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January 24, 2012
Rahul Singh says he can make
humanitarian disaster relief faster,
better, and cheaper
By Liane Beam Wansbrough
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2. Is Rahul Singh a visionary innovator, a pushy maverick—or both? Photo by Steve Payne
It’s two and a half days since the magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti on January
12, 2010. The Adventist Hospital, an enormous white building in a formerly leafy
suburb of Port-au-Prince, now looks more like a war zone. Thousands of people are
camped around the hospital in need of urgent medical care—mangled limbs, bleeding
head wounds, shattered bones. Every few minutes a pickup truck emerges from the dust
and rubbish to deposit yet another injured body onto the hospital grounds.
In the midst of this bloody chaos stands Rahul Singh, a Toronto paramedic who rushed
to the Haitian capital within hours of hearing the catastrophic news. A big, charismatic
bear of a man, Singh becomes the natural centre of gravity of most rooms he walks into,
and in the swirling chaos of the hospital, he’s the eye of the storm, someone people can’t
help but look to for leadership. He doesn’t keep them waiting. Singh quickly sets to
work with four paramedics, a general surgeon, and a water technician, all people he
brought with him on a few hours’ notice.
The medical team begins to set fractures and amputate gangrenous limbs while Singh
searches the surrounding area for a place to set up the water purification unit. He
discovers a swimming pool that’s fed by a creek on the adjoining university campus.
There are thousands of litres of water in the pool that they can purify. The creek will
refill the pool, providing a continuous supply of water. He concentrates on the task at
hand, blocking out the chaos around him. Later, he’ll describe it as a “Zen moment” in
which time stands still. Within a few minutes, clean water is flowing from the tap. Singh
and his team have only been in Haiti for a few hours, but they’re up and running.
In the immediate days after the quake, this was no small feat. The death toll was
already estimated at 200,000 victims, and thousands more lay trapped or dead in the
rubble. Non-governmental agencies tried to mobilize but faced complications because
the country was in shambles without electricity or phone service. Wreckage, dead
bodies, fires and homeless people blocked most roads. Schools, government buildings,
and hospitals had collapsed, and even a prison was destroyed, leaving 4,000 inmates at
large. Yet over an eight-week period, Rahul Singh and his small group of colleagues
from the international aid NGO he founded, Global Medic, provided medical assistance
to more than 7,000 people and distributed 15 million litres of clean water. Even more
remarkable is that they did it on a budget of $400,000—miniscule by the measure of
any humanitarian operation.
Global Medic’s work in Haiti earned Singh a place on TIME magazine’s “2010 TIME
100” list of the world’s most influential people, putting him in the company of Barack
Obama, Lady Gaga, and Steve Jobs. The Globe and Mail named him one of Canada’s
“Top 40 under 40” in 2009. Though the recognition is a recent development, he’s been
doing his unorthodox humanitarian work for a long time: for the past 13 years Singh
and his team have provided life-saving assistance in more than 40 countries suffering in
the aftermath of tsunamis, earthquakes, cyclones, floods,landslides, and other disasters.
However, despite his numerous awards and considerable experience, Singh remains an
outsider in Canadian international disaster aid.
Singh is naturally gregarious, with a natural everyman charm. Whether it’s chatting up
Taylor Swift’s backing band in a New York elevator (they were also attending the TIME
100 awards in 2010, and he offered to share a cab) or addressing the Global
Competitiveness Forum in Riyadh, he draws people in. Colleagues describe him as
larger than life—the kind of person that can walk into a room and instantly captivate
everyone’s attention. He brushes off any suggestion, however, that his rising-star status
means he has any special talents. “I just work hard,” he says. “That’s all I’ve got. I see
talented people around me and I can put them in a position to deliver.”
Born in 1970, Singh grew up as an only child with a single mother in Verdun, a former
working class neighbourhood on the island of Montreal. “I was a poor kid. I was also an
English kid in a French community and a brown kid in a white community,” he says.
