PROFILE • MAF
On a wing and a prayer
Faith-based charity MAF International uses aircraft to bring lifesaving healthcare, hope and education to remote communities worldwide. We tell its story through the voices of a senior executive, a young pilot and a grateful doctor. Words: Mike Stones
MAF pilots often operate from potentially perilous strips – such as this mountain top in Papua New Guinea.
PROFILE • MAF
On a wing and a prayer
Faith-based charity MAF International uses aircraft to bring lifesaving healthcare, hope and education to remote communities worldwide. We tell its story through the voices of a senior executive, a young pilot and a grateful doctor. Words: Mike Stones
MAF pilots often operate from potentially perilous strips – such as this mountain top in Papua New Guinea.
A MAF flight lands at a desert oasis in Chad to bring children schooling in their local language.
“WHEN WE fly, lives are saved.” Six words sum up the impact of MAF International’s work, says Norman Baker, its chief transformation and operating officer. Behind his words are countless stories of trauma casualties flown in single-engine aircraft over remote terrain to receive life-saving emergency care.
Not just accident victims benefit. Mothers and babies in remote communities get vital perinatal care and children and youngsters receive education and training that otherwise would be denied. All delivered by solo pilots flying light aircraft from dirt strips often in challenging weather.
This is a story that begins more than 80 years ago in the ashes of World War II. MAF’s founders, inspired by their Christian faith, decided to use their flying and engineering skills to deliver medical care, education and training plus psychological support to remote communities worldwide. The first flight in February 1946 was a survey mission flown from California to Mexico by Betty Greene in a Waco Standard Cabin Series biplane.
More than 80 years on, MAF International claims to be world’s largest humanitarian air operator. The charity deploys more than 200 pilots operating 120 aircraft in 11 countries worldwide – all backed by engineering and operational support teams. Each year the charity completes more than 44,400 flight legs and about 34,000 flight hours, partnering with over 1,500 aid, development and mission organisations.
The mostly single-engine fleet includes light aircraft such as the Cessna 206, Cessna 186 SMA and turboprops such as the Quest Kodiak 100 and Gippsland G8 Airvan. Plus, the charity recently invested in full flight simulators to improve training and cut its carbon footprint.
“Our aircraft operate all over the world – from Africa to Latin America and in Asia-Pacific in places such as Papua New Guinea and Australia,” Baker tells us. “Each flight is subsidised by charitable donations. We transport medical cargo and aid workers, delivering long-term development solutions into the furthest corners of the world.”
In many cases, MAF International pilots provide the only practical link for remote communities cut off from healthcare, education and essential supplies, says the former Airbus and Cessna Aircraft senior executive. It’s not simply the speed of transport that matters but also the safety the flight provides. That is compared with walking across difficult terrain or laborious truck journeys often in atrocious weather, sometimes threatened by bandit gangs. (Baker is haunted by the report of one man in Liberia who died on a long jungle journey to seek medical care after suffering a compound fracture to his arm. “A simple 20-minute flight would have brought him to proper medical care.”).
Baker describes such tragedies as “everyday reality” for people encountered by the charity. That realisation drives the team to have a much bigger impact, he adds. The charity measures that impact through the increased access to medical care and health services and education programmes. Plus, the extent to which its flights support the work of other non-governmental organisations, charities and Christian churches.
Also important is reducing the organisation’s environmental impact. Baker prefers to put it like this: “We believe in caring for the world and creation around us. So, we take very seriously our impact environmentally.” Examples include the charity’s Cessna Caravan operations, which recently became carbon neutral and the flight simulators that replace some of the need for actual flights.
Central to MAF International’s mission is its personnel – aircrew, engineers, medical staff, administrators and others. “They are world-class people who have a heart,” says Baker. “They do not join us for the money or the titles – but because they passionately believe in our mission to improve the lives of people living in isolation and poverty, where there's little or no access to essential services.”
But the charity does not believe in forever interventions in local communities. It sees its role as to provide vital support and then to withdraw. “Exit strategies are critical for us. We work with the communities we serve delivering the things they want and need. We also get out of the way when they are ready to take over,” says Baker.
To help improve the charity’s efficiency, Baker is leading a transformation process to integrate the organisation’s fundraising and marketing units in different national countries and under a single parent structure – MAF International.
There’s never a shortage of work for the charity or its pilots. At present, MAF International serves about 2,500 communities throughout the world. The charity’s ambition is to double that number by its 100th anniversary in 2045. “Over one billion people, by UN estimates and others, are living in isolation across a large part of the areas that we operate in, and so the need is huge,” says Baker.
