September 7, 2025 • 25 mins
Andy Robinson is the Acting Head of Fragile and Developing Contexts, International Partnerships for World Vision New Zealand
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk sed B.
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Real Conversation, Real Connection, It's Real Life with John Cowen
on News Talk s EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Good a, Welcome to real life. I'm John Cowan and
I used to know my guest tonight when he was
a little boy, and my main memory I have is
of him and his brother bouncing around in the back
of his family's trekker. The back of a trekker is
an ideal way to accustom someone to deprivation and hardship,
and so I'm not surprised that Andy Robinson has spent
his life helping people in some of the world's toughest places.
(00:56):
Welcome Andy, Thank you John.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
I never made the connection between trekkers and hard places,
but I think you're right.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah, they just had metal seats in the metal benches
and not much in the way suspension. Yeah. So how
are you doing anyway? You're back in New Zealand, but
you've and you've got a roll here. What's your role
in New Zealand? Now? Thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
I'm back in New Zealand. I'm working at Wolvision and
I have the great privilege of spending the funding that
comes in from New Zealand Public and putting that to
good work in places like Afghanistan, the Ukraine crisis all
around the place. So very fortunate to have the role
and glad to be doing it.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Okay, now you can probably outgun anyone as regards a
list of places you've worked over the year is quickly,
give me a list of all the countries that you've
worked in, or.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
A quick list would be East Africa would be Ethiopia
and Somalia, then into the Middle East with Afghanistan, Lebanon
and Jordan, into Asia, into Bangladesh and India and me
and mar through to Fiji and Tonga in the Pacific.
So yeah, it's been I've had some adventures in many
places and grateful for which would be the list of
(02:04):
countries that a lot of.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
People would want to avoid, And sure you've chosen a
life where you're heading off to those places, and I'd
be very interested to know what incline someone to a
life of working in places that a lot of people
would want to avoid. I recall you going off to university.
There's been a couple of decades since I've seen you
went off to university and I think you did advertising
(02:26):
or something after that. That's right, Yeah, good memory. Okay,
So how do you get from that to well, where
was your first port of call overseas? Well?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
It might have started as ignorance, as blessed John, not
knowing what you don't know. I really wanted when I
was twenty two to have a bit of an overseas
adventure and was really interested in Africa, the great continent
that I knew nothing about. But I knew that there
were elephants and giraffes and monkeys here, and I thought
it'd be great to see those, So set myself off
to do some voluntary work there, which I self funded,
(02:58):
and ended up working with street children and Addis Ababa,
the capital of Ethiopia.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Not many lions and giraffes and Addis Ababa but not
so many A lot of need, had a lot of problems,
a lot I needed, a lot of problems.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
As I say, ignorance is bliss. I didn't really know
what I was walking into. I kind of had maybe
a little bit of an idyllic idea of what I
was going to see and do. But yeah, thousands of
thousands of street children on the streets of Addis Ababa,
and the organization I was volunteering with was like, please
do something with these children, and it was.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
They had an.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Overnight shelter for about thirty young girls actually, who otherwise
would be living on the streets, and they they really
gave me a pretty clean slate to do whatever I could,
which wasn't very much as a very naive, inexperienced twenty
two year old, but ended up, yeah, for half a
year doing a whole lot of things with these young girls,
(03:51):
from basic maths and English lessons to teaching them how
to make fudge so they could sell it in a
local market and some money to buy a new pair
of shoes. And at night Wood my little guitar would
go to the shelter where they were, I'd help them
with dinner and then we would sing songs and we'd
do children's stories.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
And so this was self funded, using their own, your
own savings as a twenty two year old, but it
obviously went an appetite.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
It was such a contrast to anything I had ever
experienced in New Zealand before, and and I you know,
I realized in hindsight I had a very a very
lovely but a very sheltered upbringing. So it was really
confronting and for me six months with these these young children,
they just captured my heart and they still have my heart.
(04:37):
And yeah, it did set me on.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Of course, I'd say, right, my next impression that I
have of you, my memories are going back and seeing
sort of pictures of you writing like a cowboy around
Afghanistan or something is would that be right? Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
If Garston I hadn't wanted to go to funny enough,
I was. Actually I had played to work again overseas
with an organization with a goal of getting to back
to Africa, and they said, well, we don't have a
role for you there, but we do have one in Afghanistan.
And I'd quit my job, I'd packed up my flat,
I'd kind of everything I had was in a suitcase.
I was ready to go. So I thought, well, all right,
(05:15):
there's no going back, and yeah, off to Afghanistan where
I did. I spent two years riding horses with my
cowboy hat because I bought my own cowboy hat. They
gave me the horse because we were working these tiny
little villages up in the mountains of the Himalaan Kush
a beautiful, beautiful scenery, just beautiful mountains, snow cap mountains
(05:35):
and no roads. So the only way you could get
out to a village that I don't think it probably
changed for one hundred odd years, was to get there
on a horse.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
And so what sort of work were you doing there?
