Imtiaz Sooliman – MarkLives #TheCMOInterview of Gift of the Givers
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Charles.
My name is Charles Matthews. I'm from Mark lips, and today I'm
speaking to Dr Imtiaz Suleiman about gifts of the givers. It is
an organization that started almost 30 years ago, and today has
global recognition for the Civic and charitable work it does in
some of the world's hotspots. Dr Suleman, you started gift of the
givers almost 30 years ago. How did this all start? Where did it
start? The morning child's challenge wasn't a conventional
start. I was in Turkey. I met a religious Sufi master the year
before, in 1991 and when I as that first meeting, there was something
that attached me to him, and I fell in love for a man I've never
seen, never heard, don't know anything about the Muslim Sufi
place we do what is called a zikr. A zikr is a celebration of God's
names. You know, we charged His names in different
adjectives. We say one and only, unkind, compassionate, universal,
those kind of things. So when it was finished at 10pm the master
sitting in the corner of the room. I'm sitting in the other corner,
he looks at me directly, makes eye contact, and looks everywhere at
the same time, and then he flew in Turkish, and I don't speak a word
of Turkish, but I understood every single word that he said. And he
said, My son, I'm not asking you, I'm instructing you to form an
organization. The name in Arabic will be Wako Waku. Translated it
means gift of the givers. You will serve all people of all races, all
religions, all colors, all classes, all cultures, of any
geographical location and of any political affiliation,
but you will serve them unconditional. You will expect
nothing in return, not even a thank you. In fact, in what you're
going to be doing for the rest of your life, expect to get a kick up
your back. If you don't get a kick up your back, regard it as a
bonus. Serve people with love, kindness, compassion and mercy,
and remember the dignity of man is foremost, and in everything that
you do, be the best at what you do, not because of ego, but
because of dealing with human life, human emotion and human
dignity. And
then he went on to say, my son, remember this very important point
that whatever you do is done through you and not by you. Don't
ever forget that. I asked him, you told me all these things. What
does it mean? I'm a doctor in a place called Peter marisburg in
South Africa. I have three practices. I'm a very busy doctor.
What am I supposed to do? He told me, one night,
you will know
29 years I do know what to do, how to do, when to do, what not to do.
It just flows. There's no planning, no meetings, no
discussions. Everything comes by inspiration to the point that the
answer got it. I got answered immediately. What am I to do? The
moment I walked out of that, the inspiration came respond to the
civil war in Bosnia,
because respond to the civil war in Bosnia haven't started
organizing yet. Do I do people do a feeding scheme, or winter
granted distribution, or something simple, not going to a war zone in
another country? I have all the rules, but it was meant for me to
do that, because 90% of what I know today I learned in that first
project. It speaks to me that at the basis of your of your
construct is equality, that you treat all human beings you know
the same, that you don't put one person over another person, and
research tells us that equal outcomes make people happier. And
kind of having this kind of sense of equality right built into the
heart of what you do. How has this informed your organization? A Gulf
War in January had polarized the world Christians and Jews on one
side and Muslims the other side. And that time, a guy called Samuel
Huntington spoke about a clash of Clash of Civilizations. And you
know, coming from an apartheid past didn't help, especially when
you had to move from your own houses and you were pushed into
India that you didn't want to go to. So you had this inborn
prejudice against what is white, against what is Christian, what's
Africana? And, of course, against other countries that have been
fighting Muslim lands. So you go this perception that people are
not good people, and you go to this place. And the first shock
that I get in 91 my wife was we see people from all over, all
those work together, fought against Saddam, the guy.
Small now they do on the side of Saddam, but you saw that what the
people went through. And I'm thinking to myself, What are these
people doing here in the Muslim holy place? And the teacher
looked, saw the look on my face, and he said, What do you see? I
said, I'm confused in the Muslim holy place, how this is happening.
He said, My son, look again. I said, I see people from all
religions, those who believe and those who don't believe, all in
Muslim holy place. He said, You see, right? He said, Don't you
know the Islamic teaching, mankind is one single nation.