After his rough and tumble youth, Singh ended up in law enforcement and made his
way to Hamilton, Ontario where he took a job with the Niagara Regional Police Service.
He later moved to Toronto to work as a community patrol officer with Toronto
Community Housing. The stress of working in a milieu of drugs, guns, and violence
began to take a toll on Singh’s marriage, among other factors. He decided to leave law
enforcement and become a paramedic instead, graduating from college in 1989.

3. The switch to working ambulances was a better fit for Singh, but it failed to save his
marriage. At the age of 27, he was divorced, balding, and grumpy. Deciding that he
needed to change things up, he took off travelling the world, and eventually wound up
in Nepal where he worked with an organization that was training local medics. When a
mudslide wiped out a nearby village, Singh was sent on his first humanitarian mission.
He slept in a hammock that was not
at all designed for a man of his bulky
frame; most nights it sagged so low
that he ended up sitting in
floodwater. Among the few comforts
he enjoyed were cheese rations and
listening to Marvin Gaye’s “Trouble
Man” on his Walkman. But despite
the deprivations of the job, Singh
found he was enjoying himself: “I
discovered that I’m good at this. I’m thinking, ‘it’s the bomb!’” But the project soon ran
out of money and was forced to close down. Singh’s dedication to the mission had not
gone unnoticed, however, and he was invited to a meeting in Kathmandu to meet the
director of the aid agency. When Singh arrived, he found the director staying in a five-
star hotel. “There’s people dying and he’s eating a $21 pepper steak,” Singh says,
shaking his head in disbelief. “I couldn’t swallow it, so I told him off.”
That experience was the catalyst for the development of Global Medic. Singh wanted to
create an aid NGO that would do away with the executive salaries, bureaucracy,
equipment overhead, and the other expensive trappings of aid delivery that he saw as
wasteful. He started the David McAntony Gibson Foundation (named after his best
friend, who had died in 1998), of which Global Medic would be the operational arm. He
raised $8,500 in the foundation’s first year as a charity. And he rounded up his dirty
dozen, 13 fellow Canadian paramedics. They set off on their first international mission
in 2003, assisting anti-landmine personnel in Cambodia.
Global Medic has now worked on more than 60 missions and their 2010/2011 budget
topped out at $1.4 million. Yet Singh takes no paycheque; he still works full-time as a
paramedic with the Toronto Emergency Service. He and his full roster of paramedics,
firefighters, and police officers all volunteer for missions by taking vacation time or
unpaid leave. “I think we’ve got more credibility when we are unpaid,” Singh says, “and
more importantly, it’s pretty hard to question our motivations.”
It’s remarkable that Singh has amassed a team of volunteers to call upon at a moment’s
notice. The model best suits shift workers who can take time off without losing their
jobs. Julie Colgan, a London, Ontario paramedic who has served three missions with
Global Medic, says she enjoys the experience of seeing firsthand the difference she can
make in a community, but she also appreciates the opportunity to work with Singh
because of his “no bullshit, get out of my way because I’m coming in’ attitude.”
It’s precisely that approach—Singh calls it “pigheaded,” and says it’s typical of the
paramedic mentality necessary to cope with the job—that has enabled Global Medic to
grow exponentially in such a short period of time. Singh’s persuasive skills mean money
and supplies seem to multiply in his care. He asks companies to donate generators,
medicine, tents, water purification tablets and food to supply the warehouse outside
Toronto. The team goes to Costco to stock up on food, PowerBars, bandages, and gauze
before a mission. “Store clerks ask us why we’re buying so much stuff, and when I
explain that we’re taking it to earthquake victims in Japan they give it to us for free,” he
says. He often persuades airline and helicopter companies to fly in personnel and
supplies at no cost. He also donates his speaking fees—up to $10,000 per talk—to
Global Medic. One of Singh’s signature maneuvers is to tell speaking sponsors that he
donates his fee, then ask them to double it. They usually do.