We began with an affirmation – that MAF International flights save lives. But the reverse is also true. “When we don’t fly, people die.” More people than ever need MAF International’s life-saving and life-changing help, says Baker. It’s not hard to understand why; as western governments cut their aid budgets to developing countries. Plus, the effects of climate change ravage communities worldwide with those in remote areas often finding themselves most vulnerable.
MAF International is not working alone. The UN Sustainable Development Goal 17 highlights the need for “partnerships for the cause”. The charity explains: “This plays out in our collaborative work with a diverse group of partners such as Save the Children, The Red Cross, Med Air, UNICEF and World Vision. Together we are making a difference.”
One example is the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Sudan, which is said to have displaced 14 million people – more than half of whom are thought to be children. As the crisis spreads into neighbouring countries, MAF International is taking action. “We're driving a huge response now to the crisis, working to build a stronger presence up closer to Sudan’s border in South Sudan and in Chad.”
Amid the tragedy, trauma and torment, Baker and his colleagues are sustained by the twin supports of hope and faith plus the confidence that their work is making a real practical difference to the lives of people in remote communities.
Norman Baker takes the co-pilot’s seat on a flight over Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.
Medical mission to Madagascar. Supplies are unloaded from a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan in the country’s south west.
Parts of Arnhem Land are a patchwork of rivers and floodplains.
‘I get to make a difference to isolated people’
JAMES GULLETT
MISSION AVIATION Fellowship pilot James Gullett flies challenging missions in the far north of Australia. The 23-year-old Cessna Caravan captain, based in Arnhem Land, Northern Territories navigates over a vast landscape of towering sandstone escarpments, lush rainforest valleys and wide savanna woodlands.
It’s home to an indigenous population of about 16,000 Yolngu people, many of whom live in homelands of between 10 and 50 or so inhabitants – often with their own dirt airstrip. Bigger communities of around 1,000 people typically have a short, paved airstrip. Gulletts’ role is to replace potentially dangerous surface journeys, sometimes taking days, with quick flights.
Before describing his typical mission MAF International’s youngest pilot outlines the basics: “MAF International is a humanitarian Christian Organisation,” he tells us. “Our vision is to see isolated people transformed through help, hope and healing.” In Arnhem Land that translates into four key areas of focus on education, healthcare, regular shuttle services between population hubs and church and community support flights.
“There’s a desperate need for good education across the region,” he explains. “Every week we take indigenous students from their homelands to a bigger hub to attend boarding school. Then we take them back home on Friday.” The charity judges this the best way of providing young people with an education while enabling them to remain embedded in their communities. As part of those missions, MAF also flies teachers and other staff to schools in remote areas.
Healthcare is another key mission. These flights involve both emergency medevac flights and routine flights to run clinics in remote areas. “Each week I fly doctors and nurses to run healthcare clinics in the homelands and communities. Most centres have only a small building with a bed and we have to bring all their gear in.” Typical passenger rosters include three doctors/nurses and up to 150kg of equipment. The return flights sometimes carry patients to larger towns for more sophisticated healthcare.
Also classified as healthcare flights are missions to rescue women and children who become victims of domestic violence. Often linked to the misuse of drugs and alcohol, such flights provide a vital lifeline for vulnerable groups in remote areas. Last year he flew 150 women and children out of abusive situations.
“Whatever the mission, we try to meet the communities’ needs that are in front of us.”
Many missions are flown in a single-engine Gippsland GA8 Airvan. Cruising at 140mph, the aircraft can carry up to seven passengers or 500kg of supplies. The cockpits of single pilot MAF aircraft can be lonely places, he tells us. “There’s a significant wet season here and you have to make all the decisions yourself about whether to take the flight or, if en route to cancel the mission.”
Thankfully MAF flight training equipped him with the skills needed to keep both himself and his passengers safe. The first graduate of the MAF International Training Centre in the Netherlands, he completed his commercial pilot’s licence, instrument rating and frozen airline transport pilots licence (ATPL). The safety of his crew and passengers is Gullett’s top priority.
Halfway through our interview, I take a deep breath and prepare for a difficult question: How would Gullett answer suggestions that the charity’s work in Arnhem Land and elsewhere are neocolonial interventions into the lives of indigenous people? He pauses before answering: “You should come and sit in the plane’s right seat on a mission with me. Watch what we do. See the faces of people who receive vital medical care. The children who benefit from life-changing education. The remote communities we connect.”