Speaker 3 (05:45):
I was working for a Swiss organization, a Swiss NGO
that was doing humanitarian work. And the three main things
we were doing is clean water in these villages. We
were doing health and nutrition in these villages. And also
we were doing kind of cash for work to try
and build their resilience to natural disasters, because these villages
constantly getting hit by floods or landslide and so giving
(06:09):
people some money, particularly when they lost to harvest, if
their harvest has been wiped out by a landslide, giving
them money to work to actually put in retaining walls
or clean up the land and make it a little
bit safer for the next time. One way we could help.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I mean, when you ride into a village and you're
doing some work and then you leave again, do you
have any metrics, do you have any way of measuring
that this has done some good? I mean yeh, I mean,
can you do much good just in the sort of
role that you're doing.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Yeah. Absolutely, At a village level, you can. You can
do incredible work. You can transform a village. So as
I say, some of these villages hadn't changed in one
hundred or years. And if we just take water for example,
we're working in a part of the country in area
could Badakshan where one of three children wouldn't make it
past the age of five because of a range of things.
(07:01):
But often to do an unsafe, unclean drinking water full
of disease and going in there and you just and
I should say I wasn't doing the week we had
amazing local stuff.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
We did it.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
I just again had the kind of the privilege of
stewarding the funds and making sure the work was done well.
But just to go in and find that wherever the
water was coming from, typically a spring, and then putting
in a concrete reservoir to hold the water, piping it
into the villages so it's not getting contaminated by animal
waste or by open deification. The water is clear, it
(07:34):
is clean and like overnight. That plus some basic hygiene
training reminding people to use soap, basic things. You could
you could half the rate of malnutrition in the village,
half the rate because it just it just boosted that
basic health. So it was transformative and we could measure it.
We could see the difference before and after I.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Had I think I have heard that water borne diseases
are the biggest killer in the world, still.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Still the biggest killer.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah, and so getting clean water into people, it's going
to make a huge difference. So absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
And you know, we we have the benefit of really
strong education in New Zealand, we know that just because
water looks safe to drink or looks clean, we know
that doesn't mean it is safe to drink. In Afghanistan
and these communities that you know, people have very little education,
no thought of their own, but that basic knowledge isn't there.
So to be able to just kind of just talk
through that, explain why it needed to be protected, talk
(08:27):
about just the benefits of drink, boiling your water before
you drink it, just life changing.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
In all the decades that you've been working overseas, is
there a story that burns in your mind something when
you think back over that you think, yeah, I remember
that night, or remember that time. Is there a thing
that bubbles to the top of your recollections when you
think of that.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
I mean, there's a few Afghanistan probably that a lot
of the stories come from there because it was such
a different and difficult place to work. But yeah, a
story for now. I remember this amazing eighty six year
old man in one of these villages again, way out
on Badakshan and the Hindukush long flowing white Beard. And
(09:09):
when we came to his village and we were doing
the initial introductions of who we are, what we wanted
to do, he put his hand up and he said, please,
I want a tap, a community water tap right next
to my house, because my knees no longer will let
me walk down this path to fetch water from the river.
And I really want my grandchildren to be healthy. And
(09:30):
so fast forward six months or so when we had
the water system in place, and we had a community
tap ten feet from from his mud brick house where
he lived. And this man, this old man, I can't
remember his name, I'm sorry, but he gathered his grandchildren
and he said, I will be the first to drink
water from this tap. And he drank it, and it
(09:51):
probably didn't taste any different, but he was like, this
is the best water I've ever had. But then he
told us the story. He said, you know, I cannot
remember in my eighty six years of life, I cannot
remember a month where my stomach hasn't been upset. I
cannot remember a day when one of my grandchildren hasn't
had hasn't had diarrhea, or I've been worried that one
of them would be so sick that maybe they wouldn't
(10:11):
last the next year. And now, because of this clean water,
I think our future will be so much better.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
There would have been times when you saw humanity yet
its worst. I mean, you've worked in areas where the
problems are caused by war and dodgy, corrupt political systems
and things. So you've seen people that you've seen humanity
at its worst. Did you get any great insights into humanity? Yeah,
I'd say probably.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
The thing I think about a lot is when there
is a crisis or a natural disaster, or an emergency,
or people respond in maybe three ways broadly, if it's
a spectrum, perhaps I think most of us sit in
the middle, and we kind of maybe consider our own
needs and we look to the well being of our
own family. But then you have those who will go
(11:01):
above and beyond the helpers. And I'm trying to remember
the quote from mister Rogers who talks about you know,
when overwhelmed by crullty in the world, look for their helpers.
There's always the helpers, amazing people who will who will
do amazing things for people they don't know, people in distress,
to help them. But unfortunately you also have those who
when a crisis comes, they will look to how can
(11:22):
I take advantage of that child, how can I abuse
that woman, how can I exploit that adult? And you
just hope that you can get behind the helpers and
stand against those who would do who would be cruel.
And really, I think our responsibility here in New Zealand,
where we are so far removed from you know, these
(11:43):
terrible crisis in the world, be it gazabeit famine, the
faminine that's happening right now in East Africa, being the
terrible civil war raging and sadan for us to come
behind the helpers and be a stop gap against those
who would be cruel.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah, it's easy, I guess to look at them and think, well,
look at all the cruelty and harshness there. I'm just
cynical about the whole place, and to turn your back
on it, but you hunt out those the good people
that are in there, turning that situation around and back
them up.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Yeah, there are amazing good people. There was amazing good people.
