, how much money I have, where I live, the size of my house, all sorts of things. Now you imagine that in a rural community in Africa. Okay. You go in and you are already on a pedestal.
Nick Archer:
So people are not going to challenge you. And if you come in tell somebody what to do, they are not going to challenge you, even though they think you're talking rubbish. But you go in such a way, is that initial relationship is a reciprocal one, it's invitational, and you go in and you listen and you talk to people. Many of these people I used to talk to were non literate, never had a chance to go to school, couldn't read and write even in their own native language. So I go in, I have all these accoutrements around me. Maybe I have this fancy vehicle, I come in with a notepad and a pen, and I got all these things and I write down notes, and then I take all that away with me.
Nick Archer:
And then the person on other side is thinking, "Well, what's he writing in his notebook? What's he saying about me? What's he going to do with all that information he took away?" And it builds this picture of you, the outsider, the one who's actually the dominant voice telling the local community what should and shouldn't happen. But the reality is many of those people are actually very smart. They know a lot about their environment, they can survive there and firefight better than I can. But that relationship the way you engage is so fundamental.
Cathy Herholdt:
Yeah, absolutely. I've seen incredible strength in the people, the women, the children, the men, the community leaders, the people in the communities that I've visited. I think that all the time they are not just survivors, but have capacity and the ability to thrive and much stronger than I am. And so I think that's great to look at not only what the needs are, but World Concern takes a look at what the strengths are too, don't they? In a community and in a family and maybe what assets or natural resources a community has in planning the transformation, is that correct?
Nick Archer:
Yeah, it's totally correct. One of the things we do is actually ask people, "What are the assets in your community? Where are the things that you value? What do you try and protect? What's your history?" That's a really important one. "What's the history that's brought you to the place where you are now?" Whether it's a good history or a bad history, we all have a history with good and bad pieces to it. And what's the history that's gotten you here? And that may be a huge factor in the circumstances that you are seeing on the ground. Those things are all taking into consideration, but that information it's owned by the community, they own their information. And then you work with them to say, "Well, what do all these pieces when you look at them, what do they mean? And how can they be utilized to take your
journey forward in a positive way? That you build resources, you invest in your community, you invest in your family."
Cathy Herholdt:
I love that. So you've talked a little bit and I have too about going into these places or visiting these places. And when you or I, or any of our North American headquarters staff visit the field, we are doing just that, we're visiting. So tell me a little bit about who are the World Concern staff in the communities that are engaging in these relationships with the community? What is different? Because people might think it's you and I, but it's not you and I, is it?
Nick Archer:
No. The vast majority of our staff around the world are actually nationals from the countries in which they work. They know their people far, far better than we do. But even with that, there is still the way they go in is really, really important. Just like I could go in and be offensive, they can equally go in and be offensive. You look at Kenya, for example, Kenya has over 40 tribes in it. And those tribes, many of them will have very, very different stories and they have different relationships with one another. So if you've got one person from one part of the country going to a different part of the country, they equally have to have an attitude of service and learning when they go in.
Nick Archer:
They can't go in and Lord it over a community no more than I can. I would say that's the magic sauce and a lot of what we do. The quality of the character and the servanthood of those individuals that go in, the willingness to listen, the willingness to learn, is really the secret sauce in the work that we do around the world.
Cathy Herholdt:
And many of them are sacrificing a lot to be there, to do this work. Some of them are expats from another country, say from Kenya, serving in South Sudan, a lot of them are local indigenous from the actual region where World Concern is working. But some of them have to be away from their families and live in an office compound in the field for long periods of time. They know that these places aren't safe, they're not comfortable, and so they really sacrifice a lot to do this work because they believe in it as well. And I think, and tell me what you think, but I think that shows a level of presence of commitment, of support in another way from the World Concern field teams. Do you think so?
Nick Archer:
Yeah, I do. I think it's always easy to have a day job, where you leave your home in the morning, go and do your job and come home in the evening, which for us is fairly common. But going back to the question you raised at the beginning about, the end of the road, what does the end of the road look like? Well, for many of our staff, it's a big sacrifice leaving their family, usually in some urban centers where they live, and then going, maybe even to a third country and serving there, living there, learning the language, understanding the people.
Nick Archer:
They make a huge sacrifice in doing that because a lot of them have young kids at home, things like that. They make a big sacrifice. And when they go, sometimes they go for a month, sometimes they do six
weeks. During COVID, some of them got stuck for three, four months, couldn't get home. They make a huge sacrifice in the work that they do. I always want to give a big shout out to our field staff, because as I said, a lot of those people, they are what make our work valuable. They are the secret sauce.
Cathy Herholdt:
Absolutely. I always say many of them are my heroes.
Nick Archer:
Exactly.
Cathy Herholdt:
And I feel humbled and honored to get to work alongside them, but they're doing the real work, honestly. And I'm really excited because some of those field staff are going to be future guests on the podcast. So our listeners are going to get a chance to meet some of these amazing, godly servants that are sacrificing so much to help communities and to change lives. And so we're going to get a chance to hear from some of them and hear their stories.
