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By Lloyd Mackey
ON October 1, Calgary businessman Kevin Jenkins will take over as president and
chief executive officer of World Vision International (WVI), arguably the
largest evangelically-based relief, development and humanitarian agency in the
world.
Jenkins has served in several high-energy executive positions, including a stint
during a particularly difficult period in the airline industry, as president of
Canadian Airlines International (CAI).
In 1996, Jenkins became president and CEO of the Westaim Corporation, a
technology research company; since 2003, he has been a managing director at
TriWest Capital Partners, a Calgary-based private equity firm.
In his new role, he will head WVI’s operations in 96 countries, with a staff of 40,000 and an annual budget of
$2.6 billion.
One Christian-rooted Africa specialist wishes the new president well, and has
some suggestions for him.
David Kilgour, former federal minister of state in foreign affairs for Africa
and Latin America, said Jenkins “will be judged on how well he listens to a wide variety of persons in each of
the countries where World Vision operates.”
Kilgour notes, “World Vision already does excellent work in many countries, but there is no
doubt that it can do better in some of them.”
“The WVI presidency involves spending substantial time in New York City and
Geneva, Switzerland,” said Jenkins. Both are cities where major United Nations agencies are located,
as well as many other institutions significantly involved in humanitarian and
development issues.
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“There are at least 20 major agencies with which World Vision needs to maintain
close communication,” he added.
Coordination with other agencies “helps us to ensure that we are in the field where the poorest children are, and
to assist us in looking ahead, to where we will need [to be working] 10 years
from now.”
Asked about the agency’s well-known and sometimes-questioned willingness to coordinate with
non-Christian agencies, Jenkins acknowledged the need to “navigate through [those relationships] without losing our Christ-centredness.”
God, he said, “calls us to love the poor, and to work with them in all circumstances, even
where a different, even hostile, faith is predominant.”
June 2009
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