All this chutzpah hasn’t won Singh many friends among government officials at
home. Singh is one of the few NGO directors in Canada willing to openly criticize the
Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). He becomes livid when
describing how long it takes for the agency to make funding decisions following a
disaster. “They tell me they’re doing a good job but they’re sitting behind a desk,” he
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4. says, pounding a fist on the table. “I’ve just been in Haiti watching nine-year-old girls
getting their legs chopped off, so don’t tell me you’re doing a good job, because you’re
not.”
As a paramedic, Singh knows that time is of the essence when it comes to saving lives.
It’s his primary focus—get into a country as fast as possible with life saving assistance—
much like a 911 call—and then get out of the way so that longer-term agencies can take
over. He believes Canada should have a prepackaged program like his, complete with
inflatable hospitals and portable water units, ready to go at all times. “We get Canadian
supplies, innovation, and boots on the ground within the first 24 hours of a disaster,” he
says.
In the current system, the bulk of Canada’s humanitarian funding goes to the
multinational organizations such as CARE, Oxfam and Save the Children. It frustrates
Singh to see funding for immediate disaster response go to agencies that he says are
better suited to long-term development. Trying to crack into that closed circle has put
Singh at loggerheads with the bigger agencies, which—perhaps understandably—don’t
agree with Singh’s assessment. “I get a real push back, ‘stay down young man’ type of
vibe from them,” he says.
Agencies such as CARE and Oxfam have developed their mandate for disaster response
in a way that takes into account their long term relief goals and advocacy work. They
maintain the view that it’s important not just to get in fast after a disaster but also to get
it right. “There are moments in which an organization that is first on the scene can
appear to be more efficient,” says Kevin McCort, president and CEO of Care Canada. “In
the long run, though, it makes sense for the community to benefit from a group that can
stay there and provide value for a long time, rather than the person who gets their first
with whatever they happen to have.”
Faster isn’t necessarily better, McCort says. He describes how the Canadian Medical
Assistance Teams, a small NGO based in Brantford, Ontario, immediately got on planes
to fly to Tokyo after the 2011 earthquake in Japan. However, once they landed they
realized they weren’t prepared to deal with the radiation crisis, so they had to come
home. The focus on getting into a country first is also not entirely altruistic. “There’s a
macho component among aid groups,” says Susan MacGregor, professor of
international development at Humber Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning.
“Part of it is bragging rights to a certain extent. All the NGOs want to be first on the
ground.”
In theory, getting into a country for the initial life saving response following a disaster
should be simple. “It’s easy in the sense that the needs are clear,” says MacGregor.
“When people don’t have water, you give them water. That is much more clear than
trying to give somebody a livelihood, or trying to improve somebody’s life expectancy.”
Yet providing these basic necessities becomes extremely difficult in the midst of chaotic
conditions. The result is that disaster aid—an estimated $15 billion a year industry with
more than 250,000 employees worldwide—has become a circus.
The size of the circus has gotten bigger in recent years as instantaneous news reports
with images of suffering create awareness around the need for help. That prompts a
flood of well-intentioned—but not necessarily competent—do-gooders into high-profile
locations. While there is logic to having more players on the ground, it hasn’t yet
resulted in a more effective response.
Many experienced organizations have become increasingly frustrated at the bottleneck
of aid that occurs. Médecins Sans Frontières had their planes bumped off schedule in
Haiti because flights for celebrities such as John Travolta and Sean Penn took
precedence. Involvement of state actors such as military and government compounds
the problem and seems to be an increasing trend. Add to that hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of church groups and small NGOs with varying degrees of professionalism,
capability, and contextual understanding and you have an atmosphere not unlike the
Wild West. “There is a difference between ‘able to do’ and ‘has the capacity to do’ and
those are important distinctions,” says Michael Fark, operations manager with MSF.