The God of all men is one. We just call him by different names. And
said, any person, any Imam, Rabbi, priest, and if he preaches
violence, no matter what external periphery he may have, he's not a
man of God. Don't follow him. And any person who preaches love,
kindness and compassion doesn't matter what he's wearing. He's a
man of God. Follow him. And when you apply it practically. And when
you don't look at color and race and just look at a human the
satisfaction that you get. You talk about marketing. Now, people
come to us and say, we only want to give to you because you help
everybody unconditionally. We do want to go to my group, or our
group, or some other group. Everybody is in difficulty, and we
want our funds and our aid to go to everybody the way you should do
it. So it has to work from a marketing perspective, from a
human perspective, from a donor perspective, a support perspective
and a growth perspective. How has it changed you, and what have you
learned in these past years, and what are the people who work with
you? How has it impacted their lives, working for this
organization, this brand, with equality and at its heart, the
best part about us is with a macrocosm of the bigger world.
There's different aspects. The one is the permanent staff that run
the whole thing in South Africa, permanent staff in other
countries. And then there's the volunteers, well, specifically,
search and rescue, paramedic and medical, medical, meaning, not
doctors only. Could be a dietitian, a pharmacist, a theater
nurse and ICU nurse, very just beyond a GP or a trauma surgeon or
orthopedic surgeon, that kind of stuff and those things, when they
go, they completely diverse. And I tell them, if you're wearing a
certain type of band on your hand or a cross on your neck, or use
the Bible or other religious book, please bring them and you can, you
must do your prayer, because it's good for the mission. And they
feel very, very welcome. And you find the camaraderie instead of
religion, they know, dividing people. What's happened most of
the cases in the world today, the religion is bringing the people
together. And again, about marketing, there's a guy who's a
human doctor. He's one of my main key guys in the team's office,
surgeon. Same with Dr Levine Torino, based in between Maryland,
whenever announcement comes on mission, within 30 seconds, his
message day by ready, I'm ready. My banks are packed. So we went to
Gaza, and we went between the Muslim part. I said, Look, we have
to do the Christian part too. So we go to the church, and a new
pathway comes in from Argentina. I said, liver Roman, South America.
You're from Cuba. I said, Where's the cross? He sits in the back. I
said, take it off. Put it on. Put the cross on. This is marketing.
So you go to the church in six in Spanish, tells us a mixed team
takes his cross on fabric, grabs it and hands him. I said, You see,
all braids are broken. We have to use whatever we can for marketing
into good relations and in a non functioning aspect. When we're not
on the mission. Are we not on the ground? Are we relaxing that
camaraderie is still building, and the public can see it. It's not
like it's made up. People are very observant. The common message that
we get every single day that your teams treat people with such
respect, with such dignity. When I was with your team in Pretoria. I
was so humbled by the love that they showed everyone who was
dispossessed during the xenophobic riots. For me, as a journalist,
looking from the outside in all, I saw that people people who were
propelled by extreme purpose and the will to help those in extreme
need, we had to change our own mindset first. And when my teams
go out, they ask me, What must we do? I tell them online, I said, if
your wife and your child was on the other side, what would you do
to help them? They said, we understood. No more questions now
the same way, what is the foreign national? Because what crime has a
four month old baby committed? And people said, Why have foreign
nationals with covid 19? So I raised the question. I said, you
know, 10,000 South Africans were stranded outside South Africa when
the border shut, if not more, probably enough to.
15 or 16,000 when the border shut, I said, you know, they had no
money, no food. I said, you know, have them. South Africans. No, not
South Africans. Foreign nationals have them in the countries in
which they were stranded. Shouldn't really be returning the
fame in this country. Many foreign nationals called me and said, You
know what? We know we got no idea.
We know we are not liked. We know we can't access the ground. We
know all our shops are closed, informal settlements. You know,
all informal shops, trading shops, all closes, no income. My children
didn't do anything wrong. Please come to this address. If the food
in the hand to my child, my wife and I own it.
We are not moved by the political sentiments what people have to
say. We are moved by human sentiments, because you could very
well be in the same position somewhere else. Do you do any
marketing? Or is that all propelled through word and wrath
and kind of what people see you doing? Because you covered quite a
lot by the media this multifaceted, some of it. Okay,
the first one, the first one is spiritual. Again, I always tell
the people I have an advantage. My basis is spiritual. Yes, and the
teacher told me very clearly, they will never look for money. Yes,
people will come to you, and they will look for you. They will come
from all over the world, but from a local point of view, we don't
have paid advertising. We don't say, please give us money. We
announce our projects, and this the biggest benefit of us is the
media, because we are extensively covered. Isn't a day without
exaggeration. 365, days in a year, we are not mentioned somewhere to
the point with covid 19, I stopped making press releases, because the
media will flood you and you can't actually do your work. We do press
releases. Generally, that's our marketing, and that's for several
purposes. One is to highlight the difficulty of people and
difficulty with the aim that somebody will support those people
if they see what's going on. And secondly, and more importantly,
that when people give us money, they didn't know where we spent,
it was covered extensively in all the all the media, and people see
what's going on. The word spreads. And now with social media, it's a
much more bigger, it's amplified, and more and more people just keep
passing the messages on, because what was, what they saw, what the
needs are, or what happened, and of course, what happened the
miners during Marikana, when we got involved. We got feedback from
the whole country with the mind is the best. So no, the word just
phrases out like
the South Africans are our voice, our marketing tool. All 60 billion
South Africans. We don't have to do anything. I see people who
experience you and experience the work that you do almost become
like fans of yours, because it comes from a place of equality,
and because what you do has such a wide net and such a wide effect.