Nick Archer:
Yeah. Maybe I can add too, obviously there's those staff that do cross a physical, a country boundary to go and work somewhere else. But even in some of the inside the country programs that we have, some staff make significant sacrifices to work in different tribal and ethnic areas. That's not something that we in the West have to wrestle with very often. But it's a bit like me asking one of you listening to this to go work in a downtown part of your own city that you consider difficult, violent, rough, where you be a target. Some of our local staff make those kinds of sacrifices too, on a daily basis. And that's not something that should be taken lightly.
Cathy Herholdt:
Yeah. And yet I've seen, and I'm sure you have too, when we arrive in a community to visit, immediately the community members come up and shake hands and hug the staff members and welcome them in. They've really taken the time and effort to first build a relationship with those community members.
Nick Archer:
Yeah. It's about how you're seen. Are you seen as simply an outsider coming into to do a particular job? Are you going to fulfill your own agenda? Or have you become, and are you becoming part of the community? Are you becoming one with them? Do you have that relationship that really drives change? And going back to those words I used earlier about dignity and empowerment in transformation, the relationship that they have is like the one you described simply by virtue of the way they're approaching the community.
Cathy Herholdt:
I want to just pause for a moment and thank our listeners for joining us today. If you're just hearing about World Concern for the first time, and you're curious to learn a little bit more about who we are and what sets us apart from other organizations you might be familiar with, please visit worldconcern.org/podcast, and learn a little bit more about what we do. And now let's get back to our conversation.
Cathy Herholdt:
Well, Nick, I want to hear a little bit about your journey, your life story, and some of your personal experiences, and there are certainly plenty of those. So in your early years with World Concern, you actually lived overseas and raised your two children in Kenya. Tell me a little bit about arriving in Kenya with, was it a three and a five year old and your wife to serve there? I imagine there was some culture shock. I imagine it was just a huge change for you, but tell me about that arrival moment in Kenya.
Nick Archer:
Yeah. You may have to stop me in answering this one. I've got probably a 1,000 stories I could share.
Cathy Herholdt:
Well, give us a snapshot of what that was like.
Nick Archer:
I had traveled a bit to Africa before we first went as a family in 1991. I traveled singularly and my wife and I had actually been in Tanzania within a year after we got married for a short time, and that's our whole raft of stories around that one too. So we had a little bit of understanding of what we were getting into. But I think moving your whole family overseas, most people in the West think you're bizarre, you're nuts. My own family thought I was crackers to do that, why would you take young children, five and three? But we'd done some homework, we knew what we were getting into.
Nick Archer:
But it's all new, the sounds are new, the smells are new. And those things, when your senses are attacked like that, it takes a bit of a while to get used to it. But there's something about the smell I get when I go to Africa now that just really resonates with me. It's just wonderful, I love it. And I feel at home when I go back and I just get into that, but that was all new in 1991. Even in landing in Kenya, in 1991, there was a lot of stuff going on there, was political, a little bit of political turmoil. We had to get settled, we had to figure out where our kids were going to go to school. That's pretty stressful. My daughter was five, where is she going to go to school?
Nick Archer:
So as a parent, those of you're parents listening to this, that's a big deal. Even in the West, where's my kid going to go to school? Are they going to get a good education? What's their teacher's going to be like? And we are of course, wrestling with this wondering, "What are their classmates going to look like?" And my daughter ended up going to a British curriculum school, probably three quarters. People used to say to me, "Oh, your kids are going to miss out on terrible things. They're going to miss out on so much, if you grew up in England or they grew up in America." And I wrestled with that for a bit. After a while I realized that my kids weren't going to miss out on anything. They had different experiences, they learned different things, they had a different view of the world. My daughter went to a school where probably three quarters of them were either Kenyan, probably another 20% were Asian, probably no more than, I don't know, I'm not calculating the percentages in my head. Maybe about 10% of the school was white.
Cathy Herholdt:
You've got 5% left.
Nick Archer:
So anyway, but that was actually for them incredibly rich. They just got to mix with all these different cultures. And even the teaching staff was a whole mixed bag of people and they had a great time. And I said, I don't think my kids ever missed out on anything.
Cathy Herholdt:
Yeah. And I think obviously you've done a great job and it did not harm them. In fact, your daughter is now married and has two children of her own, and she's a missionary as well. Is that correct?
Nick Archer:
Yes, she is. That's right. As they say, what goes around, comes around.
Cathy Herholdt:
Yes, absolutely. And I'm sure maybe you thought she was crackers at first.
Nick Archer:
What can I say? When I think about what I did to my own parents and my wife for hers.
Cathy Herholdt:
Yeah.
Nick Archer:
And then now the shoes on the other foot. What can I say?
Cathy Herholdt:
Absolutely.
Nick Archer:
No defense.