And if I could tell another story, it was working
with refugees in Lebanon and meeting this wonderful man named
Mohammad who was a Syrian refugee living in Lebanon, and
he was a carpenter and he could build shelters for
refugees to live in. And he was just this tireless,
(12:38):
joyful human being in a really tough situation where refugees
were coming into Lebanon. They didn't know where they would live,
they didn't know where their next meal, was totally discombobulated.
No one tells you how to be a refugee. You
just are thrown into it and then you arrive in
a foreign country and have to figure out.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
What to do.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
And he was this amazing person who brought refugees into
safe space, who created a joyful culture, who brought smiles
to children's faces and parents' faces, and really incredible hardship,
and I've never forgotten him because it's like boy like you. Yeah,
to be a joy bringer, to be someone who who
brings sunshine and hard places, that's very very special, and
(13:17):
you do see that all around the world.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
My guest tonight is Andrew Robinson. Do you prefer Andy?
I go by either, Okay, Andy? And Andrew Robinson, and
he works for world Vision currently. He's worked for lots
of aid organizations and lots of places, and I'm looking
forward to talking to more after his break. Welcome back
to real life. I'm John Cown cooking with Andy Robinson
from World Vision, and we ask our guests to pick
(13:41):
some music. I'm a little surprised by this choice. Why
did you pick celendi On?
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Not just because she's a beautiful singer, John, but celendi
On has a special place in the hearts of the
Afghan people.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Now that's a very strange thing to say, Garry On.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Somehow, and I don't know how away, but when the
Taliban were in control the first time of Taliban, and
they kind of prohibited Western movies and Western songs from
getting into the country, somehow, the Titan Panick movie slipped
across the border, made it into Afghanistan and they people
loved it. It was their favorite movie and that song,
(14:19):
my Heart Will Go On was the favorite song. I
had a little travel guitar and, as I say, working
these little villagers where there's not a lot to do
at night, and I would sit there and I'd play
my little travel guitar to entertain myself and the Afghun
my f gun colleagues. We're all living Marie style. We're
all living in a big room all together, sleep in
this big room, having our meals there. And they asked, look,
(14:40):
do you buy any chance know my.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Heart will go on?
Speaker 3 (14:44):
And I thought was like, cause you know, you don't
ask an usually on a man and you see in
the male do you know my heart will go on?
And then you certainly don't ask them? Would you sing
it for us? And so for many many nights on
my little travel guitar, I would serenade a group of
thirty forty big burly f gun men my Heart will
go on, CELINDI on in my little squeaky voice. And
(15:05):
they loved it, and they just thought it was the
most beautiful song.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Eh, that's a beautiful image, but somewhat bizarre.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
And I have to say, but I've never done it since.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Well, we actually have a guitar.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
Now.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
I have the privilege of knowing your mom and dad,
nicest people in the world like Nels. But I even
remember your grandparents May and Gordon, and look, they were
missionaries in China and they were born there, and I
think you have ancestors who are missionaries back there. This
type of work of going overseas and serving, it's almost
(15:41):
like it's genetic in your family.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
It might well be. Yeah, it's yeah, there's a there's
a strong family history of service to I guess service
to others overseas. That might sound a little bit grandiose.
I don't mean it too here, but yeah, probably hearing
those stories from my grandparents about their time in China
growing up, and their home was full of things that
were special to them that they'd brought back from China,
(16:04):
be at some carvings or pictures, and so yeah, I
guess from a very early age I knew the world
was bigger than New Zealand. I just didn't really understand
what it was.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
And obviously they were motivated by their Christian faith and
that must be a motivation for you as well.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Yeah, absolutely, So what is.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
It about your faith that makes you think that you
need to go overseas to serve? What is it about
what you believe in that has driven you to the
fore corners of the planet.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Yeah, I would say that my faith doesn't necessarily mean
I have to go overseas, and now being home in
New Zealand, I look to how I can maybe express
my faith here. But what captured my imagination, probably in
my late teens and early twenties, was this idea that
God just hates injustice and he, like you read through
(16:54):
the Bible, there's so much in the Bible, but there's
also there's so much about God's his frustration and his
grief at letting it when poverty has just left to
run rampant, and when when there's there's things that are
just plainly wrong in a society that no one seems
to be addressing that problem. And so I took that and,
(17:16):
as I said, keptured my imagination and the way I've
chosen to try and understand that, actually I really wanted
to understand that was to take myself overseas. And it's
almost been coming back to my story of Ethiopia and
those children, like those children did capture my heart in
a way my heart had never been captured before. It
(17:38):
was also me, I guess, really wrestling with my faith
and understanding hardship and suffering in our world, and then
what is my responsibility to respond to that? And when
you fall in love with a child, and I don't
mean romantic love, I just mean you just want the
very best for this child, That was my faith kind
(17:58):
of really starting to come alive and going, well, if
I feel this way about this child, God, who I
believe is their creator, how much miserably more muscy fear
about this child? And what is the best thing I
can do for this child to make sure that they're
safe and to make sure they're protected and to give
my best to them so that they can have their best.
I hope that's not too rambly, but for me it was. Yeah,
(18:21):
this idea that at the heart of God and Christian
faith is love, love, love, love, and that love is
not soppy, love is not mushy. Love is about making
life better for someone else who's doing it hard.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Now, your ancestor of missionaries, Yeah, the conways of China,
they would have gone off there for different Well, it's
probably a similar motivation, but they would have seen that
their priority would be to change people's religion, to convert
them to Christianity. And is that still a motivation in
(18:55):
today's Christians that go overseas to do aid work.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
I think my grandparents would give me a little bit
of a quizzical look at this answer if they were
they here today. I think for many, yes, it is.