The guys who do our marketing material, you know that the brand
and the logo he got about money, he says, You know what? We need to
change the focus so much so that people say this is South Africa's
gift of the givers. We need to take the country. Needs to take
our ownership of the organization, and then the design issues. I just
call it back so you can see,
it's a brand new shirt. It's like a sporting Mac you would wear your
kind of thing. Yes, yes. So all our teams, when they wear this, I
mean, they go to a disaster mission and disable lives. People
take ownership, not only of our team. I mean, I go out and say, We
not bring this subject for the gifts, but things are totally this
is for South Africa and for Africa, because we are told that
we are the begging province, that we are useless, that we only have
corruption, that we have illnesses, that we have poverty,
and in essence, there's nothing we can do. So when we wear the shirt,
we representing 1 billion people the African continent. When we go
out and I said, that's the teacher. Said, be the best at what
to do, and then we show the world what we can do. And we did it in
93 we designed the world's first containerized mobile hospital. Our
world first designed in South Africa and taken from South Africa
to Europe to the bomb wasn't in war, and the CNN community said
the South African containerized mobile hospital is equal to any of
the best hospitals in Europe, and that was 93 when we went to
Pakistan,
meetings from the northern countries came and said, Where you
guys from? We said, We from South Africa. Oh, Africa, people, why
did you come to fetch
you guys, always wanting things. I told him, my friend, we will eat
your words. We went to the Canton hospital of Rawalpindi. They were
shutting the hospital down, and we said, This is crazy. Can you give
us this hospital? I'll give you a shopping list. Can you give me
this in 24 hours? In less than 24 hours, they broke it a hospital
that was closing down the South African team converted it into a
400 bed emergency hospital. We did 75 operations a day and saved
hundreds of lives for that intervention.
The President of Pakistan gave us the President's Award in 2006
that's amazing. That's like, really, really
incredible. Well, we in a world with this extreme polarity, and we
need to kind of innovate solutions to our problems, but we can only
really do that if we collaborate and we work together. Yeah. What
advice would you have for your fellow South Africans and then
also for people in business? To better achieve this, business has
to understand compassion. That's the first thing covid 19 did that.
Covid 19 came and changed the perception of a lot of people,
fortunately, because what difference did it make to the
people in the county rural areas? They still hungry, they still
thirsty, they still don't have clothes, they still don't have
proper feeding scheme. They still battling. Hospitals are still far
away. They still wait for hours to be treated by something. So that's
different. Nothing new, whether covid, HIV or TB, same thing, no
difference to them, but the middle class and higher class suddenly
knew what it was not to have an income, not have the luxury, not
to have a job, or to take a cut in salary, and suddenly realize the
difficulties of those that lived every other day besides covid 19,
the CEO and The CSI manager have to see eye to eye. They have to be
in sync. Because sometimes the CSI guy wants to do the CEO guy wants
to think, oh, that's for how much going to benefit the business? How
much more money going to make? What is intervention bring the
company more money? No, you can't look at it like that. The CSI guy
knows what the desperate need is at that point, and that desperate
need may bring you zero benefits to your company. Sometimes we win,
sometimes we lose, but humanity comes first. That kind of mindset
has to change. International companies came to me, and I'm
talking about a massive international company, global
footprint, came close and said, we do this. You know what? He told
him, go back to America. Don't come. Tell us here what to do.
That sister Jonathan, over here in this country, this sister says,
You the
decision maker. Know what is necessary. It's not business
anymore. It's about humanity and human life. Thank you very much,
Dr Suleman, for your time, for the work that you do, and huge respect
to you. Great. Thank you very much. Thanks for considering us.
You.