Cathy Herholdt:
Did you ever question, were there ever moments, did anything dangerous ever happen or maybe your kids got sick or something where you thought to yourself, "What am I doing here? What am I going to do?"
Nick Archer:
Yeah. That's a good question. One of the things living in Africa, which I had to adjust to, or we had to adjust to was that there are a lot less what I would call measures for protection. Your illness it feels a lot closer to you, you do see sadly, a lot more death. It's close. Everything's much more raw. That's why I try and explain to people, everything's much more raw. We protect ourselves from many of those things, we have good healthcare, we have good schools, we drive good cars, we have all sorts of things. We have all these protections around us. You actually have less of those I found in Africa. But I don't think at any point, I really worried. I think one of the things that was always, where we lived a lot of the time in Nairobi, and there is insecurity in Nairobi and that's the thing you've got to be mindful of.
Nick Archer:
You've got to think twice, if you go out at night. You have to be more watchful of what's going on around you. So you did have to learn to become attuned to a more unstable environment, that was more of an unstable orbit in which you operated in. But I think you adjust to that, you learn how to navigate. You learn how to navigate many things. I think people are incredible when you look at the details. And there were times too, when there would be upticks in violence and maybe even house invasions. We did have some things that happened, unfortunate things happened to friends of ours at different times, really in some cases, very sad stories. A couple of my friends lost children in Africa because of disease or sickness that they couldn't get addressed quickly.
Nick Archer:
People losing their lives and things. So yes, bad things do happen. That is the nature of things. But I think overall, we always felt the grace of God, and we just we tried to be wise and smart about what we did. The fact that I ended up living in Africa for 15 years is mind blowing really. Because I remember shortly after we got there, I was talking to a neighbor of mine and he said, "I've been here four years." And in my head, I said, "You're kidding me. You've been here four years?"
Cathy Herholdt:
Yeah. You had no idea what God in store.
Nick Archer:
That's right. I'd been there two at that point. And I was saying, "How is that possible that you can stay that long?"
Cathy Herholdt:
And you ended up staying 15 years.
Nick Archer:
Yeah, exactly.
Cathy Herholdt:
Yeah. Well, we are going to hear more from Nick in some future episodes here on the podcast, about some stories, firsthand stories from the field, people that he's met, experiences that he's had. We're also going to hear more of his faith journey and his life story and how God directed his life to the point where he's president of a humanitarian organization and making an incredible impact in 12 countries, the poorest and hard to countries around the world. So it's pretty amazing. But Nick, one last question for you, and this is just a fun one. I want people to learn something about you that they might not know or guess, but you had, or have a very interesting pet, don't you?
Nick Archer:
Oh, yes, I do, yeah.
Cathy Herholdt:
Tell us about that.
Nick Archer:
The story behind the pet is this. So when we were in Africa, we actually had a parrot. So if any of you know anything about birds, there's a bird called the African grey, which is a very, very talkative bird. It's one of the most talkative birds you can get. And we had one, because we were looking after it for a friend of ours who was out of the country. Any noise, this bird would mimic this noise, microwave beep, car alarm, anything, radio signal on the nuts. When we came back to the U.S., I wanted a parrot you see. So What happens? The first Christmas comes around and what do I get? I get a snake.
Nick Archer:
So it turns out that my wife wanted something that didn't make any noise. Number one. And the other one, she didn't want it pecking her feet. Because the parrot, if we let out the cage, it really liked me, but it didn't like my wife. So he would come and peck her toes. And so anyway, my wife said, "No, it's going to be a snake. Doesn't make any noise. It's not going to bite me." And I still have the snake now.
Cathy Herholdt:
Okay. What kind of a snake is it?
Nick Archer:
It's a corn snake. So nothing too outrageous, but it's been a fun, let's say, well, fun's a bit of a generous word. Interesting pet to have let's say that.
Cathy Herholdt:
Okay. Okay. Well, I have had opportunities to be in an online meeting with Nick and see this pet snake wrapped around his shoulders. So that's absolutely hilarious, I think. Well, Nick, thank you. It's been really enlightening and interesting to me to hear a little bit of what really inspires you about the work that you get to do. And I hope it's also been inspiring for those of you that are tuning in for the first time to the podcast. And as I mentioned, we're going to hear more from Nick in future podcasts, but for now, thank you Nick for joining us today.
Nick Archer:
Thank you, Cathy. Thanks for having me on.
Cathy Herholdt:
I want to thank our listeners for joining us today. I hope that your mind has been opened up a little bit, your heart has been touched through some of the stories that you have heard today. As I mentioned earlier, if you're curious about learning a little bit more about World Concern, about our work beyond the End of the Road, you can visit worldconcern.org/podcast to learn more. I want to thank CRISTA Ministries, World Concern's parent organization for making this podcast possible. And I also want to thank Casey Helmick and the whole team at Terra Firma for their production and editing and consulting expertise, for helping us bring these stories to life and bring them to you. Thanks again for joining us today, we look forward to more stories at the End of the Road next time.