It is a motivation. For me, my motivation is not
to convert. I can I can say that it's something
that's something I've wrestled with because I think if anyone
who's grown up in an evangelical church, we kind of
(19:20):
have this or we must, you know, win souls. For me,
being in places like Afghanistan and Lebanon and meeting people
in their own place where they are and doing what
I can to make life better, that is my motivation
and that is my drive. And I almost see it
John as when Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God.
(19:42):
The kingdom is about compassion and about kindness and about
love no strings attached, and it's about extending that. And
I think for me, and I think for many Christians,
and particularly Christians who are aid workers, it's about practical love,
no strings attached, just because it is the right thing
to do.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
When you are signing up to do this work and
you've worked with t your Fund and met Air and
World Vision and I don't know of any others, but
all these organizations, you know that when you sign up
for those things, you're not going to get super rich
working there.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
No, But is it rewarding? That was the one flaw
in my plan, John, I didn't. I haven't got super rich.
Unfortunately my wife married me knowing knowing that that wasn't
going to happen. It's absolutely rewarding. I again, starting right
back with the stories of that the children Ethiopia, my
heart has been captivated and expanded and stretched in ways
(20:36):
that that might sound incredibly softy, but in ways that
I feel my life is big, bigger than it would
have been if I'd never live.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Life is big. My life of us would envy you that. Yeah. Yeah.
Another thing entering into the type of work you're doing.
I mean, if you're coming from a Catholic tradition, you'd
know that if you're signing up to be a priest
or a brother, that would mean you're taking vows of
poverty and chastity there. You don't have to do that
from your faith tradition, but you must have realized that, hey,
(21:03):
this type of work, I'm not going to be meaning
a lot of women. You must have said, did you
see this a of like a call to singleness as
well as you're heading off into this overseas work.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
I never, I never saw it as a call to singleness.
But I certainly embraced the singleness and never struggle with that.
And I think maybe that was something I was fortunate
with because others would have would have struggled with that.
I have friends and colleagues have struggled with that. But
I love the freedom. I love the freedom of being
able to be single and go to hard places where
(21:33):
you know there was always a possibility of risk or injury.
But knowing that I wasn't leaving anyone out the mum
and dad, I wasn't going to leave anyone hanging if
something happened to me. Singleness was a real gift for
me and my wife. I have to be careful when
I say that in front of my wife because she's like,
I am now your gift, and I'm like, yes, yes
you are. I have traded gifts. I've traded the silver
(21:54):
for the goal, but I wouldn't trade that time of
singleness and the opportunities that gave me for.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Anything, right. I remember Tony Campolo saying that when he
came back from trips to Haiti, he would be unbearable
or as children.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
You know what a new bike do?
Speaker 1 (22:10):
You know?
Speaker 2 (22:10):
The children? And I haven't even got food to eat,
and you know what your bike? You know? Do you
sometimes get offended by the affluence and ease that the
relative ole of affluence that we have in New Zealand?
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Yeah, yeah, I do. And I'm worse when I first
come back from a place.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
And and I also look at my I said, and
I'm a lazy person, John, And I settle into my
own affluence and my own comfort and and then it
doesn't take much. It might be just looking at a
picture or a memory comes to mind and I think,
oh boy, what am I doing myself back in New Zealand. Yeah,
we do have a lot, and I think I think
for me, it's lack of gratitude. When we forget to
(22:50):
be grateful for what we have here. That's that I
find really hard.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Okay, are New Zealanders generous when it comes when you
present the needs of overseas people, and what is it
that triggers their generosity.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
I think New Zealanders are incredibly generous. I think most
of us are really generous. I think New Zealanders are
rightly careful, perhaps cynical with how their generosity could be
taken advantage of, And so will vision. We get asked
great questions about how how is this donation going to
be used? How much do you keep? And can I
say again, I'm not a wealthy man, so don't worry
(23:24):
if you don't any vision. I'm not going effluent on
your donation. But I think those are the right questions
to ask, and I think I think people have a
range of reasons why they give, but often it is
as simple as they see a need on TV or
they hear about in the radio and compelled to act
the moved. I find it's often, you know, children are
(23:47):
just so pure right, and a child sees something and
that just doesn't write to them and says, mom, dad,
we've got to do something. And so as often we
hear these stories of parents promptotec because the children are like,
that's not right, we can't we can't let that stand.
And I think that's that's.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Marvelous, that's fantastic. Give us a website that people can
can check out of feeling motivated to act on their generosity.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Worldvision dot org dot.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Z, Worldvision dot org dot inz. And let's go out
on another song that you've picked. What have you got?