MacGregor describes a situation in which a group called Mothers Without Borders
came to Indonesia after the earthquake and tsunami in 2004. The group of women
from Arkansas wanted to get to Banda Aceh to care for orphaned babies, but they

5. arrived in the country without tents, water bottles, or food. “They came with a few
thousand dollars in cash and had absolutely no idea how to get north in the country. It’s
these types that are a huge drain on the system,” she says.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) tries
to coordinate the work of various agencies through a cluster system, which splits relief
efforts into sectors such as shelter, food, water, and education. However, many small
NGOs don’t know about it. Others, such as Global Medic, don’t have full-time personnel
to attend meetings, and don’t consider the system useful to them anyway.
Singh prefers to find his own local partners to work with. “The meetings don’t even
happen until a week after a disaster and by that time it’s too late,” Singh says. Outsider
groups such as Global Medic are branded “cowboys” in the aid world by the larger
NGOs. While OCHA is clearly still a work in progress, the UN believes the effort is
worthwhile because lack of coordination results in duplicated efforts and wasted
resources.
“It’s not that we want to have somebody sitting in a meeting all day,” says Robert Fox,
executive director of Oxfam. “But we recognize that if we don’t, we’re operating on
partial information and we’re likely to be complicating, rather than helping the
situation.” Yet even the UN system has its limitations. “It’s difficult to coordinate 50
agencies,” says Fox. “ It’s impossible to coordinate 5,000.”
Global Medic has now joined Policy Action Group on Emergency Response, a network
that promotes coordination between aid agencies. It’s a signal to others in the industry
that Singh is willing to play along—up to a point. It’s an acknowledgement that Global
Medic may ultimately have to temper Singh’s shoot-first bravado in order to grow.
Singh wants access to CIDA funds, which means courting the very agency Singh has
spent more than a decade antagonizing.
There have already been some tangible results of this new, more congenial approach:
CIDA provided $535,000 to Global Medic to assist with relief following the 2010
flooding in Pakistan. Still, Singh is impatient as ever: “It’s like pulling teeth,” he says.
“They’re taking their time to warm up to us, and I’m like, ‘let’s get into bed.’”
For now, however, Global Medic continues to depend on private and corporate
donations. “Our donors are different. They don’t want to see pictures of crying babies,”
Singh says. He recounts how a law firm in Toronto called up after the earthquake in
Haiti and wanted to donate $50,000. When they asked him what he would do with the
money, Singh told them “we’ll put another hospital and water unit in, and we can do it
tomorrow.” It’s that straight-shooter response and apparent financial transparency that
make Global Medic popular with a public that is increasingly aware that there is a gap
in what NGOs claim they accomplish and what they can actually do.
Sitting in his office, surrounded by hundreds of framed press clippings, Singh sips tea
and reflects on whether he can change the way disaster response is currently delivered.
The TIME award has opened doors and in some ways leveled the playing field, but
Singh is up-front about his limitations. “We need a CEO here. We need somebody that
can wear a tie and go talk to government and speak the language and schmooze—
because that’s just not me,” he says. It hasn’t escaped Singh’s attention that often he is
the lowest-paid and least-educated person in the room. He shrugs it off. “It’s funny, this
life that I lead, because I’m a blue-collar grunt. I’m not a caviar-and-Perrier kind of
guy.”
Nevertheless, Singh is determined to change the way Canadian humanitarian aid is
delivered, whether the caviar-and-Perrier set—or anyone else—likes it or not. “We’ll get
there eventually,” he says. “But will the government open their arms and welcome me?”
He throws back his head and a huge bellow of laughter fills the room. “Hell no!”
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MJ • 3 years ago
I really like the idea of professionals volunteering their time. I find that so many
organizations spend so much on salaries or fees for administration, fundraising and
development, that only half of the donation goes to where the donor intends it. I
also like Not Just Tourists, for people who are willing to bring a donated bag or
suitcase full of medical supplies when the travel to a developing country for work or
pleasure. All you have to do is take make plans a bit ahead of time so they can get
a letter to clear you through customs in the destination country.
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