Also, MAF International never forces its services on anyone. “We serve local communities by invitation. We never forget we are here as guests,” says Gullett.
So, what’s the best part of his job in Arnhem Land? “I get to be part of making a difference to isolated people by bringing health, hope and healing. That is my favourite part.”
Gullett’s acceptance by the community he serves is revealed by his tribal name – reflecting his ethnic origin and flying skills. In the Yolngu tongue, his name is Nyirk – White Cockatoo.
His office view: David Gullett at work in Arnhem Land, Australia.
‘We have saved thousands of lives here in Vanga’
DR JUNIOR MUDJI
Dr Mudji delivers life-saving care to an infant at Vanga Hospital, as mother looks on.
IT’S A SHORT video message, packed with power. Dr Junior Mudji, speaks to a handheld camera phone. As he talks, behind him men unload boxes of malaria medicine from a MAF International Cessna Caravan bush plane. During the 90-second YouTube clip, Mudji thanks the charity for its help in combatting the disease that kills an estimated 579,000 people – many of them children – in Africa each year, according to the World Health Organization.
It is heart-felt thanks. Mudji has seen the lives taken and the lives blighted by malaria. But he is determined to fight back, using his medical skills and help from MAF International and other charities. He is well-placed to do so, working as head of research at the remote Vanga Evangelical Hospital, in Kwilu province 210 miles east of the capital Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. (Mudhi is also studying for a PhD in maternity care at Oxford University in the Department of Global Health and Tropical Medicine).
The doctor specialises in maternal and newborn health. But working at the remote Vanga hospital, he must work across all health areas. “In our local community, everybody knows about MAF International,” he tells us. “I became more aware of the charity when I worked with them to refer patients for treatment in Kinshasa.”
While driving from Vanga to the capital can take up to 12 hours depending on the state of the roads, MAF International flights complete the journey in a little over an hour. The charity also ferries patients from very remote rural areas to Vanga for treatment.
One of the most valuable aspects of the charity’s work is providing malaria kits to help protect and treat people against the devastating disease, says Mudji. “DRC accounts for about 13% of global malaria cases, so we have a lot of problems with the disease.” Problems that are compounded by lack of supplies. “Sometimes we lack medicine, rapid tests and other medicines needed to treat malaria.” That situation has improved significantly over the past five years after working in partnership with MAF International. In addition to medicines, MAF International supplies a full range of medical equipment – such as intravenous catheters.
Poverty is another enemy of public health. “The average Congolese person has to live with less than $2 per day – some earn less than $1,” Mudji explains. “So, when you fall sick with malaria, you can’t afford to spend up to $20 or $30 for your treatment when you need to buy food and clothes.”
That makes the work of MAF International and other charities crucial – particularly as more western governments cut their aid programmes to developing countries, according to Mudji. “Most western countries – including the United States, Germany and the UK – have drastically reduced their aid to the low-resource countries,” he explains. “We are seeing the effects of that now in Vanga. We are lucky because treatment is still available. In other remote areas, where MAF International and other charities don’t operate, they miss malaria treatment, so people will die. Malaria kills.”
Cutting western aid programmes should serve as a call to action for governments in Africa to boost their own healthcare systems, he believes. “African leaders should start thinking how they can fund their health systems and stop relying only on Western support,” says Mudji.
The benefits of MAF International’s help extend beyond medicines. “In providing treatment, MAF is not only supporting healthcare but also helping the local community to save some money for themselves and most importantly to have access to the right treatment at the right time,” he says.
“Without MAF International’s help, you must wait two, three days to find a cousin or a friend who can send you some money to buy the medicine. But now treatment is available when malaria is diagnosed.”
He also appreciates the charity’s work in supporting education and training together with other NGOs. The charity’s help is freely given, says the 43-year-old doctor. “I have nothing materially to give back to MAF, but I'm always available to talk about its work to the world.”
Meanwhile, back to his handheld video. Mudji finishes with these words: “Thanks to MAF International for all its help, we have already saved thousands of lives here in Vanga region. Thank you.”
Flying on faith: MAF flies delegates to the remote triennial gathering of Christian women from the Min Mountains region in Papua New Guinea.
If you would like to support the work of MAF, please contact the charity via https://maf-uk.org/ways-to-give/ or telephone +44 (0)1303 852 819.