Speaker 3 (24:17):
I chose under Africa Guys by Paul Simon, which that
reminds me of when I was a hippo life garden
in Ethiopia, John, and I'll leave there's a.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Teaser hippolife gards. Well, I suppose you'd want to be
swimming with hippos and the river, So yeah, amazing, this
is real life. I'm John Cown. It has been my
privilege to talk to Andrew Robinson from World Vision. Looking
forward to being back with you again next Sunday night.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Ju Save face was as black as the and his
path was mark by the stars in the sun.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
And your the man.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Focus days under African Skies.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
For more from News Talks at b listen live on
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Real Conversation, Real Connection, It's Real Life with John Cowen
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Speaker 2 (00:33):
Good a, Welcome to real life. I'm John Cowan and
I used to know my guest tonight when he was
a little boy, and my main memory I have is
of him and his brother bouncing around in the back
of his family's trekker. The back of a trekker is
an ideal way to accustom someone to deprivation and hardship,
and so I'm not surprised that Andy Robinson has spent
his life helping people in some of the world's toughest places.
(00:56):
Welcome Andy, Thank you John.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
I never made the connection between trekkers and hard places,
but I think you're right.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah, they just had metal seats in the metal benches
and not much in the way suspension. Yeah. So how
are you doing anyway? You're back in New Zealand, but
you've and you've got a roll here. What's your role
in New Zealand? Now? Thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
I'm back in New Zealand. I'm working at Wolvision and
I have the great privilege of spending the funding that
comes in from New Zealand Public and putting that to
good work in places like Afghanistan, the Ukraine crisis all
around the place. So very fortunate to have the role
and glad to be doing it.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Okay, now you can probably outgun anyone as regards a
list of places you've worked over the year is quickly,
give me a list of all the countries that you've
worked in, or.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
A quick list would be East Africa would be Ethiopia
and Somalia, then into the Middle East with Afghanistan, Lebanon
and Jordan, into Asia, into Bangladesh and India and me
and mar through to Fiji and Tonga in the Pacific.
So yeah, it's been I've had some adventures in many
places and grateful for which would be the list of
(02:04):
countries that a lot of.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
People would want to avoid, And sure you've chosen a
life where you're heading off to those places, and I'd
be very interested to know what incline someone to a
life of working in places that a lot of people
would want to avoid. I recall you going off to university.
There's been a couple of decades since I've seen you
went off to university and I think you did advertising
(02:26):
or something after that. That's right, Yeah, good memory. Okay,
So how do you get from that to well, where
was your first port of call overseas? Well?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
It might have started as ignorance, as blessed John, not
knowing what you don't know. I really wanted when I
was twenty two to have a bit of an overseas
adventure and was really interested in Africa, the great continent
that I knew nothing about. But I knew that there
were elephants and giraffes and monkeys here, and I thought
it'd be great to see those, So set myself off
to do some voluntary work there, which I self funded,
(02:58):
and ended up working with street children and Addis Ababa,
the capital of Ethiopia.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Not many lions and giraffes and Addis Ababa but not
so many A lot of need, had a lot of problems,
a lot I needed, a lot of problems.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
As I say, ignorance is bliss. I didn't really know
what I was walking into. I kind of had maybe
a little bit of an idyllic idea of what I
was going to see and do. But yeah, thousands of
thousands of street children on the streets of Addis Ababa,
and the organization I was volunteering with was like, please
do something with these children, and it was.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
They had an.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Overnight shelter for about thirty young girls actually, who otherwise
would be living on the streets, and they they really
gave me a pretty clean slate to do whatever I could,
which wasn't very much as a very naive, inexperienced twenty
two year old, but ended up, yeah, for half a
year doing a whole lot of things with these young girls,
(03:51):
from basic maths and English lessons to teaching them how
to make fudge so they could sell it in a
local market and some money to buy a new pair
of shoes. And at night Wood my little guitar would
go to the shelter where they were, I'd help them
with dinner and then we would sing songs and we'd
do children's stories.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
And so this was self funded, using their own, your
own savings as a twenty two year old, but it
obviously went an appetite.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
It was such a contrast to anything I had ever
experienced in New Zealand before, and and I you know,
I realized in hindsight I had a very a very
lovely but a very sheltered upbringing. So it was really
confronting and for me six months with these these young children,
they just captured my heart and they still have my heart.
(04:37):
And yeah, it did set me on.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Of course, I'd say, right, my next impression that I
have of you, my memories are going back and seeing
sort of pictures of you writing like a cowboy around
Afghanistan or something is would that be right? Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
If Garston I hadn't wanted to go to funny enough,
I was. Actually I had played to work again overseas
with an organization with a goal of getting to back
to Africa, and they said, well, we don't have a
role for you there, but we do have one in Afghanistan.
And I'd quit my job, I'd packed up my flat,
I'd kind of everything I had was in a suitcase.
I was ready to go. So I thought, well, all right,
(05:15):
there's no going back, and yeah, off to Afghanistan where
I did. I spent two years riding horses with my
cowboy hat because I bought my own cowboy hat. They
gave me the horse because we were working these tiny
little villages up in the mountains of the Himalaan Kush
a beautiful, beautiful scenery, just beautiful mountains, snow cap mountains
(05:35):
and no roads. So the only way you could get
out to a village that I don't think it probably
changed for one hundred odd years, was to get there
on a horse.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
And so what sort of work were you doing there?
Speaker 3 (05:45):
I was working for a Swiss organization, a Swiss NGO
that was doing humanitarian work. And the three main things
we were doing is clean water in these villages. We
were doing health and nutrition in these villages. And also
we were doing kind of cash for work to try
and build their resilience to natural disasters, because these villages
constantly getting hit by floods or landslide and so giving
(06:09):
people some money, particularly when they lost to harvest, if
their harvest has been wiped out by a landslide, giving
them money to work to actually put in retaining walls
or clean up the land and make it a little
bit safer for the next time. One way we could help.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I mean, when you ride into a village and you're
doing some work and then you leave again, do you
have any metrics, do you have any way of measuring
that this has done some good? I mean yeh, I mean,
can you do much good just in the sort of
role that you're doing.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Yeah. Absolutely, At a village level, you can. You can
do incredible work. You can transform a village. So as
I say, some of these villages hadn't changed in one
hundred or years. And if we just take water for example,
we're working in a part of the country in area
could Badakshan where one of three children wouldn't make it
past the age of five because of a range of things.
(07:01):
But often to do an unsafe, unclean drinking water full
of disease and going in there and you just and
I should say I wasn't doing the week we had
amazing local stuff.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
We did it.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
I just again had the kind of the privilege of
stewarding the funds and making sure the work was done well.
But just to go in and find that wherever the
water was coming from, typically a spring, and then putting
in a concrete reservoir to hold the water, piping it
into the villages so it's not getting contaminated by animal
waste or by open deification. The water is clear, it
(07:34):
is clean and like overnight. That plus some basic hygiene
training reminding people to use soap, basic things. You could
you could half the rate of malnutrition in the village,
half the rate because it just it just boosted that
basic health. So it was transformative and we could measure it.
We could see the difference before and after I.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Had I think I have heard that water borne diseases
are the biggest killer in the world, still.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Still the biggest killer.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah, and so getting clean water into people, it's going
to make a huge difference. So absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
And you know, we we have the benefit of really
strong education in New Zealand, we know that just because
water looks safe to drink or looks clean, we know
that doesn't mean it is safe to drink. In Afghanistan
and these communities that you know, people have very little education,
no thought of their own, but that basic knowledge isn't there.
So to be able to just kind of just talk
through that, explain why it needed to be protected, talk
(08:27):
about just the benefits of drink, boiling your water before
you drink it, just life changing.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
In all the decades that you've been working overseas, is
there a story that burns in your mind something when
you think back over that you think, yeah, I remember
that night, or remember that time. Is there a thing
that bubbles to the top of your recollections when you
think of that.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
I mean, there's a few Afghanistan probably that a lot
of the stories come from there because it was such
a different and difficult place to work. But yeah, a
story for now. I remember this amazing eighty six year
old man in one of these villages again, way out
on Badakshan and the Hindukush long flowing white Beard. And
(09:09):
when we came to his village and we were doing
the initial introductions of who we are, what we wanted
to do, he put his hand up and he said, please,
I want a tap, a community water tap right next
to my house, because my knees no longer will let
me walk down this path to fetch water from the river.
And I really want my grandchildren to be healthy. And
(09:30):
so fast forward six months or so when we had
the water system in place, and we had a community
tap ten feet from from his mud brick house where
he lived. And this man, this old man, I can't
remember his name, I'm sorry, but he gathered his grandchildren
and he said, I will be the first to drink
water from this tap. And he drank it, and it
(09:51):
probably didn't taste any different, but he was like, this
is the best water I've ever had. But then he
told us the story. He said, you know, I cannot
remember in my eighty six years of life, I cannot
remember a month where my stomach hasn't been upset. I
cannot remember a day when one of my grandchildren hasn't
had hasn't had diarrhea, or I've been worried that one
of them would be so sick that maybe they wouldn't
(10:11):
last the next year. And now, because of this clean water,
I think our future will be so much better.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
There would have been times when you saw humanity yet
its worst. I mean, you've worked in areas where the
problems are caused by war and dodgy, corrupt political systems
and things. So you've seen people that you've seen humanity
at its worst. Did you get any great insights into humanity? Yeah,
I'd say probably.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
The thing I think about a lot is when there
is a crisis or a natural disaster, or an emergency,
or people respond in maybe three ways broadly, if it's
a spectrum, perhaps I think most of us sit in
the middle, and we kind of maybe consider our own
needs and we look to the well being of our
own family. But then you have those who will go
(11:01):
above and beyond the helpers. And I'm trying to remember
the quote from mister Rogers who talks about you know,
when overwhelmed by crullty in the world, look for their helpers.
There's always the helpers, amazing people who will who will
do amazing things for people they don't know, people in distress,
to help them. But unfortunately you also have those who
when a crisis comes, they will look to how can
(11:22):
I take advantage of that child, how can I abuse
that woman, how can I exploit that adult? And you
just hope that you can get behind the helpers and
stand against those who would do who would be cruel.
And really, I think our responsibility here in New Zealand,
where we are so far removed from you know, these
(11:43):
terrible crisis in the world, be it gazabeit famine, the
faminine that's happening right now in East Africa, being the
terrible civil war raging and sadan for us to come
behind the helpers and be a stop gap against those
who would be cruel.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah, it's easy, I guess to look at them and think, well,
look at all the cruelty and harshness there. I'm just
cynical about the whole place, and to turn your back
on it, but you hunt out those the good people
that are in there, turning that situation around and back
them up.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Yeah, there are amazing good people. There was amazing good people.
And if I could tell another story, it was working
with refugees in Lebanon and meeting this wonderful man named
Mohammad who was a Syrian refugee living in Lebanon, and
he was a carpenter and he could build shelters for
refugees to live in. And he was just this tireless,
(12:38):
joyful human being in a really tough situation where refugees
were coming into Lebanon. They didn't know where they would live,
they didn't know where their next meal, was totally discombobulated.
No one tells you how to be a refugee. You
just are thrown into it and then you arrive in
a foreign country and have to figure out.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
What to do.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
And he was this amazing person who brought refugees into
safe space, who created a joyful culture, who brought smiles
to children's faces and parents' faces, and really incredible hardship,
and I've never forgotten him because it's like boy like you. Yeah,
to be a joy bringer, to be someone who who
brings sunshine and hard places, that's very very special, and
(13:17):
you do see that all around the world.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
My guest tonight is Andrew Robinson. Do you prefer Andy?
I go by either, Okay, Andy? And Andrew Robinson, and
he works for world Vision currently. He's worked for lots
of aid organizations and lots of places, and I'm looking
forward to talking to more after his break. Welcome back
to real life. I'm John Cown cooking with Andy Robinson
from World Vision, and we ask our guests to pick
(13:41):
some music. I'm a little surprised by this choice. Why
did you pick celendi On?
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Not just because she's a beautiful singer, John, but celendi
On has a special place in the hearts of the
Afghan people.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Now that's a very strange thing to say, Garry On.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Somehow, and I don't know how away, but when the
Taliban were in control the first time of Taliban, and
they kind of prohibited Western movies and Western songs from
getting into the country, somehow, the Titan Panick movie slipped
across the border, made it into Afghanistan and they people
loved it. It was their favorite movie and that song,
(14:19):
my Heart Will Go On was the favorite song. I
had a little travel guitar and, as I say, working
these little villagers where there's not a lot to do
at night, and I would sit there and I'd play
my little travel guitar to entertain myself and the Afghun
my f gun colleagues. We're all living Marie style. We're
all living in a big room all together, sleep in
this big room, having our meals there. And they asked, look,
(14:40):
do you buy any chance know my.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Heart will go on?
Speaker 3 (14:44):
And I thought was like, cause you know, you don't
ask an usually on a man and you see in
the male do you know my heart will go on?
And then you certainly don't ask them? Would you sing
it for us? And so for many many nights on
my little travel guitar, I would serenade a group of
thirty forty big burly f gun men my Heart will
go on, CELINDI on in my little squeaky voice. And
(15:05):
they loved it, and they just thought it was the
most beautiful song.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Eh, that's a beautiful image, but somewhat bizarre.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
And I have to say, but I've never done it since.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Well, we actually have a guitar.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
Now.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
I have the privilege of knowing your mom and dad,
nicest people in the world like Nels. But I even
remember your grandparents May and Gordon, and look, they were
missionaries in China and they were born there, and I
think you have ancestors who are missionaries back there. This
type of work of going overseas and serving, it's almost
(15:41):
like it's genetic in your family.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
It might well be. Yeah, it's yeah, there's a there's
a strong family history of service to I guess service
to others overseas. That might sound a little bit grandiose.
I don't mean it too here, but yeah, probably hearing
those stories from my grandparents about their time in China
growing up, and their home was full of things that
were special to them that they'd brought back from China,
(16:04):
be at some carvings or pictures, and so yeah, I
guess from a very early age I knew the world
was bigger than New Zealand. I just didn't really understand
what it was.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
And obviously they were motivated by their Christian faith and
that must be a motivation for you as well.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Yeah, absolutely, So what is.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
It about your faith that makes you think that you
need to go overseas to serve? What is it about
what you believe in that has driven you to the
fore corners of the planet.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Yeah, I would say that my faith doesn't necessarily mean
I have to go overseas, and now being home in
New Zealand, I look to how I can maybe express
my faith here. But what captured my imagination, probably in
my late teens and early twenties, was this idea that
God just hates injustice and he, like you read through
(16:54):
the Bible, there's so much in the Bible, but there's
also there's so much about God's his frustration and his
grief at letting it when poverty has just left to
run rampant, and when when there's there's things that are
just plainly wrong in a society that no one seems
to be addressing that problem. And so I took that and,
(17:16):
as I said, keptured my imagination and the way I've
chosen to try and understand that, actually I really wanted
to understand that was to take myself overseas. And it's
almost been coming back to my story of Ethiopia and
those children, like those children did capture my heart in
a way my heart had never been captured before. It
(17:38):
was also me, I guess, really wrestling with my faith
and understanding hardship and suffering in our world, and then
what is my responsibility to respond to that? And when
you fall in love with a child, and I don't
mean romantic love, I just mean you just want the
very best for this child, That was my faith kind
(17:58):
of really starting to come alive and going, well, if
I feel this way about this child, God, who I
believe is their creator, how much miserably more muscy fear
about this child? And what is the best thing I
can do for this child to make sure that they're
safe and to make sure they're protected and to give
my best to them so that they can have their best.
I hope that's not too rambly, but for me it was. Yeah,
(18:21):
this idea that at the heart of God and Christian
faith is love, love, love, love, and that love is
not soppy, love is not mushy. Love is about making
life better for someone else who's doing it hard.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Now, your ancestor of missionaries, Yeah, the conways of China,
they would have gone off there for different Well, it's
probably a similar motivation, but they would have seen that
their priority would be to change people's religion, to convert
them to Christianity. And is that still a motivation in
(18:55):
today's Christians that go overseas to do aid work.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
I think my grandparents would give me a little bit
of a quizzical look at this answer if they were
they here today. I think for many, yes, it is.
It is a motivation. For me, my motivation is not
to convert. I can I can say that it's something
that's something I've wrestled with because I think if anyone
who's grown up in an evangelical church, we kind of
(19:20):
have this or we must, you know, win souls. For me,
being in places like Afghanistan and Lebanon and meeting people
in their own place where they are and doing what
I can to make life better, that is my motivation
and that is my drive. And I almost see it
John as when Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God.
(19:42):
The kingdom is about compassion and about kindness and about
love no strings attached, and it's about extending that. And
I think for me, and I think for many Christians,
and particularly Christians who are aid workers, it's about practical love,
no strings attached, just because it is the right thing
to do.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
When you are signing up to do this work and
you've worked with t your Fund and met Air and
World Vision and I don't know of any others, but
all these organizations, you know that when you sign up
for those things, you're not going to get super rich
working there.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
No, But is it rewarding? That was the one flaw
in my plan, John, I didn't. I haven't got super rich.
Unfortunately my wife married me knowing knowing that that wasn't
going to happen. It's absolutely rewarding. I again, starting right
back with the stories of that the children Ethiopia, my
heart has been captivated and expanded and stretched in ways
(20:36):
that that might sound incredibly softy, but in ways that
I feel my life is big, bigger than it would
have been if I'd never live.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Life is big. My life of us would envy you that. Yeah. Yeah.
Another thing entering into the type of work you're doing.
I mean, if you're coming from a Catholic tradition, you'd
know that if you're signing up to be a priest
or a brother, that would mean you're taking vows of
poverty and chastity there. You don't have to do that
from your faith tradition, but you must have realized that, hey,
(21:03):
this type of work, I'm not going to be meaning
a lot of women. You must have said, did you
see this a of like a call to singleness as
well as you're heading off into this overseas work.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
I never, I never saw it as a call to singleness.
But I certainly embraced the singleness and never struggle with that.
And I think maybe that was something I was fortunate
with because others would have would have struggled with that.
I have friends and colleagues have struggled with that. But
I love the freedom. I love the freedom of being
able to be single and go to hard places where
(21:33):
you know there was always a possibility of risk or injury.
But knowing that I wasn't leaving anyone out the mum
and dad, I wasn't going to leave anyone hanging if
something happened to me. Singleness was a real gift for
me and my wife. I have to be careful when
I say that in front of my wife because she's like,
I am now your gift, and I'm like, yes, yes
you are. I have traded gifts. I've traded the silver
(21:54):
for the goal, but I wouldn't trade that time of
singleness and the opportunities that gave me for.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Anything, right. I remember Tony Campolo saying that when he
came back from trips to Haiti, he would be unbearable
or as children.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
You know what a new bike do?
Speaker 1 (22:10):
You know?
Speaker 2 (22:10):
The children? And I haven't even got food to eat,
and you know what your bike? You know? Do you
sometimes get offended by the affluence and ease that the
relative ole of affluence that we have in New Zealand?
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Yeah, yeah, I do. And I'm worse when I first
come back from a place.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
And and I also look at my I said, and
I'm a lazy person, John, And I settle into my
own affluence and my own comfort and and then it
doesn't take much. It might be just looking at a
picture or a memory comes to mind and I think,
oh boy, what am I doing myself back in New Zealand. Yeah,
we do have a lot, and I think I think
for me, it's lack of gratitude. When we forget to
(22:50):
be grateful for what we have here. That's that I
find really hard.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Okay, are New Zealanders generous when it comes when you
present the needs of overseas people, and what is it
that triggers their generosity.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
I think New Zealanders are incredibly generous. I think most
of us are really generous. I think New Zealanders are
rightly careful, perhaps cynical with how their generosity could be
taken advantage of, And so will vision. We get asked
great questions about how how is this donation going to
be used? How much do you keep? And can I
say again, I'm not a wealthy man, so don't worry
(23:24):
if you don't any vision. I'm not going effluent on
your donation. But I think those are the right questions
to ask, and I think I think people have a
range of reasons why they give, but often it is
as simple as they see a need on TV or
they hear about in the radio and compelled to act
the moved. I find it's often, you know, children are
(23:47):
just so pure right, and a child sees something and
that just doesn't write to them and says, mom, dad,
we've got to do something. And so as often we
hear these stories of parents promptotec because the children are like,
that's not right, we can't we can't let that stand.
And I think that's that's.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Marvelous, that's fantastic. Give us a website that people can
can check out of feeling motivated to act on their generosity.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Worldvision dot org dot.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Z, Worldvision dot org dot inz. And let's go out
on another song that you've picked. What have you got?
Speaker 3 (24:17):
I chose under Africa Guys by Paul Simon, which that
reminds me of when I was a hippo life garden
in Ethiopia, John, and I'll leave there's a.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Teaser hippolife gards. Well, I suppose you'd want to be
swimming with hippos and the river, So yeah, amazing, this
is real life. I'm John Cown. It has been my
privilege to talk to Andrew Robinson from World Vision. Looking
forward to being back with you again next Sunday night.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Ju Save face was as black as the and his
path was mark by the stars in the sun.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
And your the man.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Focus days under African Skies.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
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